Using culturally sustaining and revitalizing pedagogy in the composition classroom to engage students in critiquing supremacy culture

Incorporating texts that promote diverse voices and center critical thinking assignments on combatting white dominance and privilege is crucial to modern pedagogy and curricular development in community college composition classes. This paper suggests a way to help students understand issues of supremacy culture in education and society. The author developed a student-centric activity in English Composition 102: a survey to provoke discussion where students were asked to name American celebrities, authors, directors, inventors, artists, and athletes. The students named primarily white men in each category except celebrities and athletes. The celebrities’ category included relatively balanced ethnic, racial, and gender diversity; in the athletes’ category, students predominantly identified Black men (football and basketball stars). This paper considers the impetus and results of the assignment—including the pedagogies with which it aligns. Further, the author advocates for the presence of culturally sustaining and revitalizing pedagogy in community college composition curriculum, ideally by creating collaborative professional development workshops.