through state'

The simplicity of the choices is often provided

quick fix-it programs
federal, and district curricular mandates with
issues with substantive
that ultimately do not address the diversity
replicate the
and sustaining change. Such mandates invariably
to
institution
p"^irl* stainationLd failure of the school as an of making
The difficulty
meet the needs of underserved students.
negative beliefs'
uppropriut" choices is either masked in the
attitudes,andexpectationsaboutcertainstudents'orisclouded
changes' but without
[V- ,t d"sir" and the intention to make
Culturally and
"
the knowledge of how to do so instructionally'
complexity of
linguistically .e*ponrive pedagogy deals with the
desires to
boih these negative mindsets ura *r" well-intentioned
make changes that will matter'

Whenitcomestoconsiderationofthecultureandlanguageof

:if:l:"

the populations thai have been iOgn1i{ea Pt::,*3v^

essence, this
[.lJrri"iri'"a*,-*d -indrets are deficit oriented. In and
are seen
that the students are blamed for their failures
means

"._,t,"problem.Theviewofaneducatorwithadeficitmindsetis
reflectid in such observations as these:

If we had better

students, then we would have better

schools.

.
.

here'
Our scores were good lntll they started coming
well except for
Everyone in our school seems to be doing

thosekids.

.Thesfudentsaremyopicallyviewedaslackingsomething.

Culturallyandlinguistically,theunderservedstudentsareall
and
disruptive'
too frequently seen'as deficient, deviant' defiant'

airrerp"ctf,l.Whaltheybringtotheclassroomculturallyand
liability'
linguistically is not seen as an asset, but as a

i3

Rfsp.,rti,r.
C"l+oroJ lJ trrgutslE
The first purpose of cLR is ro refute
by having
educators undergo a change in heart
and in mind about these
students' I call this change a mindset
shift, oras my .ott"ugr"

if#r:ffins

*o
former CLAS teacher Kieche[e Russelr
dubbed it, a itnindshift.,,
In order to be c{trla]]f and linguistically ,"rpor.iu",
educutors
have to shift their beliefs, attitu;es,
and knowleage io a stance
that sees what the student brings culturalry
and linguistically as an
ur:"l,a capability, and an element that cin be
buit upon. In this
mindshift, students are not the problem but
rather the source of the
soluuon.

second purposl for cLR pedagogy is

to clarify what is meant
specifically by culture while srmuttaneously
giving educators an
awareness of some of the noted curtural
ura rirg.rlrtic behaviors
of underserved student populations. what lingeis
is a confusion
between race and culture and the various
ideniities that comprise
who we are culturally. we are made up of
at reast seven separate
identities, of which all but one have an unrerated
cultural connection.
The seven identities are race, gender, nationality,
religion, ethnicity,

class, and age.

These identities examined in isolation

say something about who
we- are and why we enact certain behaviors,
o,
what I call
cultural determinations. The exception is race.-ukJ
In other words,
our behaviors are culturally determined by
these identities only.
But race determines nothing about our behavior.
For example,
there are some behaviors that we do simply
based on how old
we are or what decade we grew up in and nothing
else. Some
decisions and behaviors are based 6, oo, socioeconomic
identity
and nothing else. Before examining other
examples, I want to
clearly eliminate raciaridentity as thI one factor
that has nothing
to do with cultural determination.

our racial identity is very clear: it is the biological

DNA

representation that gives us our blood rineage

and, fir e*ampt"
what diseases we
prone to (good information to know).
ryI.q"
Other than that, raci-al
identity really-tells us nothing
we a-re as individuars. The salient point is that
riciar identity

"il;;;

*
*
has nothing to do with our cultural identity.
Racial identity does not necessitate or affect

ln the context of culturallY and

linguisticallY resPonsiveness,

;- [:1'ffi iL'#,i: llHI':I'n,

communitY that is Passed down

I*

tto, Oltiation to generation and

represents our heritage'

* 4&E
anyOf ourotheridentitieS-age,religion, 4 & & & & * @'
g"nd"., or nationality. There is nothing
mentally or
do racially that is connected to who we are
ihu, *"
betravioratly.Althoughwearelockedintoourracialidentityby
who we are
birth and ierhaps genomes, we remain free to be
ethnically or otherwise.
identities

on the other hand, by acknowledging our various cultural

that
in explicit terms, *" *" acknowiedging a cultural complexity
troty.,peut.stothekaleidoscopethathasbeenguisedunderthe
for too
,r#o*rr.r, of racial identity and the thickness of racism
iorg. rro* an ethnoculturu-l p"rrp""tive, being African American

doesnotmeanthatoneisBlack,ifBlackisseenasanethnic
identitynodifferentfromlrish,Armenian'orJewish'Being

is White Anglo-Saxon
Caucasian American does not mean that one
protestant or catholic ethnically. Villegas and Lucas (2007) define
community
culture as the way life organized within an identifiable
language'
uses
or group. This includes the ways that a community
another, takes turns to talk, relates to time and

interacts with one

patterns that exist
space, and approaches learning' The group
to
,"fl".t the standards or noffns used by community memberswe
way
is
the
make sense of the world. Simply, cultural identity
see the world.

culture or ethnic identity differs from race, nationality,

and
itrat our ethnocultural identity is passed

socioeconomic identity in
is
down from generation to generation. what is most confusing
for
that sometimes who *" *" ethnoculturally can be mistaken
cultural
our national cultural identity and/or our socioeconomic
identity. In these cases, there are behaviors that we exhibit based
the two
simply on our nationality or our economic status. consider
questions that follow:

why do you celebrate the Fourth of July if you are a United

States cTtizen?

'

Where do You wash Your clothes?

33

B9f9re answering the fust question, though, ask yourself if you

celebrate the Fourth of July because yoo ar" white Anglo-Saxon
or
Italino (ethnically and not racially speaking) or becau"se you are a
citizen of the United States. For the r""ond question, by knowing
where you wash your clothes, I can, most of the time, accurately
guess your economic status. If you regularly wash your
clothes in
a laundromat, wash house, or building complex,
gr"r,
would
-y
be you are of a lower or working socioeconomic class.lf you
wash
your clothes in your home, then my guess would be middle class.
If someone washes your clothes for you, then you might be upper
class. The point is that the Independence oay ihat yoricelebrate is
determined not by your ethnocultural identity but by your national
cultural identity. The way you wash your clothes is not determined
by your Black or white ethnicity but by your economic identity.

The central feature of cLR is the ethnocultural identity of the

students, but not to the exclusion of the other identities
that come
with culture. Additionally, educators have to be responsive to

gender culture, national culture, socioeconomic culfure,

and youth
culture--or what I call the rings of culture.

Figure 1.1 illustrates the rings of culture. Each of these rings is

a potential source of responsiveness for the educator.
Notice that
race does not appear in the figure.

34