Unmaking Gringo-Centers

Abstract

The article focuses on the topics of race and power and how they have been addressed in writing center scholarship. It asks the writing center community to listen, well and deeply, to how members have discussed and pursued anti-racist agendas. The article points to the emergence and presence of a white/black race paradigm. It is argued that this paradigm both limits what a writing center might do and undercuts the efficacy of anti-racist agendas. A method of listening is deployed in multiple ways to substantiate an argument that while pockets of progressive politics have taken place in writing center scholarship, the failure to attend to the conditions experienced by and the needs and interests of other racial/ethnic groups such as Mexican American student writers is a limitation to writing centers' democratic desires. The article brings attention to the plight of Mexican Americans, both local and global, and moves to discuss what might be afforded in accounting for Mexican American students within writing center conversations on race and power.