When are persons ‘white’?: on some practical asymmetries of racial reference in talk-in-interaction

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.

Discursive Approaches to Race and Racism

“…Partially in response to the tendency for much social scientific research to focus on those on the receiving end of racism rather than its perpetrators, whiteness and white identities, including white anti-racist identities, have been a strong focus of many studies in these areas (e.g., Bucholtz, 2010;Hughey, 2007;Lewis, 2004;Nuttall, 2001;Whitehead & Lerner, 2009;Zajicek). Some studies have, however, focused on people of color (e.g., Hughey, 2008), or on racial or ethnic categories and identities more generally (e.g., Durrheim, et al, 2011;Hansen, 2005;Verkuyten, 2004;Whitehead, 2009Whitehead, , 2012Whitehead, , 2013aWhitehead, , 2013b.…”

“…While talk about the specific topic of race and ethnicity may be relatively sparsely distributed in such interactions, close examination of when and how racial or ethnic categories are mentioned has 16 provided insights into some ways in which they may be produced and reproduced as "byproducts" of the everyday interactional business in which participants are engaged, even if they are not a direct or explicit topic of discussion. For example, building on pioneering analyses by Sacks (1984bSacks ( , 1986, Whitehead & Lerner (2009) examine a set of interactional mechanisms through which the otherwise typically "invisible" category of whiteness can be exposed and disturbed as a result of everyday interactional processes. Other studies based on naturally occurring interactional data have examined how racial and ethnic categories can be used and thus reproduced in institutional settings such including formal meetings (Hansen, 2005;Shrikant, 2015) and talk radio (Whitehead, 2012(Whitehead, , 2013a, and how they are interactionally produced as officially recognized categories of people for institutionally relevant purposes (Kameo & Whalen, 2015;Wilkinson, 2011).…”

Moving forward by doing analysis

“…While the merits of distinguishing between 'natural' and 'contrived' data have been discussed at length elsewhere -see, for example Speer (2002) and responses by Lynch I would like to be clear, however, that I am not disputing the benefits that can be gained by examining how categorial phenomena are realized in interactions in which particular categories are not pre-specified as discussion topics in accordance with a particular research agenda (see Whitehead [2011b, In press] for discussion and demonstrations of some of these benefits; also see Whitehead & Lerner, [2009]). Instead, I am arguing that the possibility of also producing valuable findings by examining sequential and categorial phenomena concurrently in researcher-generated data should not be foreclosed prior to an empirically based assessment of their utility (or lack thereof) for examining particular phenomena.…”

“…In addition, Raymond and Heritage (2006) provide an analysis of the ways in which speakers' orientations to the relevance of their 5 membership in a particular category (in this case, 'grandparent') are recurrently displayed through the deployment of practices for managing epistemic authority and subordination at different sequential positions in assessment sequences. My own work (e.g., Whitehead, 2009;Whitehead & Lerner, 2009) has been similarly engaged in examining circumstances in which the use of MCDs is a consequential feature of unfolding sequences of action, as has that of a number of other authors, including Hopper and LeBaron (1998), Kitzinger (e.g., 2000Kitzinger (e.g., , 2005aKitzinger (e.g., , 2005b), Lerner, Bolden, Hepburn and Mandelbaum (frth), Schegloff (e.g., 2007), and Stokoe herself (e.g., 2009and Stokoe herself (e.g., , 2010. Although this latest contribution by Stokoe more explicitly describes a systematic program and set of resources for producing this type of research, these previous contributions provide additional demonstrations of some ways in which such work might proceed.…”

The Role of References in Custody Mediation

“…12 Referencing can also display an interactant's attitude toward others and be employed in the identity construction (Kitzinger & Mandelbaum, 2013;Tracy, 2011;Vasilyeva, 2015a;Whitehead & Lerner 2009). For example, according to Kitzinger and Mandelbaum (2013), vocabulary selection demonstrates interactants' orientation toward their own identity and the identities of others.…”