BASIC WRITING, CUNY, AND "MAINSTREAMING": (DE) RACIALIZATION RECONSIDERED

<p>This essay begins by using the notion of education as "white property" to explore the racialized discourses surrounding BW students. By analyzing accounts from the early period of open admissions at CUNY, it shows how students are racialized as "minorities" despite the significant numbers of whites in the program. It argues that because open admissions students embody a threat to established structures of white power and privilege, they are discursively coded as non-white. In its next major section, the essay contends that racialization within contexts like BW needs to be identified and understood in order to truly dismantle these structures of whiteness. As a means of proving this, the essay explores two examples of discourse that is "deracialized" in some way: one pertaining to the end of CUNY open admissions, and one advocating for mainstreamed BW courses. Both examples demonstrate that by not directly addressing issues of race, structures of whiteness are ultimately left intact.</p>