Unraveling the Meritocratic Myth: Oppression and Conflict In the Emergence of Critical Educator Subjectivities

Vitae Scholasticae, 201232

1. Introduction

Why do some things that seem to be placidly accepted by my co-educa-tors outrage me? Why do I see and thus resist oppression that others do not?In sum, how did I come to develop the subjectivities of a critical educator? Bycritical, I mean an educator whose teaching methodology and subject matterare strongly shaped by an understanding of and desire to end the sufferingcaused by overt and covert oppression.1Young has suggested an appropriatemethodology for formally answering this question: “Feminist scholars haveadvocated using personal narratives in examining women’s experiences asprimary centers of knowledge and interrogating the intersections of race,gender, and class in shaping women’s identities.”2 Furthermore, some of thecritical scholars whose work has had the greatest impact upon me—PatriciaHill Collins, bell hooks, Paulo Freire, and Gloria Anzaldúa—used autoethno-graphic methods in their scholarly work. Thus, I use autoethnography toresearch the emergence of my critical educator subjectivities, in particular myunderstanding of oppression.

Foucualt’s analytics of power/knowledge3 along with Collins4 work onoppression and power/knowledge form my analytical framework.Accordingly, I focus on schooling conflicts I experienced that changed mysubjectivities, specifically, that induced my understandings or knowledge ofoppression. Sites where these formative conflicts took place include my stu-dent experiences in elementary, undergraduate, and graduate school as well

Unraveling the MeritocraticMyth:

Oppression and Conflict In theEmergence of Critical Educator Subjectivities

Felecia BriscoeUniversity of San Antonio

Felecia Briscoe 33

as my experiences as a middle school science teacher. This paper is arrangedinto five sections: The first provides the rationale for the study. The secondsection describes the analytical framework. The third section describes themethodology. The fourth section presents my findings and analysis. The finalsection discusses the implications of my findings and suggests avenues forfurther research.

1.1 RationaleIn the rationale I describe how this research contributes to scholarly lit-

erature and argue that the development of critical educators benefits studentsin schools and society in general.

1.1a Contributions to the Critical Educator LiteratureThis research contributes to the literature on critical education by adding

to our understanding of the variety of processes by which people becomecritical educators, especially people whose cultures have been marginalized.While my experiences comprise but one strand in a rhizome of knowledge,5

and thus cannot be directly generalized to the development of all critical edu-cators, when combined with other analyses of the development of criticaleducators, diverse commonalities may begin to emerge. This autoethnogra-phy necessarily only presents a partial perspective of my experiences.However, it is at the same time larger, reaching out to intersect with the livesof other critical educators, clashing in some places and melding in otherplaces. As Jacques Derrida said, “Each story…is at once larger and smallerthan itself.”6 My story is larger in part because it helps us to understand thediverse paths of development for those who become critical educators, teach-ing for social justice.

1.1b How Critical Educators Benefit Students and thus SocietyAccording to Cochran-Smith et al,7 one of the defining qualities of those

who teach for social justice is that they focus on the learning of every studentin their classroom. In their qualitative study of beginning teachers, theyfound:

Contrary to charges that teacher education for social justice concen-trates on “touchy-feely” goals and ignores learning… we found thatevery single participant in the study emphasized pupil learningwhen asked what it means to teach for social justice.8

Because critical educators focus on the learning of all students, they are espe-cially crucial to students who are oppressed as indicated in part by the factthat their schools continue to disproportionately fail to educate them. To edu-

Unraveling the Meritocratic Myth34

cate all students, teachers must make their lessons relevant to the lives of alltheir students.9 When educators ignore the various educational and societalobstacles faced by many students their lessons become irrelevant to thesestudents’ lives. And if the school curriculum seems unrelated to their lives,students tend to lose interest and motivation to learn.10 Thus, if we wish toeducate all students to participate knowledgeably in democratic society, it isimportant to develop critical educators. Knowing the diverse developmentalpaths taken by critical educators will also provide useful insights for teachereducation programs that seek to develop social justice educators and whosestudents are becoming increasingly diverse.

An equally important reason that teachers should educate critically is todispel the prevalent myth that the US is a meritocracy. The myth of meritoc-racy assures both disadvantaged students and more privileged students thatthe more privileged students and their families prevail because of their meritand that students and families who suffer oppression do so because of theirlack of merit; it also influences teachers and administrators to believe thatless privileged students and their families are not as successful because theyare deficient in some way.11 Such understandings negatively affect both theteaching and learning of students who have been and are oppressed in oursociety. We must have critical educators who integrate the acknowledgementof and resistance to oppression into their teaching so that education is morerelevant and motivating to students who schools have disproportionatelyfailed to educate.

2. A Foucauldian Analytical Framework

My analytical framework is primarily based upon Michel Foucault’sunderstanding of power/knowledge and subjectivity. In this section Idescribe what Foucault12 means by power, his ideas about the relationshipsamong power, knowledge and subjectivity, and the individual. WhileFoucault’s ideas form my overarching analytical framework, because knowl-edge of and resistance to oppression is integral to critical education, I inte-grate Patricia Hill Collins’13 more specific findings regarding the relationshipbetween one’s positioning within a web of power and the developing theknowledge (or understandings) of oppression.

2.1 A Foucauldian Analytics of PowerFoucault claimed that power is never inert, but always in action, acting

upon people to induce some actions and proscribe others.14 He explained“Power is never localized here or there…[Rather it] is employed and exer-cised through a net-like organization.”15 Thus, power is not statically locatedin laws, economic structures or formal positions of power, but rather these

Felecia Briscoe 35

macro structures arise out of a dynamic web of micropractices, in other wordseveryday social practices. Foucault claimed that this web of power circulatesaround conflict or potential conflict,16 which forms its nexuses. These nexus-es of power are mutually supporting, acting to maintain current power rela-tions; at the same time, because they are interconnected, if one nexus ischanged, the change may ripple out to influence the entire web.17 Further, forFoucault, conflicts are not necessarily overt (such as an argument) or violent(such as a fight or war). They can be far subtler and covert, such as conflictsover whether a belief system is a religion or a cult, the definition of love, orwhat it means to be gay.18

2.2 Power/Knowledge & SubjectivitiesFoucault indicates, “Subjectivity is grounded in the exercise of power.”19

In other words, according to Foucault the exercise of power acts positively toinduce certain types of subjectivities and negatively to inhibit other types ofsubjectivities.20 Subjectivities are desires, expectations, values, attitudes andunderstandings and are fluid.21 Our understandings of the world are particu-larly important subjectivities for Foucault.22 Foucault claimed that there is notruth with a capital “T”; rather, those understandings that are supported bypower relation are taken seriously and therefore referred to as knowledge.23

Thus, power is a primary aspect of understandings that are referred to asknowledge. Further, Foucault maintained that power and knowledge have areciprocal relationship.24 While power induces us to take certain understand-ings seriously, understandings themselves are a type of power, which act toeither support or resist other power relationships.25 Together they form a webof power/knowledge.

2.3 Power: Exercised upon and by IndividualsNevertheless, Foucault also maintains that individuals “are not [power’s]

inert or consenting target; they are always also the elements of its articulation.In other words, individuals are the vehicles of power, not its points of applica-tion…[they] are always in the position of simultaneously undergoing andexercising this power.”26 Thus, for Foucault “One doesn’t have here a powerwhich is totally in the hands of one person who can exercise it alone and total-ly over the others… [However,] everyone doesn’t occupy the same position:certain positions preponderate and permit an effect of supremacy to be pro-duced.”27 These effects of supremacy (and its necessary partner, subordination)induce particular subjectivities and thus particular understandings, dependingupon where one is positioned within the web of power/knowledge andwhether or not they resist those power relations. It is these effects of suprema-cy/subordination that I (and others, such as Collins) refer to as oppression. Intheir exercise of power, people may resist or support existing oppression.

Unraveling the Meritocratic Myth36

2.4 Positionings within Power Relationships and Understandings ofOppression

Like Foucault, Collins cautions against a simplistic view of people aseither oppressors or oppressed. She “emphasize[d] the importance of race,class, and gender as intersecting oppressions in shaping the U.S. matrix ofdomination.”28 “And this “matrix of domination contains few pure victims oroppressors. Each individual derives varying amounts of penalty and privilegefrom the multiple systems of oppression, which frame everyone’s lives.”29

Thus, for scholars such as Collins and Foucault, people cannot be neatlydivided into groups of oppressors or oppressed—although, certainly somepeople do suffer more oppression than others. Rather, the degree and typeof oppression suffered depends upon one’s multiple positionings withinpower relations. Collins provides a Foucault-like description of the operationand effects of US systems of power relationships:

Domination operates by seducing, pressuring, or forcing…membersof subordinated groups, and all individuals to replace individual andcultural ways of knowing with the dominant group’s specializedthought—hegemonic ideologies that in turn justify practices of otherdomains of power.30

As Foucault and Collins have indicated, most people experience both domi-nation and subordination but in different manners and to different degrees.Furthermore, both scholars noted that individuals exercise power and thusmay resist or acquiesce to oppressive power relations. Collins indicates thatthose who experience a particular type of oppression are also more likely tobecome aware of- and resist that type of oppression.

On the other hand, Collins claimed that those on the upside of a powerrelationship are less likely to see power relations that act to privilege them.

Although most individuals have little difficulty identifying their ownvictimization within some major system of oppression—whether itbe by race, social class, religion, physical disability, sexual orienta-tion, ethnicity, age or gender—they typically fail to see how theirthoughts and actions uphold someone else’s subordination.31

Thus for Collins, those positioned on the downside of power relations aremore likely to become aware of and resist oppression. Furthermore, if Collinsis correct, then it is likely that people who become critical educators willbecome aware of the oppressions that most directly affect them more readi-ly than they become aware of oppressive relations that less directly affectthem.

Felecia Briscoe 37

3. Methodology

In this section, I describe the method used in this autoethnographicresearch. I then describe my initial and current positionings in society as wellas my relevant current subjectivities. Finally, I describe the process of datacollection and selection.

3.1Autoethnographic MethodThis autoethnography is incorporates key features of an analytic

autoethnography described by Leon Anderson: “(1) complete memberresearcher (CMR) status, (2) analytic reflexivity, (3) narrative visibility of theresearcher’s self, and … (4) commitment to theoretical analysis.”32 I engage ineach of the above key features of analytic autoethnography in the followingmanner: (1) The only participant in this research is myself; this means that Ihave CMR status; (2) I engage in analytic reflexivity, by using a Foucauldiananalytic framework to recursively examine my experiences and to pick outthe important aspects of those experiences (described later in greater detail);(3) By repeatedly using the word, “I” and its cognates in describing the partic-ipant and in describing the analytical methods that I use, I create narrativevisibility of the researcher; (4) I use an analytical framework to reflect uponthe theoretical implications of my findings, connecting them to existing the-ories and exploring their implications for building upon those theories. Inaddition, I hope my autoethnography will, “be invitational, provoking a visu-alization and exploration of resonant points within your own construction ofidentity, and as a means to engage those you have helped to create—inten-tionally or not—for others…” Autoethnographies are often used to “examinethe [role of socialization in] individual choice in the formation of public andprivate identities.”33 Thus, I examine how power relations acted upon andthrough me, as I developed the understandings of a critical educator.Accordingly, I focus on conflicts I experienced that were pivotal in my devel-opment of critical educator subjectivities in particular, my understandings.

3.2 My Dynamic Positioning and SubjectivitiesI grew up positioned subordinately as one of the poor, and as a girl in a

polygamous fundamentalist Mormon culture. Living polygamy was and isstill illegal. When I was four, my parents were arrested for living a polyga-mous lifestyle and we, the children, were removed from our home by socialworkers. My family fled to Mexico to escape persecution for our polygamousway of life. We returned to the US due to the dismal economic opportunitiesof Mexico. Although I was not aware of it until eighth grade, we were quitepoor most of the time I was growing up. For example, I remember puttingcardboard in my shoes to cover the holes in them when I was in elementary

Unraveling the Meritocratic Myth38

school. We lived Kalispell, Montana; Las Vegas, Nevada; a small border townin Mexico in rented homes, trailers, and once in a tent.

I was my mother’s first child and my father’s third child in a polygamousfamily. My mother, as the second wife, was subordinate to the first wife.34 Inaddition, according to the beliefs of fundamentalist (aka, polygamous)Mormon communities, my mother had bad blood due to her Lamenite(Native American) ancestry, which she had passed onto her children. (Myfather himself actually has African American ancestry, but he steadfastlyrefuses to believe it despite genealogical evidence.) In practice, she was treat-ed more like a servant than an equal. I was warned by community membersto be careful that my bad blood did not cause me to err. Growing up, I wasfilled with anxiety about whether or not my bad blood was surfacing. In partto safeguard myself against my possibly deficit nature, I married at the age of18. According to Mormonism, as God was to my husband, my husband wasto me. In other words, he was to be my boss. I cringe now when I think ofhow much control I gave to him. My husband ‘allowed’ me to begin takingcollege courses toward a medical degree. I got pregnant during the firstsemester of college and had my first son at the age of 19. By the time I was22 I had three sons. I was (legally) an unwed mother of three with a highschool education.

Currently, I am a single, middle-aged, female associate professor in thestate of Texas. Because I look European American, I have largely been accord-ed the privileges of being White; however, my ancestry is also NativeAmerican and African American. During my 46 years in public schools, as astudent, teacher, and professor, I learned how to pass as a White middle classwoman of academia—unless I deliberately step out of that role. I now expe-rience most of the privileges of a middle class European American in the US.However, my memories of being positioned as a second-class person withinan illegal polygamous community and of being subordinately positioned asone of the poor and a woman35 still shape the way I see the world. Further,the subjectivities engendered by my first 20 years of experiences continue tobe a motivating factor for the critical way that I teach.

3.3 Using Analytical Reflexivity in my Data Collection and Selection I began by asking myself what the pivotal events had been in my life at

school, writing down whatever occurred to me. Then I asked myself what mycritical educator subjectivities were. As indicated earlier, critical educatorsteach for social justices, seeking to overcome existing oppressions. Thus, forme, (based partly upon my reading of a variety of critical theorists) these sub-jectivities are: a propensity for questioning (including questioning my ownactions and ideas) as opposed to believing;36 an avid desire for fairness;37 rec-ognizing the existing oppressions in our society,38 while imagining a more

Felecia Briscoe 39

desired future and seeing possibilities for change;39 a desire to resist oppres-sion of all types;40 accepting uncertainty as unavoidable;41 and a habit of seek-ing and telling the other side(s) or versions of a story (or counter-narra-tives).42 I then read the different stories I had written down, seeking eventsrelevant to these subjectivities. In doing so, I noticed that some stories did notdirectly relate to critical subjectivities. I removed the irrelevant stories fromthe file. I also thought of additional conflicts related to my development ofthe above subjectivities. I wrote these events down—focusing on the conflictsthat were embedded in the events as well as my negotiation of those con-flicts. In reading, re-reading and coding these stories of conflict, I found thatmy critical educator subjectivities, more often than not, had emerged piece-meal through time. Due to space limitations, in this research I decided to pri-marily focus on the emergence of my understandings of oppression. Finally,I went through each of the stories and selected the complexes of conflicts inschools that were crucial to my emerging understandings of oppression. Iarranged these experiences roughly in chronological order, explaining howthey affected my understanding of oppression. My narrative represents myexperiences, as I understand them at this time; however, like all other histories, they are dynamic and subject to change in the future.

4. Findings

The narrative developed by the above process fell into three different lifestages. These three stages are childhood (0-18 years), my early 20s as a uni-versity student (undergraduate and graduate), and my late 20s (27-30) as amiddle school science teacher. I discuss the pivotal conflicts in each of thesetime periods that helped to transform my understandings of oppression.

4.1 Childhood (0-18 years)Education was highly valued by my parents; they demanded that we do

well in school. At the age of six I entered school in Las Vegas, Nevada. Beforelong I learned that the US was a land of religious freedom via the story of thePilgrims. This understanding created a major conflict, as this was not thetruth my family had lived. Yet there was no space for our lived truth in school.Our lived truth in Foucauldian terms was a subjugated truth.43 As will be seenlater and as predicted by Foucault and Collins, these subjugated truths borethe seeds of my resistance and transformation. At the time I wondered ifsomehow I misunderstood my experience of watching my parents beingtaken away by the police for their religious practice of polygamy. I wonderedwhether school was wrong in this one area, but right in other areas or if therewas something I did not yet understand that would make these two conflict-ing truths fit together. I was beginning to learn that ‘truth’ was relative; it var-

Unraveling the Meritocratic Myth40

ied, depending upon the context—or you had to act as if it did. I also beganto learn that school provided me with an alternative, more powerful position-ing than my home community.

4.1a Alternative Relations of Power/Knowledge and ConflictAt school I began developing subjectivities related to my more powerful

positioning. Because I appeared to be European American, I enjoyed the priv-ileges of a White person. I did exceptionally well at school. I liked going toschool because I had fun there and did not have to work as hard as I did athome. The adults thought well of me, showing it in many ways. For example,one of my paintings hung in my elementary school principal’s office. Teachersoften appointed me group leader. I was elected class president in third,fourth, fifth, and sixth grade. My ability to do well at school—in other wordsmy positioning in school—became very important to me. This more power-ful positioning helped to influence me to adopt the schools’ understandings,even when the schools’ understandings conflicted with those of my home.For example, in first grade one of my answers was marked wrong, when I wassure it was right (I had circled the letter ‘B’ to represent the first sound of apicture of a bag). I couldn’t understand why it was marked wrong. I sum-moned the courage to ask the teacher if she had made a mistake, but shereplied that the correct answer was ‘S’ for sack. I was upset, but I didn’t sayanything. I eventually decided that the better name must be ‘sack’, not ‘bag’as I had learned at home. I also remember my fourth grade teacher sayingthat it would be a real shame if I did not go to college. Going to collegebecame my fixed goal. My mother always blamed this teacher for puttingideas in my head. In Foucauldian terms, I was seduced by my more powerfulpositioning and the more powerful position of my teachers, and acquiescedto the power/knowledge relationships of school. However, even as I acqui-esced, I did not forget about the troubling contradiction regarding the free-dom of religion in the US. I kept thinking that somehow this conflict aboutreligious freedom would be resolved—that I could make sense of it some-how.

My first serious overt conflict with a schoolteacher came about when Iwas in seventh grade. Most of the students in my elementary school werefrom professional homes and the processes of my elementary education wereas Jean Anyon described: creativity and thinking-things-out-for-yourselfwere stressed more than following rules. My seventh grade science class wasa different story. I loved science and wanted to become a scientist. But myseventh grade science teacher simply gave us workbooks to read and fill outthe answers. That was it, nothing else—no labs, no books, no field trips, andno class discussions. The teacher sat at the front of the room watching us tomake sure we were doing the work. He had no joy in teaching science or us.

Felecia Briscoe 41

He sorely disappointed me. My classmates and I became restless and resent-ful. We began to ignore the teacher, talking to each other instead. The teacherresorted to paddling students at the front of the room. One day I kept talk-ing even after the teacher told me to stop. I was called down for a paddlingin front of the class. This paddling–the only paddling I ever received—hadabsolutely no effect upon me. The paddling was very mild compared to thewhippings I received at home. Further, by then it was a point of pride to bepaddled by that teacher. This experience helped my later reading of scholarslike Jean Anyon, providing me with basis for understanding of how studentsmight come to resist school. Nevertheless, I still made sure I learned every-thing I could and earned A’s, keeping in mind my college goal even wemoved to a very small rural town, where the schools had no ambitions tosend anyone to college.44

We moved to this small desert town when I was in eighth grade. I real-ized there that we were poor. Our classmates, called us “sewer people,”because someone found out we had an open sewage system. Our parentssaid they had to wait for another couple of paychecks for enough money tofinish putting in the sewage system. Until then I hadn’t conceptualized ourfamily as poor. Throughout grade school and high school I eagerly acceptedthe meritocratic myth that the rich were rich because they somehow meritedbeing so (hardworking and/or smart), while the poor were poor because theywere either stupid and/or lazy. By high school I really wanted to believe themeritocratic myth that if I studied hard in high school and college andworked hard, I could be successful and escape the humiliation and hardshipof poverty. But, it also meant my parents, because they worked very hard,were not lazy; therefore, they must be stupid in someway that I did notunderstand.

My senior year was tiresome: we were still learning the same things overand over again, like the difference between verbs and nouns, which I remem-bered learning in the fourth grade. This interminable boredom caused me tomake another break in my acquiescence to schooling. I began skippingschool three or four times a month—I stayed home and read books. I wrotemy own excuses for my absences. No one ever questioned my absences or myexcuse notes. While I had questioned individual teachers before, this was thefirst time I rejected school as an institution. As Collins suggested, I first ques-tioned and resisted a teacher and schooling as an institution when I wasdirectly oppressed with meaninglessness tedium day after day, when attend-ing school actually kept me from learning. Still, I made sure I kept my gradesup and became valedictorian. I wanted to go to college to escape poverty andmy home community.

Unraveling the Meritocratic Myth42

4.1b Conflicting Understandings of Race and GenderSchool also provided understandings that I wanted to believe more than

those of my home community. At school I heard (at least formally) informa-tion about race and women that was different from that of home. The newsand songs spoke of Black power, hippies, and a cultural revolution. We readessays and stories in school that conflicted with my home community’sunderstandings about what it meant to be a girl. I found alternative, morepositive constructions of women in books like Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinklein Time or in essays like Sojourner Truth’s Ain’t I a Woman? Of course therewere troubling stories like The Princess and the Pea, where the weaker awoman was, the more desirable she was. I came to prefer the genre of sciencefiction in which women and people of color were equals to white men.Science fiction and essays over topics like Marie Curie’s discovery of radioiso-topes made me believe that I could become a scientist. However, my beliefswere not unitary. I had conflicting understandings of women’s capabilities. Ihalf believed that women were as smart and capable as men, but at the sametime, I limited my reading to male authors—I wanted to make sure that Ilearned to think like a man. Like their conflicting, but preferable, understand-ings of women, schools’ overt assertions about race conflicted with those ofMormonism.45

Literature in the school library, such as Sacajawea and A Dream Deferredby Richard Wright clearly conflicted with Mormon racist understandings ofAfrican Americans and Native Americans. Given my ancestry, I preferredschool’s construction of ‘Indians’ to the Mormon community’s construction of‘Lamenites’. I began avidly reading books about Native American (e.g., ChiefCrazy Horse). In addition the demand for and lack of racial equality was in theair, as we watched the news and saw the marches, sit-ins, and riots, andspeeches demanding equal rights. However, in the everyday context of highschool in the small (almost entirely White) rural town of Nevada, during theearly 1970s, many students were open racists. This contradiction led to a con-flict in which I openly resisted racism:

I was sitting in the school library reading a book and heard some kidstalking at another table. One of them was talking about ‘niggers’ [quote] andquestioning whether they really were as smart as Whites. There was a Blackguy in the room within hearing distance of this conversation. If he had notbeen there, I probably would have just ignored them, but having been thebutt directly and indirectly of many such conversations at home, I immedi-ately imagined how he must feel. With a hot burst of anger, I turned aroundand said in a hard voice, “Have you ever noticed how curly my hair is? Well,that is because I am part Black. But, I am also the smartest kid in the school.If any of you think you are smarter than me, then prove it.”46 By creating racialsolidarity with the young man, I implied that being Black might mean being

Felecia Briscoe 43

smarter than non-Blacks, such as them. I was deploying my positioning asthe brains of the school against the painful racist questions being asked. Thisis the first time I remember publicly resisting oppression that was not direct-ed at me. I never heard any more disparagement of Blacks at school.47 In thisresistance I used a practice of telling counter stories that I had developed athome. In these counter stories I used (and sometimes elaborated upon)understandings I had learned at school. My counter stories only obliquelycontested Mormonism by constructing positive images of Native Americansas opposed to the negative ones found in the Book of Mormon. For example,my fair-skinned half-sisters burned red and blistered easily in the desert sunof Nevada. I pointed my darker skin out to them, noting that I didn’t burn likethem because of my Indian blood.

Contesting these racist understandings enacted my emerging but not yetsolidified critical understanding of racism as a form of oppression. I still half-believed two conflicting understandings of women and race. I preferred theschool’s explicitly expressed version, but I could not accept it unequivocally.My self-doubt was heavily inscribed and re-inscribed in my home communi-ty. Because school positioned me more powerfully than did my home com-munity, I was blind to any institutional or systemic racism48 or sexism atschool for years. In addition, I still understood public institutions as merito-cratic—that no matter the circumstances of your birth, it was by your ownefforts that you succeeded or failed in society (the myth of meritocracy). Threecomplexes of power/knowledge relations induced me to believe it: First, itgave me hope that I could have a better life than the women in my homecommunity; second, I was largely accorded the privilege of “Whiteness” inschool; and third, the myth of meritocracy was embedded in webs ofpower/knowledge in both my home and at school. I did not seriously ques-tion this myth until early adulthood when an experience made it clear to methat without help, no matter how hard I tried, I would have failed. That expe-rience began to critically—but not completely—unravel the meritocraticmyth for me.

4.2 Early Adult and Graduate School (18-26 years)I rejected Mormonism and left my husband when I was twenty-four. Due

to my vocal and adamant rejection of their belief system, my family largelyshunned me. Single with three children and no child support, I was desper-ately determined to prove to everybody (including myself) that I could suc-ceed, despite my ‘bad blood’. I took out student loans, got a part-time job, andstudied hard whenever I had any spare time. However, while I was in collegeloose threads began to appear in the myth meritocracy. The first threadsappeared in the critical history I learned in college, which was very differentthan the bland celebratory history49 I had learned to hate in high school. I

Unraveling the Meritocratic Myth44

wondered why you had to go to college to learn this version of history? Whywasn’t it being taught in high school, which everyone had to attend?

During student teaching in the final month of my last semester of col-lege, my car broke down. I had no money, and was anxious about how I wasgoing to pay next month’s rent. I left my car on the side of the road andwalked home sobbing and frantic. I pulled myself together and called mysupervising teacher. I told him I had to quit student teaching, because my carhad just broken down and I didn’t have money for next month’s rent. He toldme not to do anything rash and that he would see what he could do. Iremember thinking, “There is nothing that he can do, but I have no otheroptions. Maybe, just maybe, he could do something.” Later that afternoon hecalled to say that he had arranged for me to receive a $350 Shriners’ scholar-ship—enough for rent next month. He suggested that if I had a bike, I ride itto school, carrying my student teaching supplies in a backpack. I followed hissuggestions and at the end of the semester graduated summa cum laude. Iknew deep in my bones that if it hadn’t been for his help, I would not havefinished college (let alone obtained the graduate degrees I needed to becomethe professor that I am today). I realized that despite how hard I had tried, Iwould not have succeeded on my own. I had no more energy left to musterfor overcoming yet another obstacle. This experience sharpened my aware-ness of- and empathy for- others’ struggles. Yet, the threads of the meritocrat-ic myth were not yet completely unraveled: I told myself, that if I had beensmart enough to go to school before having children, I wouldn’t have need-ed help. That it was a lack of intelligence, not an unfair society that had land-ed me in this position. I was experiencing systemic classism and sexism, butunlike Collins asserts I did not apprehend either. These oppressions weresubtle compared to the sexism and racism of my home community and Ilacked an understanding for clearly apprehending them.

4.2a As a Graduate StudentBefore I graduated from college, I applied for and gained entrance to a

masters program in psychology. I also applied for and was awarded one ofthe only two $20,000 a year fellowships available at the University of Nevada,Las Vegas in 1982. This was an abundance of money compared to how Iscraped through the last years of my undergraduate program. If I were verycareful this money would allow me to go to school full time, buy food, pay forbaby-sitting, and rent an apartment without needing another loan or to holddown a job. I was excited about getting a masters in psychology, motivated tofind out why some people excelled academically and others failed.50 Duringthe first week of my masters program, I went to a reception for new graduatestudents. One of the purposes of the reception was to recognize the two students who had won the fellowship. The dean of the graduate school intro-

Felecia Briscoe 45

duced us to the rest of the students and faculty. I thought that because I wasawarded this very competitive scholarship, the faculty and administrationwould see me as an excellent prospective student and believe that with theunprecedented financial support of the fellowship, I would fly through theprogram. I was dismayed when the graduate dean pulled me aside and saidthat he expected problems from me due to my circumstances. The very cir-cumstances that I thought would be seen to my credit were seen as mydeficit. I realized at that moment that contrary to my very positive view of myability to achieve academically, his was negative. I was aghast and dumb-struck; finally, I walked away. In retrospect, I think he was trying to be sup-portive, but lacked the words to voice his support. Another conflict that I hadin graduate school affected my understandings of society and school.

In the US schools are positioned as the mechanism for operationalizingthe US as a meritocracy. This myth was embedded in my home and K-12schooling and unquestioned in my teacher education program. In my psy-chology program, I had only read one historical text51 that talked about classoppression and mental illness (the poor were doused in freezing cold water,while the wealthy received talk therapy). There were no texts about any othertype of oppression. The basic understanding I received was that some wereborn smart and some were not. The smart succeeded while those less smart,or lacking a work ethic, succeeded to a lesser degree. This understanding wasstated overtly by some scholars and implied by others. It was never overtlycontested by any of the psychology classes I attended. Instead the literaturefocused on individual differences in intelligence and under what universalconditions learning and retention could best be maximized. Thus, nowhere inmy formal education had I learned about systemic classism, racism, or sex-ism. However, two incidents occurred in graduate school that caused me toseriously question the myth of meritocracy when it came to economic class.

While in graduate school, I came to know a bit about other students’ per-sonal histories. I came to realize that a number of them had made huge blun-ders in their past. Some had developed a huge gambling debt while othershad experienced drug and alcohol addiction. I asked how they could recoverfrom such errors. They told me about their emotional trauma and the coun-seling they had received. I said, “No, I mean economically how did you re -cover?” They seemed nonplussed and then replied that their parents hadpaid for it. Some said that it had taken a while, but gradually their parentscame to see that they had changed, and then were convinced to pay for theirgraduate school as part of a new start. I was sort of shocked. They took it forgranted that their parents would pay their tuition. I realized that the econom-ic circumstances of their family provided them with many more options thanI had ever had. They could ‘afford’ to make mistakes that would have placedcollege and graduate school completely beyond my reach for years, if not for-

Unraveling the Meritocratic Myth46

ever. Were they rich? They didn’t consider themselves rich, just middle class. The second thing was that I developed an understanding that helped me

pick out systemic forms of economic oppression. My two best friends in grad-uate school were studying sociology and anthropology. Both of those pro-grams of study taught Marxist theories of class oppression. At first, I dis-missed Marxism as an esoteric, antiquated communist philosophy. However,I was curious. The little I had heard resonated with me in some undefinedway. I began to read about Marxism. These readings were a strange compan-ion to my psychology curriculum, but began to make sense of recent eco-nomic experiences. I became convinced that economic circumstances,regardless of your intellect or work ethic, directly affected your ability to suc-ceed. The US had a slanted meritocracy, where the wealthier you were, themore chances you got and that hard work and smarts were not alwaysenough for success. I was still unaware the sexism and racism of larger soci-ety. Compared to my family, society and school certainly seemed benign.Although Marxism did not focus on sexism or racism, it provided me with alens for becoming aware that systemic racism did exist, as I was to realizeduring my years as a middle school teacher.

4.2b As a Middle School Science TeacherI was 27 years old and at the thesis stage of my masters program when I

interviewed for my first teaching job in the mid-1980s. I was immediatelyhired to teach 7th grade science in a suburb of Las Vegas, Nevada. There wereroughly 900 students in the school. The children were working-class andmostly European American. There were some students who were recentlyimmigrated from Mexico and Vietnam along with a small number of AfricanAmerican students. All of the teachers were European American and mostwere over 40. The principal was a 50-something-year-old, EuropeanAmerican male from the Midwest. He decried single mothers as the bane ofsociety and made racist jokes about Mexican Americans. These tendenciesproduced a conflict within me. But, although they were hurtful to others andme, I never said anything to him the whole time I was there—I was afraid tojeopardize my job or make my work situation more difficult. My resistancewas mostly in my head, solely manifested in my attempts to stay away fromhim as much as possible. This experience provided a foundation for furtherdeveloping my understanding of why students might avoid and even dropout of schools where they had to endure racist jokes or worse. The schoolused to be a high school and had been renovated as a junior high school.Thus, the large science classrooms were excellent, equipped for labs withsinks, tables, and upon my request, microscopes. I was delighted with thepossibilities provided by the space. But I questioned my ability to teach.

I was confident that I knew the subject area of science. What I was not

Felecia Briscoe 47

so sure about was whether I could “control” students. During student teach-ing, I had come to understand that teachers must control their classroom;otherwise no learning would take place and you would get fired. I didn’t likethe idea that I had to control other human beings. I think that came with myown dislike of being controlled by my husband. I questioned why my stu-dents should learn science and thus, why they should behave in my class-room. The answer I gave to myself and then to them was: first, it would befun to learn science; second, they could impress other people with the thingsthey learned; third, it was worth learning science for its own sake; and fourth,it would provide them opportunities to enter careers that would otherwise beunobtainable, such as medicine. I also said that they were free not to learn ifthey decided they didn’t want to learn science. I would not force them tolearn. However, they could not impede the learning of any other student. Atthe same time, I was determined to develop an engaging learning environ-ment.

Until my third year of teaching, I did well as a science teacher. Many students entered my class hating science and most left it liking (sometimesloving) science, and more importantly they learned science. I had to makesome adaptations as we only had one set of textbooks, which were to stay inthe classroom as a resource. Students were not allowed to take the textbookshome. So I also taught note-taking skills: one student read the text aloud,another student summarized the main idea in the paragraph, and thenanother student identified any sub-ideas, which I wrote on an overhead pro-jector. Students copied down these notes in their science notebooks to takehome for study. More importantly—based upon psychological concepts thatboth motivation and the learning of unfamiliar material would increase whenstudents were actively engaged in hands-on learning—every student in myclass spent an entire period conducting a real lab experiment at least once aweek. I developed these labs to illustrate a key idea from the text and to rein-force their learning of the scientific method. It was during two of the labs thatconflicts occurred, pushing me further toward being a critical educator.

One of the lab experiments required students to use flat toothpicks toscrape their cheek cells onto a slide and stain it with iodine. I had cautionedthe students to push the iodine back to the wall when they were finished tomake sure they did not spill it and stain their clothes. As the period waswinding down, one group of three had not been able to stain their cheek cellsadequately for viewing. So I went to help them. I forgot to push the iodineback against the wall and sure enough, when adjusting the microscope, Iknocked the iodine over, spilling it onto my pants and the floor. A stunnedsilence fell over the class at the sound of breaking glass. I straightened up,grabbing some paper towels, and said jokingly to the class, “You see whathappens when you don’t push the iodine back?” They burst out into laugh-

Unraveling the Meritocratic Myth48

ter. At that moment the principal walked into the classroom. He gruffly askedwhat was going on and demanded that all the laughter stop. I was puzzled.The class was completely appropriate in their laughter. Inadvertently, I hadindeed made my point about the iodine. My resistance was not overt. I did-n’t say anything, but I resented his unnecessary harshness to the students. Ifelt like they were behaving appropriately and actively engaged in learning.

My second conflict was in regards to trusting these working class stu-dents. I had created a lab that asked the students to hypothesize whethercandles burned at a constant rate. To see if their hypothesis was correct, stu-dents were to light a candle for ten seconds, blow it out, measure it, and thenrecord the measurement. They were to repeat this process until the candlewas gone and then graph the results to determine if their candle had burnedat a constant rate. However, I was hesitant and nervous: Students lightingmatches and burning candles seemed risky. Later, as a doctoral student, I wasto find that this was precisely the sort of experience that working class students seldom had, but were a regular part of students from professionalfamilies.52 I decided that it would be okay due to the classroom norms we haddeveloped.

All of the students wanted to do the labs, but a standing classroom rulewas that if you did not use the materials appropriately, you had to do dittoworksheets instead. The other classroom norm was that students wererewarded with an opportunity to do more science activities. I had found sev-eral prepared microscope slides of plant and animal materials, which I keptat the back of the classroom. Students were allowed to select any slide andview it through a microscope—unbelievably, they were enthusiastic aboutthis reward. Although I had no explicit understanding of how power inducedparticular subjectivities, I had set up the power relations in the classroom toinduce a liking of science—to see doing it as a reward. So I proceeded for twoyears, beginning to ever so slightly push the boundaries of acceptable learn-ing activities for these working class students. At this point, in my mind,although I perceived the different races and genders in my classroom, I didnot understand that students were systematically treated differently basedupon their race and gender.

During my second year of teaching, I participated in a program called“Teacher Expectations and Student Achievement” (TESA). TESA provided mewith an understanding of the subtleties of institutionalized oppression thathelped me to resolve some of my lingering conflicting understandings aboutrace, racism, and the myth of meritocracy. TESA, a research-based program,focused on the different ways teachers transmit their low expectations to stu-dents and then taught techniques that could be used to better communicatehigh expectations for all students. The information I learned in TESA resonat-ed with the Marxist understanding of society that I had developed. When

Felecia Briscoe 49

asked by the principal, I was excited to lead TESA workshops for the otherteachers. With this background knowledge, the experience of another conflictcrystalized my understanding of the relationship between student achieve-ment and covert institutionalized and systemic racism in schools. This crys-tallization allowed me to clearly understand, articulate, and begin to resistthe institutionalized racism in schools.

In my third year of teaching, I was confronted with a painful conflict thatpushed me to clearly understand that African American children sufferedfrom racism embedded in the structures and processes of schooling.Likewise, I completely rejected the understanding of inherent racial differ-ences that I had heard at home and from school peers. I came to understandthat people of different races did indeed have unequal academic and societalopportunities. Schools in Las Vegas were forced to make adjustments man-dated by then new IDEA law. Suddenly a small number of boys appeared inthree of my science classes. They had been labeled as mentally slow and, untilthen, placed exclusively in the special education classroom. All of the boyswere African American. They did not read at the seventh grade level; a cou-ple had difficulty with simple words like “when.” What was I to do? We onlyhad one classroom set of books and so students continued reading the textsaloud, picking out the main ideas and sub-ideas in order to outline the chap-ters. Following what I had learned in TESA about transmitting high expecta-tions to all students, I randomly called upon students to read. When I calledupon one of the boys, I gave them whatever help they needed to get throughtheir reading. I worried that they would become inhibited and be embar-rassed to read. To my surprise, they seemed to like being called upon to read.They did, however, have difficulty with note taking and they could not mean-ingfully read their meager notes. How were they to complete vocabularytests? How were they to study for the required semester exams? The boyswere being positioned to fail.

I went to the principal to ask what I could do. I figured that he should atleast be good for this kind of information. He had no suggestions about howto aid them with their learning, but said to put the tests on a tape recorder. Iasked since their reading skills were so poor, then how could they write thecorrect answer? He suggested I stay after school to give them each a verbaltest and then write in their answers. I could not do that. I had young childrenof my own at home that needed me. He said to just do the best that I could.I was floored. This was the first time I had gone to the principal for any helpin my teaching. I expected him to be able to assist me with this quandary. Hedidn’t. The boys hadn’t been given a chance to learn to read, which was cru-cial to learning science. How could they possibly do well on the tests, no mat-ter how hard they tried? Should I grade them on a different scale than therest of the class? If they got a B or C, wouldn’t I be saying that they had

Unraveling the Meritocratic Myth50

learned seventh grade science to that degree? Wouldn’t they be put in situa-tions where they would be expected to know that information? This was ahuge conflict for me. Ultimately, I graded them on the same scale as the otherstudents in the classroom. They all got D’s or F’s. I realized I was part of thesystemic oppression, pounding yet another nail into in their academic coffin.

On the other hand, by the end of the semester all of them had substan-tially improved their reading and I was convinced that their ability to learnwas equal to any other student in the classroom. I also understood, thanks toTESA, some of the mechanisms by which teachers subtly transmit negativeexpectations to students. Over the years teachers were probably implicitlytelling these boys repeatedly that they were unintelligent in many differentways. Because I did not want to participate in this systemic oppression anddid not know how to resist it, I left teaching to get a doctoral degree, deter-mined to find a way to transform schools into places that really did provideequal opportunities to students, regardless of race or class.

By this time, I had developed some of the crucial understandings of acritical educator. However, it was not until later in my doctoral program thatI began to see systemic sexism in schools and society, even though I wasmore greatly oppressed from school and mainstream society due to my gen-der than to my apparent ethnicity. Later still, a gay couple helped me devel-op an understanding of the heteronormative oppression of gays and lesbians.It took me the longest to see society’s condemnation of those who livedpolygamy (whether Mormon, Islamic, or another religion) as oppressive andresolved my conflict in this regard.liii However, space limitations force me toleave the stories of how I came to understand the oppression of those wholive polygamy for another time and place.

5. Discussion & Implications

There are four major themes in this autoethnography. These themes con-cern (1) the relationship between having conflicting understandings of race,gender, class, and the development of my perception of oppression that let tomy resistance; (2) the types of oppression that induced my resistance, thustransforming a potential conflict into active conflict; (3) The effect of my posi-tioning upon my method of resistance; (4) the relationship between thedegrees of oppression that I experienced in the two contexts of school andthe order in which I became aware of the different types of oppression.

5.1 Conflicting Understandings, Awareness, and Resistance to OppressionThe first theme is that oppression when it did not elicit my awareness

and thus, resistance was only a potential conflict. Conflict remained potentialas long as I failed to perceive oppression. My resistance to oppression gener-

Felecia Briscoe 51

ally actualized only when I had developed alternative and conflicting under-standings that helped me to perceive oppression. These conflicting under-standings arose because of the two very different webs of power/knowledgein which I was embedded: those at school and those at home. The most piv-otal conflicts between the two different webs of power/knowledge were theunderstandings of gender and race. These conflicting understandings helpedme to perceive, and thus resist, racism and sexism. For example, these con-flicting understandings of race and gender provided me with the resources toperceive my family’s understandings as oppressive to me. Such awarenessbrought about my resistance. And the Marxist theories I learned in graduateschool induced me to develop an understanding of my own economicoppression and thus, begin resisting its normalization. Awareness of oppres-sion transformed a potential conflict into conflict when I resisted that oppres-sion. However, both webs of power/knowledge agreed upon the myth ofmeritocracy and thus, it took much longer for me to perceive systemic andinstitutional oppressions.

In sum, an important implication of this study is that when schoolsopenly address the different types of oppression experienced by differentgroups they may increase the likelihood that students will develop under-standings that enable them to perceive and resist their own and others’oppression. One of the ways to do this is to teach critical multiculturalism inpublic schools.liv Such a critical multicultural education would help studentsdevelop both alternative understandings of racialized groups and a clearunderstanding of existing racism. These two understandings would help stu-dents see and thus resist racist oppression. Of course teachers would alsohave to teach about the other types of oppression for students to developunderstandings of those oppressions. Resistance to oppression can be trans-formative, lessening the pain and suffering in the world.

5.2 The Types of Conflict that Induce Understanding & Resistance toOppression

The second theme is conflict directly based upon oppression and myresistance to it. There were three types of conflicts that induced me to devel-op my understandings of and resistance to oppression. Below, in the order inwhich they occurred in my life I discuss these conflicts.

(a) Conflicts resulting from my resistance of my own oppression. Oneexample occured when I used the positive understandings of “Indians” atschool to begin contesting the negative understandings of “Lamenites”offered by my home community. These “Lamenite” understandings weredirectly oppressive to me in my home community. Another example is whenmy seventh grade teacher created an environment of interminable tedium,spoiling my expectations of a creative, figure-it-out-for-yourself laboratory

Unraveling the Meritocratic Myth52

experiences. This learning environment was directly oppressive to me and Iactively resisted it. This experience brought scholarship on working classschool environments vividly to life for me when I later read it.

(b) A second type of conflict actualized when I resisted the oppression ofothers that was similar to oppression I had experienced. For example, in thelibrary of my high school when European American students questioned theintelligence of African American in the presence of an African American, Irecognized this as oppression based upon my similar experiences at home.My recognition ignited my fierce resistance.

(c) A third type of conflict occurred when I resisted being implicated insomeone else’s oppression. At one point I was teaching middle school andfound myself implicated in the systemic positioning African American boysfor academic failure. Being implicated in this process horrified me. Myunwilling implication in their oppression opened my eyes to the systemicoppression of African Americans within schools.

According to Collins,lv one is more likely to develop an awareness of theoppression one suffers than those suffered by others. The pattern of myresistance to oppression largely agrees with Collins, but with a couple ofminor differences. My resistance to oppression follows Collins’ claims in thatthe oppressions that elicited my resistance were those in which I was person-ally involved. Thus, my personal involvement facilitated my awareness andresistance to these oppressions. However, the pattern of my resistance differsin that it did not necessarily need to be directed at me and that I resistedbeing personally implicated in others’ oppression.

5.3 Positioning MattersThe third theme is that my resistance to oppression remained indirect

and/or covert unless my positioning within a power/knowledge web wasequal to or superior to those doing the oppressing. For example, when theprincipal made jokes about Latinos or cast slurs upon single mothers, I wasinternally conflicted, angry and resentful. However, my resistance remainedlargely in my head and was only weakly enacted in the efforts I made to keepmy distance from the principal. Another example is when I resisted theunderstanding of Native Americans disseminated in my community; I neverdirectly told any community member that the Mormon Lamenite history waswrong (until much later when I had totally rejected Mormonism). Instead, Iindirectly resisted their negative understandings with positive understand-ings.

5.4 Relative Degree of Oppression & Developing Understandings ofOppression

The fourth theme is that for me the relative degree of oppression I expe-

Felecia Briscoe 53

rienced was more important in the development of my awareness of oppres-sion than the absolute degree of oppression. When different contexts havedifferent power/knowledge webs, we experience different oppressionsand/or degrees of oppression. For me and perhaps for most people in the US,the most powerful contexts in terms of shaping my understandings of theworld have been home and school. Not only did the power/knowledge websdiffer within the two contexts, but also my positioning within those webs andthus, the type and degree of oppression experienced. I was positioned farmore powerfully at school as a female who was perceived as White than inmy home community as a female with “bad blood”. Thus, the sexism I expe-rienced at school was subtle compared to that I experienced at home. Further,hearing slurs against Native Americans (which only I knew applied to me)was the only racism I experienced at school, which was subtle compared tothe racism I experience in my home community. This relative subtletyinduced me to remain oblivious to systemic racism at school until I was ateacher in my late 20s. Likewise, it took me until my early 30s to discern sys-temic sexism. The development of my awareness of systemic sexism andracism in schools does not seem to follow the pattern suggested by Collins.But, Collins’ work can be extended to cover these findings by suggesting thatwhen a greater degree of an oppression is experienced in context A thanContext B, then one does not readily become aware of the oppression in con-text B.

Nevertheless, the first major vivid conflict I experienced between theunderstandings of school and home was about religious freedom, but it tookthe longest to develop the understanding that US laws were oppressive tothose with polygamous faiths. This finding does not align with Collins’claims. However I think that it can be explained by the fact that Collins’ workcentered on Black women. My experiences in school and home were likemost African Americans in some ways, but importantly different in others.My home community, like many marginalized groups, was positioned subor-dinately in society. Like many racialized families, my parents were less pow-erfully positioned in economic, legal, and social terms than the adults atschools. However, schools provided a more powerful positioning for me thandid my home community. This is opposite to the experience of most racial-ized groups, who are more likely to be positioned more powerfully in theirhome communities than at schools.lvi Adopting the understandings ofschool positioned me more powerfully and aligned me with a more power-ful group in society. I was seduced into ignoring the conflict between mylived experience and school’s claim that the US was a land of religious free-dom for years.

An important implication of this finding is that if the power/knowledgewebs of schools offered racialized groups more powerful positionings, racial-

Unraveling the Meritocratic Myth54

ized groups would be more likely to adopt (i.e. learn) the understandings thatschools teach.

5.5 EpilogueFuture studies on critical educators that include autoethnographies as

well as ethnographies are necessary in order to begin understanding how thepower relations in which they are embedded shape and are shaped by criti-cal educators. I suggest that such knowledge will help teachers and schoolsoppose the institutional oppressions of different groups that cause pain andsuffering, which leads to their disaffection with school and society. Shouldthat not be a primary purpose of education?

In sum, the unraveling of the myth of meritocracy was pivotal in thedevelopment of my understandings of different oppressions and hence myresistance to those oppressions. This myth ought to be explicitly unraveled assoon possible for students in schools everywhere. There are those who wouldsuggest that the myth gives hope and helps those who are oppressed tostruggle onward and indeed it did help me to struggle. However, I think Iwould have struggled harder and not been so disheartened at times had Iknown both the oppression I was fighting and that it could be resisted.

Endnotes

i For a more detailed analysis of what it means to be critical, see JürgenHabermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, trans. J. Shapiro. Boston: Beacon Press,1968 or Alistair Pennycook, Critical Applied Linguistics: A Critical Introduction.Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2001.

2 Stephanie L. Young,“Half and Half: An (Auto)ethnography of Hybrid Identitiesin a Korean American Mother-Daughter Relationship.” Journal of InternationalIntercultural Communication. 2.2 (2009): 139-167, 145. She cites the following feministscholars: Alcoff, Anzaldua, Collins, Gubrium and Holstein, Haraway, Harding, andLorde, 1984.

3 Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish, trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Pantheon,1977; The History of Sexuality: Volume I, trans. Alan Shapiro. New York: Vintage Books,1980; and Power/Knowledge, trans. and ed. Colin Gordon. New York: Pantheon Books,1980.

4 Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and thePolitics of Empowerment. New York, NY: Routledge, Chapman, & Hall, Inc., 2000.

5 A rhizomatic approach understands knowledge as emerging from multiplelocations, expanding in multiple directions, and weaving through various forms ofinformation, experiences, and subjectivities of a society as noted by Giles DeleuzeandFelix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. B. Massumi.Minneapolis, MN: The University of Minnesota Press, 1987.

6 Jacque Derrida, “Living On – Border Lines.” In Deconstruction and Criticism. Ed.Harold Bloom. (New York: Seabury Press, 1979), 99-100.

7 Marilyn Cochran-Smith, , Karen Shakman, Cindy Jong, Dianna G. Terrell, JoanBarnett, and Patrick Mcquillan, “Good and Just Teaching: The Case for Social Justice in

Felecia Briscoe 55

Teacher Education,” American Journal of Education. 115 (2009): 347-377. 8 Ibid, 357.9 Gloria Ladson-Billings, “But that’s Just Good Teaching! The Case for Culturally

Relevant Pedagogy.” Theory into Practice. 34.3 (2009): 159-165. 10 Muhammad Khalifa, “A Re-New-ed Paradigm in Successful Urban School

Leadership: Principal as Community Leader,” Educational Administrator Quarterly(2012): 424-467.

11 Felecia Briscoe, Gilberto Arriaza and Rosemary Henze, The Power of Talk: HowWords Change our Lives, Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, 2009, Chapter 5: 93-118.

12 As described in three of Michel Foucault’s books, Discipline & Punish,Power/Knowledge, and The History of Sexuality: Volume I.

13 Collins, Black Feminist Thought.14 Foucault, History of Sexuality.15 Foucault, Power/Knowledge, 98.16 Foucault, History of Sexuality.17 Foucault, Power/Knowledge.18 Foucault, History of Sexuality.19 Deborah Kerfootwith D. Knights, “Into the realm of the fearful.” Power/Gender:

Social Relations in Theory and Practice, Eds. H. Lorraine Radtke and Henderikus J. Stam(London: Sage Publications, 1994), 67-88, 69.

20 Foucault, History of Sexuality.21 Ibid.22 Foucault, Power/Knowledge23 Ibid.24 Ibid.25 Ibid.26 Ibid, 98.27 Ibid, 156.28 Collins, Black Feminism, 251.29 Ibid, 287.30 Ibid., 287.31 Ibid, 287.32 Leon Anderson, “Analytic Autoethnography.” Journal of Contemporary

Ethnography 35 (2006): 373-395, 378.33 Steve Ryder,, “I Don’t have to Play Football to be Hurt: An Inquiry Concerning

the Disjunction between Public and Private Self.” Qualitative Inquiry 16 (2010), 314.34 I believe my father had at least eight wives. However, because I haven’t really

been close to my father since I was 24 years old I am not certain exactly how manyother wives he has had.

35 E.g. Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature.New York: Routledge. 1991.

36 e.g. Jean Anyon, “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work.” Journal ofEducation. 162(1980): 67-92.

37 E.g. Collins, Black Feminism.38 See for example Maud Blair,“Whiteness” as institutionalized racism as conspir-

acy: Understanding the paradigm. Educational Review, 60-3(2008): 249-251. 39 See for example Pennycook, Critical Applied Linguistics.40 See for example Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests.41 See for example Pennycook, Critical Applied Linguistics.42 Concha Delgado-Gaitan, “Consejos: The Power of Cultural Narratives.”

Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 25 (1994): 298-316.

Unraveling the Meritocratic Myth56

43 Foucault, Power/Knowledge.44 I say this, because when I went to the school counselor to ask what kind of col-

lege scholarships applications were available to me, the counselor suggested that Iwrite to a football player asking if he would fund my college. He offerred no otherinformation or advice.

45 Later on in the late 70s, the prophet of the official Latter Day Saint Church hada revelation in which he declared that African Americans and Native Americans hadworked off their sins and were no longer cursed races.

46 I realize as I write this how conceited and arrogant I sound, but by this time itwas already accepted by both the faculty and students that I was the smartest personat that school and I eventually, as expected, graduated as valedictorian.

47 Of course this doesn’t mean that they weren’t being said when I wasn’t around. 48 Blair, “’Whiteness’ as institutionalized racism as conspiracy: Understanding the

paradigm.” 49 See James Loewen, Lies my Teacher Told Me: Everything your American History

Textbook Got Wrong. New York: Touchstone, 1995. 50 I was conflicted about the source of the academic differences in my family.

There were four valedictorians in my family, but some of my brothers and sisters bare-ly graduated from high school. What explained these different levels of educationalsuccess? Was it that some of us had better teachers than the others? Was it a matterof intelligence? I thought experimental cognitive psychology could provide theanswers to these questions—my understanding was that science, unlike religion,could resolve this conflict and provide me with the “Truth”.

51 Thomas Szasz, The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of PersonalConduct. New York: Harper & Row, 1977.

52 Jean Anyon, “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work.” Journal ofEducation. 162 (1980): 67-92.

53 Some might wonder how I can defend people’s right to live in polygamy as partof their religious practice, when my experience living in Mormon Fundamentalistpolygamy was so terribly sexist. Although sexist religious codes structured the polyg-amous system in which I grew up, polygamy is not inherently sexist. For example, his-torically Native Americans practiced polygamy. Yet Joel Spring, in Deculturalizationand the Struggle for Equality (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2001) notes that historicallywomen had more freedom in Native American societies than in European Americansocieties. When polygamy is made illegal, it is not sexism that is outlawed, but rathera marriage arrangement. Outlawing polygamy does not outlaw sexism. Catholicismand many other religious faiths are similarly sexist. For example, mainstream LDSMormonism has all the same sexist religious codes (except polygamy is only to bepracticed in heaven) as Mormon Fundamentalism, but it is not illegal. How peoplechoose to structure their intimate lives (unless force is involved or it impinges uponthe rights of others) should be their right, not imposed by law. There are non-sexistreasons for living polygamy. For example, a disproportionate number of AfricanAmerican men are incarcerated, making it disproportionately difficult for AfricanAmerican women to marry African American men and have children under the eyesof the State. If two women wish to marry one man, why should they not be able to doso, as long as force is not involved? Just as gay and lesbian couples should have theright to structure their intimate lives as they wish, so too should those who wish tolive polygamy. Further, marriage has traditionally been a religious practice andpolygamy is often part of a religious practice. People should have the right to livepolygamy as part of their religion, especially as the U.S. claims to be a land of religious

Felecia Briscoe 57

freedom. The Islamic religion and a number of Native American faiths allow the prac-tice of polygamy, but the state does not. Finally, just as some claim that polygamy isinherently sexist, others claim that the institution of marriage is inherently sexist. Yet,would not most people oppose any proposition to outlaw marriage because it was asexist institution?

54 Stephen May (Ed), Critical Multiculturalism: Rethinking Multicultural and Anti-Racist Education. London: Taylor Francis, 2005.

55 Collins, Black Feminism.56 E.g. bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of freedom. New

York: Routledge, 1994.