I woke up today thinking about how white students automatically assume I will take their side when they get irritated at bilingual (especially Spanish-speaking) students using another language in their presence. This assumption is an excellent, concrete example of how the expectation of white privilege in the public sphere by white people is tied to the fact that they've most likely learned that the nearest authority will favor them over whomever they complain about. This is basically the “Karen” phenomenon in a nutshell.
When I tell those white students that it's THEIR fault for not learning any other languages, they become outraged. These are people, sometimes grown-ass men nearing my age, who throw toddler tantrums at the idea that the authority figure in their midst--who LOOKS like them--will not swaddle their feelings by policing others on their behalf. They will say it’s not fair and bluster about how we’re in “AN ENGLISH” class. I remind them that it’s actually a college rhetoric class located in a predominantly English-speaking country and the course number isn’t ENG, but WR. I then point out that I, personally, do not require everyone speak my primary language in my presence and won’t bully anyone into doing so.
”Chris Cottrell: making friends,” as my spouse would say.
This type of person, who has been raised to believe the world should automatically bend to their will with the backing of whoever's in charge, invariably prefers writing arguments that neatly mirror the complaints of people like Tucker Carlson and the latest white supremacist terrorist to murder people in the name of saving the so-called (and completely concocted) "white race." They write papers in which they cast themselves as “victims” without producing any concrete or verifiable evidence of their victimhood. They say they are being “silenced” and “replaced,” often arguing that they should have more power and authority than already granted by the law or arguing in favor of maintaining any power structures that give them a distinct edge.
This leads me to questions: How many teachers in that student's life automatically turned to the bilingual kids and demanded they speak English? Or punished bilingual students outright for existing in several languages? How many of these white students were raised by their families to feel "oppressed" by the completely harmless experience of not being treated as though they're the center of someone else’s world? These are students who, on more than one occasion, have told me to my face that it’s “racist” (or “reverse racist”) to allow someone to speak Spanish in their midst. Each one thinks they are unique individuals, but I encounter the archetype often enough that the embittered “not a racist, but” white person is basically a classroom stereotype at this point.
That they consistently argue they’ve got no power and are being replaced and silenced is laughable when we look at how deeply they assume authority will intervene to alleviate their minor discomfort and how hard they lose their shit when that authority doesn’t come to the rescue. What they don’t realize is that they ARE being replaced by the thing they think they’re protecting and is so vehemently protected by almost every authority and law in the US: whiteness itself.
If my job is to introduce critical thinking to people who, as Liam Neesom noted about being white in the series Atlanta recently, "don't have to learn anything if [they] don't want to," then it behooves entitled white students to encounter someone who will not make space for their unearned entitlements or force anyone to accommodate them when they aren't doing anything to improve themselves. We can pity them for being robbed of the opportunity to develop into adults under the infantilizing yoke of white supremacy--it's not entirely their fault that they were raised in a system that keeps them too intellectually lazy to examine assumptions--but the sooner (and more often) they learn to face the discomfort of learning their white identity doesn’t entitle them to special treatment, the sooner they can learn to genuinely participate in a world that is increasingly realizing we’re long past due to evolve out of the dark ages.
So, when white students run to me to tattle on students for being bilingual, I tell them to learn the language, or several, if it makes them uncomfortable to live in a monolingual darkness empty of rational thought. That their discomfort is the direct consequence of their personal choice to live and think in only one language. Then I turn to the bilingual students and remind them that they have the right to write bilingually, with or without translations, if it makes sense within the context of the rhetorical situation. That it’s on me if I don’t speak the language and don’t put in the effort to learn.
