The Cultural and Intercultural Identities of Transnational English Teachers: Two Case Studies from the Americas

The Cultural and Intercultural Identitiesof Transnational English Teachers: Two Case Studies from the Americas JULIA MENARD-WARWICK University of California, Davis Davis, California, Uni

The Cultural and Intercultural Identities

of Transnational English Teachers: Two Case Studies from the Americas

JULIA MENARD-WARWICK

University of California, Davis

Davis, California, United States

This article presents case studies of two long-time English languageteachers: a California English as a second language instructor originallyfrom Brazil, and a Chilean English as a foreign language teacher whoworked for many years in the United States before returning home.Based on interview and classroom observation data, this research ex-plores teachers’ perspectives on the connections between their transna-tional life experiences and their development of intercultural compe-tence, how they define their own (inter)cultural identities; and howthey approach cultural issues with their English language learners Al-though both women self-identify as bicultural, they were observed tohave somewhat different approaches to teaching cultural issues: TheCalifornia teacher emphasizes subjective comparisons between themany national cultures represented in her classroom, but the teacher inChile focuses more on the cultural changes that she and her studentshave experienced as a result of globalization Whereas previous studies

of teacher identity in TESOL have focused primarily on the dichotomybetween native- and nonnative-English-speaking teachers, this articleargues that the profession needs to put more value on the pedagogicalresources that transnational and intercultural teachers bring to Englishlanguage teaching I end with implications for educating interculturalteachers

In recent years, many authors have discussed the dichotomy betweenthe native-English-speaking teacher (NEST) and the nonnative-English-speaking teacher (NNEST) in TESOL (e.g., Lazaraton, 2003;Nemtchinova, 2005; Pavlenko, 2003) A rough consensus is perhapsemerging that NNESTs have been unfairly discriminated against, thatthey provide good role models for English language learners (ELLs), butthat they may lack knowledge about the target language and culturalnorms Although it is not uncommon for authors to mention in passingthat many TESOL professionals are “multilingual (and) interculturally

savvy” (Sparrow, 2000, p 750), little attention in the research literaturehas gone to such teachers—especially those who do not fit neatly into theNEST/NNEST dichotomy Nevertheless, intercultural teachers havemuch to offer TESOL pedagogy Conversely, teachers with limited ex-perience of other cultures, no matter their native language, will needspecial guidance in teacher education programs in order to successfullyteach interculturality (Kramsch, 2005) What’s needed are teacherswhose life experiences have led them to intercultural competence andwho “just as importantly have a meta-cognitive awareness of their com-petence” (Byram, 1997, p 20).

This article provides case studies of two such teachers, Ruby,1 nally from Brazil but a long-time adult English as a second language(ESL) teacher in California, and Paloma, a university-level Chilean En-glish as a foreign language (EFL) teacher who spent 20 years in the

origi-United States Interculturality (Byram, 1997; Kramsch, 2005), that is,

see-ing cultural issues from multiple perspectives, should not be viewed as

synonymous with transnationality (Kumaravadivelu, 2008; Risager, 2007),

that is, having significant interests or experiences that cross nation-state

boundaries I refer to these teachers as transnational, however, because

their accounts emphasize the importance for their intercultural identitydevelopment of having lived long-term in two different national con-texts Thus, these interpretive case studies explore three questions fromthe perspectives of these two teachers: How have their transnational lifeexperiences helped them to develop intercultural competence and ameta-awareness of this competence? How do they define their own (in-ter)cultural identities? How do they approach (inter)cultural issues withtheir students? The article concludes with a call for incorporating similarsubjective explorations of cultural and intercultural experiences intoteacher education programs so as to facilitate new teachers’ awareness ofcultural complexities in the second language (L2) classroom

CULTURE AND INTERCULTURALITY IN L2 EDUCATION

In the 1990s, U.S professional organizations collaborated on nationalstandards for foreign language (FL) learning, with one goal being thatstudents gain knowledge and understanding of other cultures (Phillips,2003) Specifically, the framework requires students to analyze relation-ships between the practices, perspectives, and products of the cultures

studied Culture in these standards is undefined but can be inferred to

mean a group of people (e.g., a nation) sharing practices (e.g.,

greet-1 Names are pseudonyms.

ings), perspectives (attitudes, values), and products (books, foods, etc.).

However, culture can also refer to the shared practices, perspectives, and

products themselves

Clearly, groups of people (from nations to garage bands) do tend toshare practices and perspectives that to some extent differ from thoseshared by other groups However, there has been a recent shift from thestable, normative view of culture implied by the national standards to-ward seeing cultures as heterogeneous, dynamic, loosely bounded, andsubjectively experienced (Kramsch, 1998) Atkinson (1999) proposed a

“revised” view of culture in TESOL in which learners are seen as viduals-in-context with “multiple, contradictory, and dynamic” (p 643)identities However, Atkinson’s proposal was critiqued for not takingaccount of power relations (Siegal, 2000) or the specificities of educa-tional contexts (Sparrow, 2000) Moreover, as Kubota (1999) writes, rep-resentations of culture in TESOL (e.g., that Japanese students valueharmony) need to be problematized as discursive constructions oftenimposed by politically and economically privileged groups Similarly,Harklau (1999) argues for problematizing cultural content in order to

“facilitate students’ explorations of culture from their own varied vidual backgrounds” (p 126)

indi-Meanwhile, European economic integration and heightened globaltensions between the West and Islam have led to growing emphasis inlanguage pedagogy on dialogue across national and ethnic boundaries

leading to interculturality (Byram, 1997; Wesche, 2004), defined as “an

awareness and a respect of difference, as well as the socioaffective ity to see oneself through the eyes of others” (Kramsch, 2005, p 553)

capac-According to Byram (2003), interculturality is not the same as

bicultur-ality, the capacity to function in two distinct cultural groups, but

bicul-turality may facilitate interculbicul-turality Similarly, intercultural ences, that is, interactions across cultural boundaries, can facilitate in-terculturality but should not be seen as synonymous with it Along withknowledge of one’s own and other cultures, interculturality involves at-titudes of curiosity and openness, skills in interpretation and mediation,and a critical awareness of conflicting value systems (Byram, 1997) How-ever, survey research inspired by Byram’s work and conducted with Eu-ropean FL teachers found that most perceived culture in terms of knowl-edge about target language nations, and few promoted interculturalcompetence (Sercu, 2006)

experi-Other recent scholarship on cultural pedagogies in language teaching(Kumaravadivelu, 2008; Risager, 2007) situates this work within the cur-rent context of globalization Without denying the importance of na-tional and ethnic identities, these authors emphasize the need for lan-guage educators to move away from a simplistic equation of nation–culture–language (as in the teachers surveyed by Sercu, 2006) to what

Risager calls a transnational paradigm, based on an awareness of linguistic

and cultural complexity in a globalized world where practices and spectives (as well as individuals) often cross national borders In thisglobal context, both authors advocate a focus on the “the complexity of

per-an individual’s cultural growth” (Kumaravadivelu, 2008, p 6) withinlanguage education

TEACHER IDENTITIES

This emphasis on complexity is in keeping with recent views of identity

in L2 education (e.g., Norton, 2000) as “often contradictory, and subject

to change across time and place” (Morgan, 2004, p 172) However, it isprimarily learners whose identities have been theorized in this way Al-though ESL teachers’ racial and gender identities have been profiled inrecent years (e.g., Lin et al., 2004), the NNEST/NEST dichotomy re-mains the most prevalent way of theorizing teacher identity in TESOL.This scholarship represents a commendable attempt to get away fromthe “colonial legacy” of the “native speaker fallacy” (Morgan, 2004, p.172), but teachers’ cultural, intercultural, national, and transnationalidentities remain undertheorized

Research on teachers has often portrayed them as prototypicallymonocultural Although Alsup (2006) convincingly outlines teacheridentity development as a process which “incorporates personal sub-jectivities in to the professional/cultural expectations of what it means to

be a ‘teacher’” (p 27), all her research participants were young whitepeople preparing to teach high school English primarily to other youngwhite people Indeed, much of the TESOL literature that concernsteachers’ cultural identities connects the limitations of their back-grounds to their difficulties in addressing culture in the L2 classroom.Duff and Uchida (1997) profile four English teachers in Japan, whose

“sociocultural perceptions and identities” (p 473), along with tional constraints, led them to make classroom choices about addressingcultural issues that were often at odds with the beliefs they stated ininterviews In a U.S context, Harklau (1999) observed ESL instructorswho were experienced in working with international students but un-equipped to handle the more intense cultural identity issues faced byGeneration 1.5 immigrant students Finally, Lazaraton (2003) empha-sizes a lack of cultural knowledge in chronicling NNESTs’ attempts toanswer ESL student questions

institu-In contrast to the rather bleak picture of teacher identity drawn byTESOL researchers, scholars of bilingual education detail teachers’pedagogical resources, indexing the importance of “identity as peda-

gogy” (Morgan, 2004, p 178) Through biographical case studies,Galindo and Olguín (1996), Weisman (2001), and Monzó and Rueda(2003) note the gifts bilingual teachers bring to the socialization oflanguage minority children As Weisman explains, such teachers are

“vital role models who can offer their students the opportunity to ine possibilities for their future that do not negate their cultural world-view” (p 222) Moreover, bicultural “teachers bring worldviews shaped by the sociocultural and historical contexts of their lives” (Monzó

imag-& Rueda, p 72), which enable them to address the linguistic, ideological,and social concerns of students from diverse communities However,before teachers’ identities can become resources for pedagogy, “criticalreflection (on) life experiences” may be needed (Galindo & Olguín, p.33; cf Pavlenko, 2003) Such biographical reflection facilitates not onlybicultural and/or intercultural competence, but additionally a meta-awareness of this competence that can be shared with learners (Byram,1997)

Some authors note biculturality or interculturality as an asset ofNNESTs: For example, Nemtchinova (2005) mentions that NNESteacher trainees’ “study of language and culture other than their ownenables them to make explicit cross-cultural comparisons and con-trasts and to weave these observations into their teaching” (p 254).Although this example shows how teachers incorporate personal subjec-tivities into their professional identities (Alsup, 2006), little research hasbeen conducted on the bicultural or intercultural identities of secondand foreign language teachers or how such identities might influencepedagogy

METHODOLOGY

This article comes from a larger qualitative study, conducted between

2004 and 2006, at a small university in Chile and several California adultESL programs Through multiple case studies of English language teach-ers in both educational contexts, this project has explored teachers’perspectives on their own cultural identities and how these identitiesaffect their approaches to teaching culture in the language classroom.Recognizing the complexity of teachers’ pedagogical decision mak-ing, which is necessarily based on an interrelationship between institu-tional and biographical factors (Duff & Uchida, 1997), I cannot argue for

a straightforward causal link between the particularities of teachers’ national experiences and the ways they approach cultural pedagogies.Instead, my work is interpretive, focused on the links that teachers seebetween their experiences, their identities, their teaching practices, and

trans-especially the approaches to teaching culture that I observed in theirclassrooms (Watson-Gegeo, 1988) Indeed, because the research inter-view itself is a site where speakers can “do discursive work to addressdilemmas and resolve contradictions in order to construct coherentidentity” (Taylor, 2003, p 194), to some extent my research questionsco-constructed their conceptualizations of these links Rather than pre-senting an objective account of how particular experiences result inparticular pedagogies, this article recounts my interpretive exploration

of these complex issues with two intercultural, transnational Englishteachers

In this exploration, I define culture as shared understandings and

practices within groups of people, while noting that these “shared” derstandings and practices are inevitably subjective, heterogeneous, and

un-dynamic (Kramsch, 1998); I define identity as a negotiation between how

one sees oneself and how one is seen by others (Blackledge & Pavlenko,

2001) Since interculturality involves distancing oneself from one’s own

cultural viewpoint in order to explore the perspectives of others (Byram,

1997; Kramsch, 2005), an intercultural identity is thus a negotiated

invest-ment in seeing the world through multiple cultural lenses

DATA COLLECTION

I observed and audiotaped the classes of three Chilean English ers and five California ESL instructors, spending 8 hours in each class-room over several weeks Immediately after each observation, I wroteethnographic field notes I also conducted audiotaped interviews withthe eight observed instructors, regarding their history of FL study anduse, their experiences as English teachers, their cross-cultural experi-ences, and their perspectives on culture in language teaching I con-ducted follow-up interviews to get their perspectives on the cultural is-sues from the class observations Interviews lasted from 1 to 2 hours

teach-I recruited California participants through personal contacts; all wereteaching intermediate to advanced ESL classes, which focused on L2skills (e.g., reading) but which also allowed time for open-ended discus-sions The U.S./Chile Binational Fulbright Commission arranged for me

to conduct research at the Chilean university On arrival, I receivedpermission from the instructors of the most advanced general Englishcourses to observe their classes and to interview them These classes werecomparable in level and subject matter to the classes observed in Cali-fornia I focused on intermediate to advanced classes assuming that stu-dents’ greater linguistic competence would allow more discussion ofcultural topics Participants knew I was interested in issues of culturalidentity and how teachers talked about culture in the classroom

Though this was not the basis on which I selected them, all the ticipating teachers had significant intercultural experiences, such as so-journs abroad or intercultural marriages However, Paloma and Rubywere the two who by far had spent the longest time living abroad andwere the only ones who self-identified as bicultural As an Anglo-American English teacher who has taught and conducted research inLatin America as well as in U.S Latino communities, I have always foundinterculturality (to the extent I can accomplish it) to be a significantresource for my work Therefore, I am interested in exploring the per-spectives of truly transnational English teachers who have become im-mersed in cultural contexts other than their own to the point where theyconsider themselves bicultural.2 Both Paloma and Ruby were teachingadvanced general English classes when I observed them, Paloma to uni-versity students preparing to become English teachers and Ruby to amixed-nationality class of immigrants at an adult school in an upper-middle-class California community.3

par-DATA ANALYSIS

Having decided to write a comparative case study of Paloma and Ruby,

I conducted a thematic analysis of their interview and classroom datausing NVivo (QSR International, 2006) qualitative data analysis software

Prevalent themes included politics, students, and gender Additionally, I coded the classroom data for types of activities, e.g., responding to texts and

sharing opinions However, since my research questions concerned

con-nections between cultural identities and pedagogies, I needed to tionalize a definition of culture that could be applied to different types

opera-of data across research contexts Although the national standards proach to culture discussed earlier (Phillips, 2003) is simplistic, for thisvery reason it served as the basis of a workable coding system: I codeddata as having cultural content when it concerned practices, perspec-tives, and resulting products that are shared among groups of people.For example, in the data from Ruby’s class, tattooing is a practice shared

ap-by fashionable youth worldwide, which results in a product (body art)and arguably exemplifies values of individual freedom and self-expression Though it could be argued that linguistic forms are cultural,

2 While I recognize that living transnationally is neither necessary nor sufficient for the development of interculturality, it is nevertheless one significant means to this end Like- wise, although biculturality is not synonymous with interculturality, these should be seen

as mutually facilitative.

3 California adult schools offer government-funded, free ESL classes Ruby’s adult school offers general English classes at beginning, intermediate, and advanced levels, and mul- tilevel classes for immigrant parents.

I excluded most form-focused activities, for example, vocabulary cises, from my cultural coding.4

exer-Data coded for cultural content was given subcodes as to whether itconcerned practices, products, or perspectives I also coded cultural data

for approaches toward culture taken by participants Ruby’s most common approach was cultural comparison (Byram, 1997): discussion of how the

practices or perspectives of one group (she focused primarily on nationalgroups) differ from those of another group Paloma also used this ap-

proach, but more often focused on cultural change in Chile: discussion of

how contemporary practices and perspectives compare with those in thepast

The Transnational Life Histories section consists of chronologicallyarranged interview data thematically related to major life events: educa-tion, marriage, emigration, long-term employment, and current activi-ties The (Inter)cultural Identities section is a synthesis of data coded for

cultural identity, defined as participant’s sense of belonging or not

be-longing to particular groups based on his or her history and tion in particular practices and systems of meaning Finally, I selectedclassroom data that exemplified trends in teaching culture that I ob-

participa-served I had not coded for interculturality (Kramsch, 2005; Byram, 1997)

because identifying its presence within data excerpts requires larly high levels of inference Thus, in my analysis of classroom data, Ipoint to evidence of interculturality within typical activities in the twoclassrooms

particu-In presenting this analysis, I know that the 8 hours I spent in Ruby’sand Paloma’s classes may not be representative of their teaching practiceand that my presence may have affected the approaches they took during

my observations.5Moreover, the life narratives in this article should not

be seen as transparent representations of factual information, but rather

as the tellers’ perspectives on past events in relation to the context oftelling (Ochs & Capps, 1996; Taylor, 2003) Nevertheless, in triangulat-ing interview and classroom data (Watson-Gegeo, 1988), I found enoughcongruence to draw interpretive conclusions about participants’ per-spectives on their own intercultural experiences and how these experi-ences affect their teaching

TRANSNATIONAL LIFE HISTORIES

Teacher identities are multiple, complex, contradictory, and subject

to change over time and place (Morgan, 2004) These complexities and

4 In a few cases, cultural and linguistic content was inextricably interwoven.

5 Ruby told me that she actually talked about culture to her students more when I was not there.

contradictions may shift and realign within discursive interactions butare also constructed long-term across personal and social histories Intheir 1997 study of EFL teachers, Duff and Uchida found that particularcultural identities became foregrounded in classrooms due to biograph-ical as well as institutional factors Thus, I present accounts of my par-ticipants’ life histories to contextualize my later discussion of their (in-ter)cultural identities and teaching practices.

Ruby

Born in Brazil in the 1950s, Ruby was a middle child in a family whosefortunes fluctuated over the years of her childhood The complexities ofher language development trajectory make it difficult to label her aseither a native or a nonnative speaker of English, NEST or NNEST Herfather had moved to Brazil from the United States as a young man, andher mother had come from England as a child Both were bilingual inEnglish and Portuguese and spoke both languages at home in Ruby’searly childhood Her father was initially successful in business, but laterthe business failed After her parents divorced when she was five, Rubydescribes her family life as “spinning in chaos.” Mostly she lived with hermother, who used only Portuguese at home after the divorce; in this wayRuby lost her early proficiency in English After her mother remarried,Ruby at 13 temporarily joined her father in Holland, where she re-learned some English This European sojourn interrupted her Portu-guese-language schooling, and she ended up behind her age groupwhen she returned to Brazil

At 17, needing to earn money, Ruby dropped out of high school andbegan using her English skills as a freelance tour guide The next yearshe got a job teaching at a private English school because although she

“didn’t speak that well at all,” she “did speak without an accent.” Outside

of class, Ruby spent time with expatriate English teachers, who urged her

to continue her education; with her “staunch capitalist” but now erished family; and with a “very left-leaning” boyfriend, critical of themilitary regime in Brazil An invitation to move to New York and live withher uncle offered her a way out of these contradictions, through what shenow sees as a rather nạve embrace of the “American Dream.” She re-members telling her students, “I’m gonna be zipping around in thisconvertible Mercedes and isn’t life great.”

impov-In New York, she finished high school, took junior college classes, andregained a native-like proficiency in English In her mid twenties, shemoved to California, got a degree in agronomy, and met her husbandMatt, a university lecturer They married and had two daughters Rubyinitially planned to be a full-time mother but was offered an evening job

teaching ESL at the local adult school When her daughters startedschool, she was able to change to a morning class “That class was a littlehigher level and I didn’t know the grammar at all I was gettingall mixed up so I decided that if I was going to teach English, Ineeded to go back to school.” Ruby earned a master’s degree in TESOLand continued teaching.

Both her daughters have now finished high school and recently spent

6 months in Brazil to improve their Portuguese Along with teachingEnglish, Ruby organizes local Latin American music festivals, as well asBrazilian community gatherings: “Any information we have of any eventthat has to do with Brazil we just send it to everybody on (our) Yahoogroup So it’s pretty fun, I’m really happy about it.”

Paloma

Born in the 1940s, Paloma was the youngest child in a speaking middle-class family in the Chilean city where she now lives.Having acquired English initially through academic study in Chile, shedescribes her English-language proficiency after many years in theUnited States as “near-native.”6 Though she particularly enjoyed study-ing French in high school, “for some reason I always told my mom that

Spanish-I wanted to be a teacher of English,” so she enrolled in the Englishteaching program at the local university She married her boyfriendJavier right after graduation in December 1970, and then learned thatshe had been accepted for a Fulbright grant to earn a MATESOL degree

in the United States Deciding to go with her, Javier “was a wonderfulhusband (he) sold everything he could, he took money, and hecleaned dorms.” Javier got his master’s degree in literature at the sameuniversity where Paloma studied TESOL

Returning to Chile in 1973, they found the country enduring severeshortages of consumer goods in the final days of Allende’s socialist presi-dency The coup and military dictatorship soon followed Though theyhad initially supported Allende, the fact that they had spent most of hispresidency abroad meant they were able to keep their jobs while col-leagues viewed as leftist fled into exile “But things turned out very, verybad and then we just devoted ourselves to working.”

They taught English at the university in their hometown under tary rule until 1985, when Javier was accepted into a doctoral program at

mili-a U.S university mili-and Pmili-alommili-a found mili-a job mili-as coordinmili-ator of temili-aching

6 Thus, in terms of the debate in the field, Paloma could be described as an NNEST although she herself did not use this precise term in describing herself.

assistants in the Spanish department Over the next decade and a half,Javier finished his doctorate and taught Spanish literature, while Palomagot a second masters in Spanish and continued to coordinate teachingassistants.7Their son, nine at the time of the move, acculturated to life

in the United States and for the most part abandoned Spanish In thelate 1990s, Javier lost his U.S teaching job and received an offer to teachEnglish literature at their former university in Chile The country hadreturned to democracy in 1990, and he wanted to return At the time,Paloma was just starting a doctoral program in education, so she triedstaying in the United States alone but found it too hard on their mar-riage Returning to Chile in 2003 without finishing her doctorate, shebegan teaching English part-time at the same university

Although transitioning back to Chile was difficult for Paloma, it tually brought new opportunities to promote cultural awareness Palomafelt lost in her native land until a friend invited her to attend a leadershipdiploma program As a project for the program, Paloma started an ex-change program for Chilean English teachers to spend a month in theUnited States, living with Spanish teachers and assisting in their classes.Two years later, when I interviewed her, she was excited about the results

even-of this cultural immersion project, as a life-changing experience forChilean teachers She described one participant saying, “Now I believe Ican do things Now I trust myself that I can bring change.”

(INTER)CULTURAL IDENTITIES

In my interviews with language teachers, probably the most ing question I asked was “How would you define your own culturalidentity?” A number of teachers stumbled over this question or asked me

challeng-to define cultural identity first However, perhaps because they had a more

explicit metacognitive awareness of their bicultural status (Byram, 1997,2003), Paloma and Ruby answered readily, although with laughter Inthis section I look at how they represent themselves as women who havelived and identified with different cultural groups Although nationalidentities may lose relevance in an age of globalization (Kumaravadivelu,2008; Risager, 2007) and should not be equated with cultural identities(Kramsch, 1998, 2005), it may also be true that living in two differentnation states actually reinforces the salience of national identities Whenpowerful experiences of cultural difference come as a result of crossingnational boundaries, it is easy for national labels to stand in as cultural

7 Due to bias against NNESTs, Javier and Paloma taught Spanish rather than English in the United States.

labels, as they often do when Ruby and Paloma articulate their nitive awareness of their intercultural histories (Byram, 1997) However,

metacog-it remains crucial to note that in other contexts, national identmetacog-ities maynot be at all salient Therefore, though national and cultural identitiesmay be emically conflated by the participants in this study (Watson-Gegeo, 1988), they should be kept theoretically distinct

Ruby

When I asked Ruby about her cultural identity, she immediatelylaughed, and said, “Split Definitely split I feel like a hybrid of somesort, you know I think at this point I’m probably more Americanthan Brazilian.” At times she has felt alienated from other Braziliansbecause of being married to an American and of having lived, in someways, a “gringo” life even in Brazil Though not particularly close to herfather, she had picked up some of his values, especially pride in knowingpractical skills like gardening, which middle-class Brazilians disparage:

“I’m very American that way.”

At the same time, Ruby saw her own communication style as veryBrazilian, based on context and body language and often leading tomisunderstandings with her more literal-minded North American hus-band She prioritized passing on Brazilian values to her daughters, likethe importance of socializing with friends and family To this end, shehad actively reclaimed her Brazilian identity during her daughters’ child-hood Although the Portuguese she knew best was “rebellious teen Por-tuguese” with “a lot of cuss words,” she began singing to them the chil-dren’s songs she remembered Indeed, it was through music that shereconnected with her heritage, after meeting a Brazilian musician whowas looking for a vocalist: “Next thing I know, it’s been 10 years, andwe’ve been singing together ever since.” This involvement in music led toher work with the Latin American cultural organizations described ear-lier

Paloma

Like Ruby, Paloma laughed when I asked about her cultural identity.Still laughing, she replied, “My cultural identity Um, I was born white,Catholic, I went to the States, they told me that I’m not white, I’mHispanic I am not a majority, but a minority.” Despite being racial-ized in this way (Kubota & Lin, 2006), Paloma felt that her level ofeducation brought her some acceptance in the white community Whencolleagues called her “near-native,” she would respond, “Thank you for