1. A Composition-Specific CLASP Module #6
5/5/2018
Rhetorical Listening, Color-blind Racism, and Stereotype Threat: Considerations for Student-Teacher Conferencing
A Composition-Specific CLASP Module #6
Anna Plemons and Jordan Engelke
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2. Stereotype Threat Review
5/5/2018
Stereotype Threat Review
Claude Steele: the threat of being viewed in a stereotypical way, resulting in acute, negative psychological effects
Focus on Identity Contingencies
Cues in the environment that change particular identities into threat-inducing contingencies
Black students on intelligence test
Female students in the sciences
White male students on math test as compared to Asian males
The more the student cares about their performance, the more acute stereotype threat’s negative impact
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3. Disciplinary Bias Against Listening
Heidegger’s divided logos, which “speaks but does not listen” (Ratcliffe 23)
Ratcliffe argues that Rhetoric and Composition theory does not account for the ways we use listening or how our listening and/or choosing not to listen uses us.

4. Rhetorical Listening Defined
Teachers examine their own rhetoric
Rhetorical listening:
a trope for interpretive invention
code for cross-cultural conduct (17)

5. Ratcliffe’s Four Moves
Can be folded into a “performance of a person’s conscious choice to assume an open stance in relation to any person, text, or culture.”
Promoting an understanding of self and other
Proceeding within an accountability logic
Locating identifications across commonalities and differences
Analyzing claims as well as the cultural logics within which these claims function (26)

6. Ratcliffe’s rhetorical listening as a response to Jacqueline Jones Royster’s question:
“How do we translate listening into language and action, into the creation of an appropriate response?”

7. “We should listen not for intent but with intent”
Ratcliffe & Royster in Conversation
“We should listen not for intent but with intent”
“How may we listen for that which we do not intellectually, viscerally, or experientially know?”
Ratcliffe
Royster

8. bell hooks on Listening Without Mastery
“I suggest that we do not necessarily need to hear and know what is stated in its entirety, that we do not need to ‘master’ or conquer the narrative as a whole, that we may know in fragments. I suggest that we may learn from spaces of silence as well as spaces of speech, that in the patient act of listening to another tongue we may subvert that culture of capitalist frenzy and consumption that demands all desires must be satisfied immediately…”

9. Ratcliffe’s Conditions for Ethical Listening
Two important conditions for ethical rhetorical listening:
Listener has agency to choose to act ethically, "either by listening and/or by acting upon that listening."
Listener “provided with a lexicon and tactics for listening and for acting upon their listening.” (76)

10. Steele & Bonilla-Silva on Lexicons & Tactics
Accountability logic (Move #2) addressed in the work of Claude Steele on stereotype threat
Cultural logics and claims (Move #4) addressed in the work of Eduardo Bonilla-Silva on color-blind racism

11. Frames: Listening for What We Do Not Know
CLASP working to collect frames through which to interrogate our own rhetoric
Bonilla-Silva
Steele
Student comments

12. Rhetorical Listening and Color-Blind Racism
Ratcliffe (2006) & Bonilla-Silva (2003):
Looked at a construction of rhetorical listening
Used that construct to think about color- blind racism in the context of responding to student writing

13. Color-Blind Racism
Central Frames of Color-blind Racism:
Abstract liberalism
Naturalization
Cultural racism
Minimization of race
-Eduardo Bonilla-Silva

14. Activity Directions: Each group review assigned frame.
Where have you seen this?
When have you used this frame?
How does it play out in your classroom?
With this frame in mind, how can rhetorical listening be employed in your response to student writing?

15. Student-Teacher Conferencing
In small groups (10 minutes):
How do the concepts we have discussed this semester (rhetorical listening, color-blind frames, stereotype threat) inform your conferencing practice?
Discuss specific “Best Practices” you are developing based on the discussions this semester.
As a large group (remaining time):
Best practices
Items for further consideration

16. Conclusion: Invitation to Iteration
We hope this is a conversation we can continue having:
Over time
In changing contexts
Inviting additional voices

17. References/Further Reading
Jacqueline Jones Royster, “When the First Voice You Hear Is Not Your Own.” (1996).
Krista Ratcliffe, Rhetorical Listening: Identification, Gender, Whiteness (2006).
bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. (1994).