This article argues that mid-1970s discourses of literacy crisis prompted a problematic shift toward color-blind ideologies of language and literacy within both disciplinary and institutional discussions of writing instruction for "high-risk" minority students. It further argues that this shift has continuing import for contemporary…

If we want monority students to be able to speak out effectively for their rights, we must teach them, without destroying their own voices, to use language that cannot be labeled substandard. (JH)

Discusses evidence in support of combining nonnative speakers and native speakers of nonstandard English for instructional purposes. Discusses the goals and strategies for language learning these two groups have in common, arguing that the two produce many of the same linguistic forms and can interact profitably toward language acquisition. (HTH)

This essay examines a Brooklyn College-based research collective that placed African American languages and cultures at the center of the composition curriculum. Recovering such pedagogies challenges the perception of the CCCC's 1974 "Students' Right to Their Own Language" resolution as a progressive theory divorced from the everyday…

Though diversity serves as a valuable source for rhetorical inquiry, expressivist instructors who privilege diversity writing may also overemphasize the essential authenticity of their students' vernaculars. This romantic and salvationist impulse reveals the troubling implications of eighteenth-century Natural Language Theory and may,…