ABSTRACT
We return to Stan’s classroom again, this time to illustrate across race discursive negotiation of identity. This second transcript illustrates how, once again, race is complicated by issues of social status and identity, and how those issues interrelate to create and disrupt various alignments between Stan and his student. In this case, more subtle shifts in positions and alignments allow an academically challenged student to remain in the discursive academic space without rejecting it. The interaction takes place in the hallway outside Stan’s classroom. Of his twenty-three students, seventeen are African American, five are Arab American, and one has recently arrived from Cameroon. Stan is a middle-aged White male, and Sonandra, his female eleventh grade student, self-identifies as Black and African American.
