Redneck & Hillbilly Discourse

I just read a fascinating article with the title above. The full title is Redneck and Hillbilly Discourse in the Writing Classroom: Classifying Critical Pedagogies of Whiteness. (Beech, 2004) Although it's not necessarily connected to my chapter's topic (writing instruction of diverse students), the article's guiding questions are applicable.

Beech questions the sweeping notions teachers often use when talking about their white students and how they are educated. She points out that many poor, working class, white students self-identify (or are identified by culture) as something different than the mainstream, educated, middle class populous. Those students who hold the label as 'redneck' or 'hillbilly' or even 'white trash' will often confront tensions with academic discourse in much the same way diverse students do. She goes on to talk about how writing instruction needs to be cognizant of that fact.

These ideas apply to my inquiry in two ways. First, diverse or minority students aren't all alike. We can't just 'lump' them together, assuming they have the same Discourses (Gee) and tensions as any other minority student. Of course, this seems obvious, but it again underscores why Ogbu's research (for example) brings so much discussion and dissonance. This also connects to some of Gee's writing when he indicates that some of our research on minorities, especially African Americans, have inadvertently blended African American students = Lower class students.

Second, the article uses a quote from Harris (2003) that says the purpose of a college composition course is "not to leave one community in order to enter another, but to reposition themselves in relation to several continuous and conflicting discourses. Similarly, our goals as teachers need not to be to initiate our students into the values and practices of some new community, but to offer them the chance to reflect critically on those discourses--of home, school, work, the media and the like--to which they already belong" (p. 105).

I really like this quote and it makes me ask the question...what IS the purpose of writing instruction for minority or diverse students? Are we providing an entrance for them to a standardized, majority culture, OR are we judging as inferior. Where is that line?