Judging by the acceptance of having such a racist history, and now having a president (Donald Trump) who often pushes a racist agenda (build a wall, anti-Mexican, Puerto Rico, etc.) it feels like the United States' society is justified in publically displaying their racist rhetoric/practices that were once closeted. Although I openly agree that these same individuals have always been racist, the difference is that they are now PROUD of displaying their racist practices. A prime example of this pride is the old “okay” hand gesture, which has been recently employed by people who wish to sign “white supremacy.”

Although many racist acts occur at a large national level, for the most part, scholars have chosen to ignore them. That said, there are some scholars of color like Asao Inoue and Carmen Kynard, who do address these issues. For example, in “The Good Work of Writing Assessment That Reveals What the Field Lacks,” Inoue writes: “While many have worked to make race and racism more present in composition studies since her [referring to Prendergast] important article, it is still an absent presence in the scholarship on writing assessment (1)”. This is a powerful statement because as Inoue mentioned, Prendergast in 1998 made the initial claim that “race has been an absent presence” in the composition field. Eighteen years after Prendergast’s initial claim, at the time Inoue is writing, it is still not appearing in the writing assessment field, meaning that scholars do not think this is an issue worth taking up. So the question is: Although many scholars are reading race material, are they really listening?

Carmen Kynard has also addressed the existence of racism, but in a different context. In her case, although somewhat different from Inoue’s claim on how a field simply ignores a needed research call, Kynard writes about the difficulty of being a professor of color. In “Teaching While Black: Witnessing and Countering Disciplinary Whiteness, Racial Violence, and University Race-Management," Kynard addresses the racism that both students of color and professors of color face in the writing classroom. She writes:

I am starting with the narrative of a black female graduate student and myself because I am suggesting that it is a critical context in which to understand the space in which black college students and faculty must write and carve out their (literate) being in colleges today. We face a resistance and questioning of our intellect that oftentimes look no different from what Phyllis Wheatley faced when white colonists found it difficult to believe that Wheatley had written her own poetry. (3)

In my own narrative, which includes teaching writing for twenty years, I have very similar experiences to what Inoue and Kynard write about. In my case, I have been addressing issues of race, ethnicity, and writing for a very long time, and I don’t really think we are listening. Of course there are other scholars (mostly of color), in addition to those previously mentioned like Iris Ruiz, Geneva Smitherman, Victor Villanueva, Raúl Sánchez, Keith Gilyard, Cruz Medina, Aja Martinez, Adam Banks, Elaine Richardson, who do talk about these sensitive issues, but unfortunately most of my White European American (WEA) colleagues/allies STAY AWAY from these sensitive topics. Ironically though, almost every time a critical article or book, or even a presentation is presented that addresses these controversial issues, most of these same people get excited, talk about it for awhile, may even use it their classrooms, cite it, but then quickly forget about it. It seems like most of our colleagues/allies do not realize that being an ally is a 24 HOUR A DAY, LIFE-LONG COMMITMENT that must be embedded in all facets of life, including research, teaching, and living. Although I applaud the efforts by Inoue, Kynard, and other scholars of color in addressing issues of racism in composition, this effort needs to be more prominent among all scholars, especially WEA scholars.