ABSTRACT

This article presents the results of five open-ended surveys administered to two Advanced Placement classes in a primarily White high school in upstate New York. Surveys sought to explore how students make sense of the course diversity selection, Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, which was inserted into a primarily White textual canon. Responses were coded and analysed via a Critical Discourse Analysis methodology. Analysis revealed that while many students replicated the discursive patterns of White innocence, characterised by an obliviousness to their complicity in White supremacy, some students, often coming from marginalised social positions, registered more nuanced reactions to the power dynamics represented in the text. The study concludes that while diversity insertions like Things Fall Apart can be mechanisms that actually reinforce White supremacy due to a perceived social disconnect, modest insights can also be generated by students seeking to better understand the dynamics of contemporary social oppression.

摘要

本文介绍了对纽约州北部一所主要白人高中的两个大学先修班进行的五项开放式调查的结果。调查旨在探索学生如何理解课程多样性选择，Chinua Achebe 的事情分崩离析，它被插入到一个主要是白人的文本教规中。通过批判性话语分析方法对响应进行编码和分析。分析显示，虽然许多学生复制了白人无辜的话语模式，其特点是忘记了他们在白人至上的同谋，但一些学生，通常来自边缘化的社会地位，对文本中所代表的权力动态有更细微的反应。