When are persons “White”?
Dublin Core
Title
When are persons “White”?
Subject
Race
Reports
Classification
Description
This report contributes to the study of racial discourse by examining some of the practical asymmetries that obtain between different categories of racial membership as they are actually employed in talk-in-interaction.
Creator
Kevin A. Whitehead
Gene H. Lerner
Publisher
Discourse & Society, (2009) Vol. 20 No 5.
Date
2009-00-00
Rights
Copyright to the author.
Language
English
Document Item Type Metadata
Text
Abstract
This report contributes to the study of racial discourse by examining some of the practical asymmetries that obtain between different categories of racial membership as they are actually employed in talk-in-interaction. In particular, we identify three interactional environments in which the ordinarily “invisible” racial category “white” is employed overtly, and we describe the mechanisms through which this can occur. These mechanisms include 1) “white” surfacing “just in time” as an account for action, 2) the occurrence of referential ambiguities with respect to race occasioning repairs that result in overt references to “white,” and 3) the operation of a recipient design consideration that we term “descriptive adequacy.” These findings demonstrate some ways in which the mundane invisibility of whiteness – or indeed, other locally invisible racial categories – can be both exposed and disturbed as a result of ordinary interactional processes, revealing the importance of the generic machinery of talk-in interaction for understanding both the reproduction of and resistance to the racial dynamics of everyday life.
This report contributes to the study of racial discourse by examining some of the practical asymmetries that obtain between different categories of racial membership as they are actually employed in talk-in-interaction. In particular, we identify three interactional environments in which the ordinarily “invisible” racial category “white” is employed overtly, and we describe the mechanisms through which this can occur. These mechanisms include 1) “white” surfacing “just in time” as an account for action, 2) the occurrence of referential ambiguities with respect to race occasioning repairs that result in overt references to “white,” and 3) the operation of a recipient design consideration that we term “descriptive adequacy.” These findings demonstrate some ways in which the mundane invisibility of whiteness – or indeed, other locally invisible racial categories – can be both exposed and disturbed as a result of ordinary interactional processes, revealing the importance of the generic machinery of talk-in interaction for understanding both the reproduction of and resistance to the racial dynamics of everyday life.
Collection
Citation
Kevin A. Whitehead , “When are persons “White”?,” ccrri Archive, accessed May 24, 2013, http://ccrri.ukzn.ac.za/archive/items/show/6.