What I’m reading…
Not a new article, but a good reminder: How We Pronounce Student Names, and Why it Matters
In other words, mutilating someone’s name is a tiny act of bigotry. Whether you intend to or not, what you’re communicating is this: Your name is different. Foreign. Weird. It’s not worth my time to get it right. Although most of your students may not know the word microaggression, they’re probably familiar with that vague feeling of marginalization, the message that everyone else is “normal,” and they are not.
(I shared a similar article back in August.)
Lynne Murphy is one of my favorite people to follow on Twitter for her writing about language. This one surprised me…using “nick” for general cheating/overcharging someone?
Oh, Merriam-Webster.
Tia Brown McNair, for the AAC&U Liberal Education Blog, wrote in Reimagining How We Define Equity Gaps: Decentering Whiteness and Privilege that higher education faculty/staff and institutions must:
“elevate anti-racism as an agenda . . . if we are ever to truly be the just and good society we imagine ourselves to be.” This requires us all to be active participants in critically examining existing practices that are commonly accepted but perpetuate privilege and the hierarchy of human value.