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This Ain’t Yesterday’s Literacy: Culture and Education After George Floyd
Edited by Vershawn Ashanti Young
Release: December 20, 2020
Top Hat edition (preferred interactive option): 978-1-64485-441-9
Ebook edition: 978-1-64485-412-9
Vershawn Ashanti Young
Vershawn Ashanti Young, who goes by dr. vay, has been writing for newspapers and magazines for almost twenty years. He is a solo performance artist as well as a professor of communication, race, gender, literature, writing, and performance. He is the author or coauthor of nine books, including Other People’s English (Parlor Press, 2019), The Routledge Reader of African American Rhetoric (Routledge, 2018), and Neo-Passing: Performing Identity After Jim Crow (University of Illinois Press, 2018). He is currently the chair of the Conference on College Composition and Communication, the largest educational organization dedicated to college literacies of communication and writing.
A Conversation Series with Vershawn Ashanti Young
Did you miss the conversations with dr. vay?
Watch the recordings below.
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About the Book
The themes and units in this book encourage conversation about, reflection on, and analysis of culture, education, and literacy in the wake of protests over George Floyd’s death.
All Units include an Introduction by Vershawn Young and an End-of-Unit Assignment suggestion. Individual readings are introduced and contextualized and include a Furthering the Conversation section that extends the topic in meaningful ways, including additional articles, performances, speeches, and videos that are embedded or linked directly in the text.
Unit 1: George Floyd As Cultural Tipping Point
- How George Floyd Was Killed in Police Custody
- Do You Understand Now?: George Floyd is Exactly Who Colin Kaepernick’s Been Kneeling For All Along
- Educational Institutions Make Statements
- The Mythology of Racial Progress
- Obama and “A More Perfect Union”
- Systemic Racism: Video Essay
- Patience is a Dirty Word
- Turning to the 2020 Election
Unit 2: Calls for Racial Justice and Socially Just Policing
- James Baldwin Discusses Racism
- What Would Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Say about the BLM Protest Movement?
- When, Exactly, Do Protests Become Riots?
- An Overload of Riot Porn is Driving Conflict
- Racism and Policing
- What Exactly Does it Mean to Defund the Police?
- Poetry is a Political Act
- Black Voices in the Conversation about Confederate Monuments
Unit 3: Appropriate Uses of the N-Word in Culture and Education
- “The Name ‘Negro’” by W. E. B. DuBois, March 1928
- An Interview with James Baldwin
- Talkin and Testifyin
- Gloria Naylor on The Meaning of a Word
- Who Can Say ‘N*’? And Other Considerations
- Vershawn Young on “Nigga-Gender”
- The Idea That Whites Can’t Refer to the N-Word
- Banning the N-Word Ain’t the Answer
- This unit includes samples of student work
Unit 4: Decolonizing Black Language, Standard English, and Academic Discourse
- If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?
- Culture and Communication: Implications for Black English in the Classroom
- “Response to Hunt Meyers, et al.”
- Talking Black in America
- Should Writers Use They Own English?
- The Re-Education of Neisha-Anne S Green: A Close Look at the Damaging Effects of ‘A Standard Approach’…
- African American Rhetoric: What It Be, What It Do
- This Ain’t Another Statement! This is a DEMAND for Black Linguistic Justice
Unit 5: Allies and Anti-Racist Activism After George Floyd
- Introduction to Performing Anti-Racist Pedagogy
- The Racial Conduit
- Anti-Racism and Christian Responsibility
- For white folks who have wrung their hands…
- 6 Rules for Allies
- Higher Education’s Role in Promoting Racial Healing…
- Corporate America’s role in Promoting Equity
- BLM May be the Largest Movement in History