THE CEA FORUM - Winter/Spring 2015 - Cross-Examining Bigotry - Using Toulmin’s Argument Model and Huckin’s CDA to Interrogate Overt and Covert Racist Arguments

Oct 15, 2026

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A practical teaching plan addresses how to challenge overt and covert racist arguments in writing and literacy classrooms. The author recounts student pushback to overt racial language, then argues that ethics and politics can be handled as rigorous argument analysis. The article proposes three tactics: embed bigotry discussion in Toulmin and CDA-based units, start with overt examples to reduce defensiveness, and then shift to texts that reveal how overt prejudice becomes covert—using scaffolded excerpts and structured analysis to improve critical thinking and writing.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages35

Reading Time1 h 28 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Student resistance and classroom ethics

Pedagogical strategy

Three main tactics

Scaffolding overview

THE CEA FORUM Winter/Spring 2015 Cross-Examining Bigotry: Using Toulmin’s Argument Model and Huckin’s CDA to Interrogate Overt and Covert Racist Arguments Nancy Effinger Wilson Texas State University “Why is it that a Black person can call me ‘cracker,’ but I can’t call him the ‘N-word?’”my composition student wanted to know. He had come by my office following our second class discussion of Coming of Age in Mississippi, Anne Moody’s 1968 autobiography in which she traces her life from her childhood in segregated Mississippi through her time as an activist in the Civil Rights Movement. Taken aback by such a question, the first words I uttered were,“why in the world would you want to call someone that?” and my second,“The racism you have a problem with in the book is against Whites?” I then realized that rather than feeling a uniting compassion for Moody as a person struggling against systemic racism, Travis had become defensive, perceiving Moody’s condemnation of “crackers” as a condemnation of all White people. Thus, despite my and Moody’s effort to decenter whiteness, this White, male student had found a way to center it again. Travis’parting words to me that day were “When am I going tobe a protected minority?” After this experience, I considered abandoning my social justice agenda. After all, I am supposed to be teaching students how to write, not how to be more humane and open-minded individuals. Perhaps it was time to take Stanley Fish’s advice and “save the world on my own time.”However, Travis’comments were not only immoral, they were illogical, and logic is a THE CEA FORUM Winter/Spring 2015 writing teacher’s business. Even Fish says so. He writes that politics, ethics, civics, and economics have a place in the classroom if they are “dissected and assessed as arguments,” as“objects of analysis, comparison, historical placement, etc.”(25-6) . Whether bigoted students will engage with us in a dissection of racist arguments, however, is another matter. Not only was Travis resistant, he was aggressive. He wished to dish out to others the disrespect that he felt had been shown him. Thomas Rickert predicts this type of pushback, arguing that “the disruption and politicization of hierarchies of power and privilege, especially in terms of race, class, and gender”may produce “new forms of power and privilege”and “new resistances”(165) . I did not want to make matters worse. Despite such obstacles, I feel strongly that we should not allow even covert racist beliefs to go unchallenged simply because some students feel threatened. As recent events make abundantly clear, stakes are too high. But neither should we proceed without a strategy. To that end, I have developed the plan that I detail in this article. My three main tactics to support the goal of interrogating overt and covert racist arguments include 1. Tuck the discussion of bigotry into a larger unit on analyzing arguments using frameworks established by Stephen Toulmin (the Toulmin Argument Model) and Thomas Huckin (Critical Discourse Analysis or CDA). By focusing on argumentation and analysis, racist texts simply serve as evidence of flawed logic in action. As a result, students are less likely to perceive and therefore resent the unit as yet another accusation that they and their generation are bigots. 2. Begin the unit with overt examples of bigotry, thereby playing to the students’egos by allowing them to feel superior to “old-school” racists. Specifically, we apply Toulmin’s THE CEA FORUM Winter/Spring 2015 methodology to overtly racist claims such as “Whites are superior” and “Blacks are poorer because they don’t work as hard” as they surface in Anne Moody’s 1968 Coming of Age in Mississippi. Students will (in general) dismiss these “old-school” racists’beliefs, thereby minimizing emotional responses such as guilt and anger that may derail our analyses. Similarly, because I do not (yet) challenge the belief that racial discrimination

FAQs

What motivates the author to develop a strategy for interrogating racist arguments?

The author responds to experiences of defensive, aggressive student pushback while concluding that racist beliefs—especially covert ones—should not go unchallenged, though instruction must use a clear strategy.

How does the first tactic reduce students’ defensiveness?

By embedding discussion of bigotry into a larger unit on analyzing arguments with the Toulmin Argument Model and Huckin’s CDA, racist texts are treated as evidence of flawed logic rather than accusations about students themselves.

What is the role of starting with overt examples and then moving to covert ones?

The unit begins with overt racist claims to allow students to dismiss “old-school” racism and lower disruptive emotional responses, then follows with texts that illustrate how prejudice can be embedded covertly for deeper CDA-based interrogation.

Oct 15, 2026

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