Introduction

According to the 2010 U.S. census, the Hispanic population has reached 50.5 million people, making Hispanics the largest minority group in the United States. Between April 1, 2000, and April 1, 2010, the Hispanic population increased 43%, which makes it the fastest growing population in the United States. Perhaps even more indicative of the country’s changing demographics and views on race was the election of the first African-American president of the United States, Barack Obama, in 2008. While the nation has shown progress by electing its first African-American president, the education, employment, income, and health disparities between White Americans and historically marginalized groups still exist. Because of these inequities, African-American, a group whose civil rights movement has served as a model for historically marginalized people around the world, continue to have the strongest political and racial group identity in the United States. While scholars from various disciplines study the effects of major demographic and social changes in the United States, they also acknowledge that these changes have not alleviated obvious, and sometimes growing, inequities in health, wealth, and education. Noting these major changes in the United States, we are not surprised that a national discussion on race has become prominent. In this special issue, scholars in technical communication and multicultural education add their voices to this national discussion.

We acknowledge, though, that many, inside and outside of our field, believe that race is not a relevant concept in our society or field. Some argue that we live in a nonracist society, and thus the need to acknowledge color no longer exists. Gordon (2005) explained that color blindness “maintains that race does not exist as a meaningful category and posits that the benefits accrued to White people are earned by (gifted) individuals rather than systemically conferred” (p. 281). For example, in some technical communication classes, as in most classes, instructors adopt a color-blind perspective, reiterating the sentiment that race has no place in the classroom (Hairston, 1992). According to this perspective, to see or speak of race is to give life to a racist social system that has historically marginalized people of color and given unfair advantages to white European Americans (WEAs).

The foundation of a color-blind perspective is grounded in the belief of a merit-based system of reward and penalty. Yet this merit-based system rarely works to the advantage of people of color. As Bonilla-Silva (2003) and others have shown, the color-blind ideology is false and usually translates into societal practices that build on and bestow neutral WEA cultural, linguistic, and racial knowledge.

Thus, despite electing its first African-American president and having a growing Hispanic population, the United States is not a postracial society. Unfortunately, we still live in a society that produces racial constructs and where people live out racialized lives as part of their everyday experiences. Even though (or quite possibly because) race as a concept and thereby racism still exist, many people, if not color-blind, avoid topics of race, ethnicity, and culture in their daily conversations.

Thus, it is not surprising to find this same reticence to discuss such topics in technical communication research and literature. In 1994, Limaye edited a special issue of JBTC on workforce diversity that was an effort toward embracing discussions of multiculturalism and technical communication in the United States. Since then, we have seen an encouraging number of academic articles that discuss gender and international technical communication; still, few discuss technical communication as it relates to race and ethnicity within the United States.

Thrush (1997) made this case 15 years ago in her seminal article “Multicultural Issues in Technical Communication.” She pointed out that “as little as we know about technical communication in other countries, it is startling how little research has been done on subcultures within the United States. . . . This includes African-American, Hispanic-Americans, and Asian-Americans as the largest groups of American-born minorities” (p. 172). Unfortunately, there was still little research in this area in 2004 when the article was reprinted in Dubinsky’s Teaching Technical Communication: Critical Issues for the Classroom. Recent scholarship responding to Thrush’s call includes Banks’s (2006) Race, Rhetoric, and Technology: Searching for Higher Ground and Williams’s (2010) From Black Codes to Recodification: Removing the Veil From Regulatory Writing. Both monographs address African-American and their use of technology or genres of technical communication within the United States. Johnson, Pimentel, and Pimentel’s (2008) “Writing New Mexico White: A Critical Analysis of Early Representations of New Mexico in Technical Writing’’ and St. Germaine-Madison’s (2006) “Instructions, Visuals, and the English-Speaking Bias of Technical Communication” address the representation of Latinos in U.S. technical communication. With this research, these and other scholars move beyond arguments about the importance of multicultural issues in the United States and in technical communication to highlight the unique ways that people of color in the United States use or invent technical communication.

To continue this conversation, we have selected four critical articles that explicitly address race, ethnicity, or multiculturalism in technical communication. The first article, “Race, Rhetoric, and Technology: A Case Study of Decolonial Technical Communication Theory, Methodology, and Pedagogy,” by Angela M. Haas, is a case study that examines the place of race, ethnicity, rhetoric, and technology in a graduate-level technical communication classroom. This study demonstrates the importance of race and ethnicity in the technical communication curriculum design and pedagogy.

In the second article, “The Double Occupancy of Hispanics: Counting Race and Ethnicity in the U.S. Census,” Charise Pimentel and Deborah Balzhiser examine the historical and current racial implications of the U.S. Census questionnaire. In this analysis, Pimentel and Balzhiser demonstrate the problematic nature of both the Hispanic-origin and race questions that ultimately reproduce racial inequities. Through a careful, critical deconstruction of the 2010 census form and census data reports, Pimentel and Balzhiser propose a “double occupancy of Hispanics” whereby the Hispanic-origin and race questions simultaneously encourage the U.S. society to keep a tab on Hispanic growth and inflate the white count.

The third article, “Beyond Compliance: Participatory Translation of Safety Communication for Latino Construction Workers,” by Carlos Evia and Ashley Patriarca, presents data collected from research that used participatory design methods to discuss and address workplace safety and risk discourse in a way that Latino construction workers could more fully understand. Evia and Patriarca specifically demonstrate how Latino construction workers collaborate to design safety-related artifac ts that are culturally relevant to their needs.

In the final article, “Reimagining NASA: A Cultural, Political, and Visual Analysis of the U.S. Space Program,” Miriam F. Williams uses concepts from narrative theory and visual rhetoric to analyze the images used in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) History Timeline, paying special attention to why certain images of social, political, and cultural significance were selected as historical markers over other photographs. Specifically, Williams uses arguments from Sontag’s On Photography and Barbatsis’s “Narrative Theory” to explain how NASA’s photographic narrative provides a plot that spans from triumphs and tragedies in space exploration to pioneering efforts in racial, ethnic, and gender diversity.

All of these articles effectively and critically shed light on issues of race, ethnicity, and multiculturalism in technical communication. While these issues often are overlooked, go unnoticed, or are silenced, the articles included in this special issue of JBTC demonstrate the prominence, and much-needed analysis, of race, ethnicity, and multiculturalism in technical communication. As guest editors, we look forward to the intellectual discussions and writings that respond to these articles.

The authors and we would like to thank the reviewers for their valuable contributions to this special issue. We could not have completed it without the help of Libby Allison, Thereisa Coleman, Thomas Huckin, Rebecca Jackson, Jaimie Mejia, and Emily Thrush. We thank you for your guidance and patience and for providing reviews and comments that were essential for selecting and revising the articles published in this special issue. We would also like to thank David Russell and Lori Peterson for your guidance and commitment to this project.