ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors focus on the ways in which literacies (re)produce who they are as individuals and cultural groups and how they are positioned in the world. They also focus on challenging societal literacies and ideas, which justify and reify problems affecting education and society writ large. The authors explain how discourses such as the achievement gap and notions such as remediation, both of which pathologize minoritized individuals and populations and blame them, are problematic and colonialist; they serve to excuse societies and their structures from any answerability or responsibility. They reaffirm their belief that the myth is highly exclusionist and racialized, and it is meant to keep the status quo in place and to strip democracy of its very purpose. The authors discuss the complexity of children's literate identities, moving beyond standardized, fixed measures of linguistic competence toward a more nuanced, fluid understanding of language competence.
