INTRODUCTION Race confounds us
Race confounds us. In the United States, we are caught in its ideological grip with various levels
of consciousness about its hold on our psyche and our bodies. Yet, race, a social construction and
political negotiation, is with us. It shapes our talk and walk, our privileges and debts, our realities
and dreams, our births and deaths. It separates us and divides our quality of life unequally.
Yet, its common use in our language does not translate to a common sense of what race is or does.
This dissertation examines the meanings of race and how they are constructed by students at a
predominantly white university in the Northeast, U.S.A. with strong commitments to diversity. My
study investigates how this generation of college students comes to understand what they do about
race, how they talk about it, and how they negotiate and re/produce discourses about race from their
social locations. This study spans three years and concludes during the campaign that produced the
first African American president of the United States. It is within this historical moment that news
media have pondered and suggested that the U.S. has reached a new day in racial politics, a new
“post-racial” era. Yet, many question what that term could possibly mean except to silence any
meaningful conversation about race because we are somehow “beyond” it. Even though President
Obama articulated the necessity for national dialogue about “race” during his historic campaign for a
more perfect Union, he seems particularly challenged (perhaps because of his race) to discuss race as
he leads the imperfect union during this contemporary period of “post-racial rhetoric.” Race is
irony.
Race has confounded and gripped us from the beginning. It challenges our foundations and ideals.
This is clearly exhibited in the juxtaposition of our constitution and the social context in which it
was written. The Constitution of the United States of America was established by “the people” in
order to “form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility” (U.S.
Const. pmbl.) and fulfill other functions of a nation state seeking the blessings of liberty. As the
Constitution was written during the time of brutal chattel enslavement of Africans by White
oppressors, so is the rhetoric of “post-racialism” spouted in the present day when racial injustice and
inequity patterns are so rampant. While promising equality and justice for everyone, the United
States has perpetuated a history of racial injustice that is still prevalent today. Racial inequality is
obvious among our nation’s educational, health, and economic systems. Hard data provide hard
evidence of persistent broken promises for non-white people within the structure of American life.
For example, the U.S. Census (2000) data shows that Black Americans are three times as likely to be
poor as White Americans, and are among racial minorities who are overrepresented in the most
disadvantaged neighborhoods. A review of both the flow of money (income) as well as the
collection of assets that one owns (wealth) reveals the crucial patterns of racial imbalance that
plague this country (Oliver & Shapiro, 1995, 2004). The U.S. economic structure which has been
transformed from an industrial to service focus has stifled the incomes of people with modest
educational achievements, significantly impacting Blacks, Hispanics, and Asian Americans (Massey,
2006).
Education in the United States has been considered one of the great “equalizers” or remedies for
social inequities and injustice. Yet, U.S. education is particularly a site of inequality (Frankenberg &
Lee, 2006; Kozol, 1991; Ogbu, 1994;). African Americans, Latinos/Hispanic Americans and other
racial/ethnic minorities have historically been denied opportunity to higher education until the access
movement that began in the 1940’s and later included the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950’s and
1960’s (Seidman, 2005). Still great disparities between White and underrepresented students remain
today. Recent statistics indicate that even before college, Blacks and Hispanics meet challenges to
their educational attainment at a higher rate than Whites. According to the U.S. Department of
Education, the high school dropout rate for African Americans ages 16 to 24 was 9.9 percent, almost
double the rate for White Americans at 4.8 percent in 2008. For Hispanic Americans, the dropout
rate was 18.3 percent that year, the highest of all race/ethnic groups with American Indian/Alaska
Natives at 14.6 percent (“The Condition of Education,” 2011). Manning Marable (2002)
observes that “opportunity and access to higher education are determined primarily by wealth” (p.
137). At the primary and secondary levels, Black and Brown students are victimized by the lack of
financial, human, and pedagogical resources facilitated by a structural formula of school operations
that maintains them in the lowest performing public schools. Wilson (1996, 2009), an African
American sociologist, has made race and class integrative arguments to explain the source of this
social fact; pointing to past racial discrimination that created the Black underclass and the structural
dis/location of employment ending in resource depleted neighborhoods. Although Wilson (1973)
has controversially declared a “declining significance of race,” critiques of his work have
demonstrated that a trend toward income racial parity that Wilson argued in 1973 did not and does
not hold (Cancio, Evans, & Maume, 1996; Kim & Tamborini, 2006; Thomas & Hughes, 1986;). Yet,
Wilson contributes significantly to discussions that reveal the inequities of historical and present
systemic racism. It is well documented that residential segregation patterns are closely linked to
concentrated poverty lines that work against successful schools. Of course this is only a part of the
larger story of disparity in the quality of educational services and successful pedagogy for urban
schools and school districts with a majority of racial minorities.
Since the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision to end segregation of American students by
race, there was significant decline in segregation patterns until the mid 1980’s. However, an
examination of U.S. public schools demonstrates a reversing trend leading to resegregation,
especially for Latino students whose enrollment in public schools has tripled since the late 1960’s
(Frankenberg & Lee, 2006; Orfield, Eaton, & Jones, 1996). Sadly, court orders ending
desegregation plans have contributed to this reversing of two educational goals U.S. American
society says it holds dear: equality and integration. There is much research that emphasizes
teachers’ engagement of culturally relevant pedagogy for students’ success (Banks & Banks, 2004;
Howard, 2001; Ladson-Billings, 1995, 2001; Tate, 1995). Additionally, ethnographies like Annette
Lareau’s Unequal Childhoods (2003) and Anne Ferguson’s Bad Boys (2004) highlight the central
white middle-class lens from which many students are interrogated, judged, provoked, and
disciplined. Ferguson calls for a “restructuring of the entire educational system” in response to the
race, class, and gender intersectional subjugation of students (p. 234).
Meanwhile, post-Civil Rights laissez-faire racism pervades the national landscape and inhibits
governmental action to redress racial inequality concerns at any and all levels. Bobo (2006)
describes laissez-faire racism as a pattern of beliefs that involve “staunch rejection of an active role
for government in undoing racial segregation and inequality” and denies that discrimination and
racism is a problem in society (p. 93). This post-Jim Crow form of racism also accepts negative
stereotypes of African Americans and views Blacks as the source of their collective problems. This
racist discourse is coupled with another dominant discourse: colorblindness. Bonilla-Silva discusses
colorblindness as “ideology” so I will use his language here. Colorblind ideology suggests that we
live in a race neutral society where inequalities are the result of naturally occurring phenomena such
as market dynamics and the inferiority of Blacks (Bonilla-Silva, 2006). In other words, colorblind
ideology as a form of racism takes on subtle and institutional forms that “explain contemporary
racial inequality as the outcome of nonracial dynamics” (p. 2). This “new racism,” as Bonilla-Silva
calls it, stifles conversations about race or racism or any acknowledgement of inequality and creates
a catch 22 for contemporary victims of racism who must prove that racism exists by demonstrating
their victimization, which is precisely what the colorblind system of racism rejects. However, this
“race neutral” perspective that denies discrimination acknowledges race only for commodification—
the purchasing and sharing of “race” as products, symbols and experiences for Whites as well as
African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans (“People of Color”2).
It is within this national climate of dominant colorblind discourses that this dissertation is written.
The research presented in this dissertation grew out of my interest in the subject of race and racism
that may have begun as early as third grade. It was during a regular school day at Clarks Town
elementary in Jamaica, West Indies that one of my peers challenged me to understand race and
nation as two distinct identities. “If you were born in England, how come you’re not White?” he
asked. My eight-year old peer and I had witnessed many tourists in coach buses drive by our
school, slowing speed only to gaze at us, Black children, on the playgrounds. The buses, filled with
White people from “Foreign,” were like fancy mobile cages with windows and doors that never
opened toward us. This made tourists seem at once special. They were set apart in another world
behind the glass windows and towering metal of the coach bus. Then at once they were also strange,
alien beings, even bust like, looking at us with blank stares and expressionless in their overlapping
white economic privilege. As a U.K. born Black Jamaican boy, I was a bit of an outsider, a foreign
boy when I mentioned my birthplace. However, my classmate and I both knew I was not like the
foreigners in the bus.
When I arrived in the United States one year later, race would become more real to me. My
teachers were mostly White and my fellow students were diverse but mostly Black at the first school
I attended. I would soon learn about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Underground Railroad and
Sojourner Truth during Black History Month. Two years later, I would better understand that Dr.
King was a soldier in the army for racial justice and the Underground Railroad was a metaphor for
the journey of enslaved Africans who escaped their slave-oppressors like runaway trains toward
freedom. By middle school, my family moved to a more integrated town in New York State where
the number of my White classmates decreased each academic year. (I didn’t learn about “white
flight” until college.) The diversity of my teachers increased but remained mostly White. I thought
little of it, but did think about race often in my honors courses in high school. It was in those
classrooms that I shared the most racially diverse academic experiences which included Black,
Latino, Asian, and White classmates. However, most of my high school peers were Black and
Brown (or Latino) students who did not share as many classes with White counterparts in our
school’s racially stratified academic tracking system.
I attended a very large public university where the Black population was less than ten percent.
Latinos and Asian Americans also represented a small percentage of the population. Native
Americans were almost invisible. The university was historically and predominantly white in its
enrollment and employment. It was in that setting that I experienced the most direct interpersonal
and institutional racism. Freshman year, my relationships with White roommates quickly
deteriorated as I felt racially isolated by them and witnessed their blatant ignorance and tokenism
toward me. When I became a leader on campus, I would learn more about the majority disdain and
stereotypes held toward minority groups as well as the structural disadvantages toward students of
color as individuals and members of cultural clubs and organizations on campus. I would also
become civically engaged by participating in grass roots student resistance to some of these
concerns, dedicating myself to community service and learning about the local community, and at
times engaged in student protests that countered the status quo. Yet, I was also able to develop some
cross-racial friendships and associations with my peers and university professionals. These
experiences helped me to consider issues of race and racism as complex formulations to negotiate
and struggle against, while developing optimism for positive cross-racial relationships and social
change.
These considerations informed my interests as a professional in the field of Higher
Education. I developed strong passions for work in critical multiculturalism and diversity education,
as well as access and retention projects. These works deepened my interest in the social construction
of race and social justice through education as I pursued the Cultural Foundations of Education
doctoral program. However, I also recognized that my collegiate experiences with race and the
academic theories I was exposed to were somewhat different from contemporary ideologies and
experiences of the millennial college generation. These students were more likely to have heard and
learned about concepts like “diversity” and “multiculturalism” than I was in my secondary and
college years. Further, issues related to these concepts seemed to be more openly engaged in
university curricula today; and, from my professional observations and discussions I held with
colleagues from various campuses, cultural organizations seemed to be more generally supported.
Therefore, I wanted to understand more about how this generation of college students interpreted
race. How did these students come to understand race? What contributed to this understanding?
How did students think about race even as they matriculated to college? This dissertation presents
my academic inquiry and discovery on the topic.
What do you think about race?
“It’s never really been a factor. I’ve never really thought anything of it, to be honest with you, I
guess. I don’t, like I guess, I don’t know about anything about race. I never really sat down and
asked myself that question. It’s not an issue for me, to be honest with you. Um, I guess, I don’t
know, I don’t really know how to describe it...”
- Tom, a first-year white student in the Pre-First Program
It may sound as though Tom does not have a concept of race. Rather, he has a certain concept of race that
allows him to manage his privileged position in a racist society. The discourse of colorblindness is visible
in his talk.
“Race” disrupts. Many high school students, all of whom live lives shaped by race, give it limited
reflection and critique when they transition from high school to college (Pascarella, Edison, Nora, Hagedorn,
& Terenzini, 1996). This ethnographic study explores how students make meaning of “race” as they
transition from high school to Findings University, the pseudonym for a large, diverse, predominantly white,
private university in the northeast. This project examines the conceptions of “race” held by 25 students who
identify broadly with one or more of these historically recognized race categories in the U.S.--white,
Asian/Pacific Islander, Hispanic, and African American/black. Conceptions about race can include identity,
social relations, meaning, history, and origin. The primary focus of this work does not probe the particular
racial category informants employ to identify themselves. That is, I am not primarily interested in how
students identify racially and their reasons for doing so as a major focus of this study. I am, however,
interested in how the students’ racial identification contributes to the social location from which they speak.
This project has broader objectives than the study of students’ racial identity. It highlights the vocabulary
they use, the discourses that animate their talk, the examples they provide, the issues they raise—in other
words, the meanings they make about race among and between themselves--to understand its impact in
society from their perspectives. These meanings include the ways that informants discuss their identities as
well as race itself. I examine how informants’ comprehension of race frames their understanding of the
social world and shapes their personal experiences.
Through participant observation, in-depth interviews, and focus groups, this project collected data
in two phases: 1. During the students’ pre-collegiate summer experience- the Pre-First program at Findings,
I conducted interviews as well as observations of students in their residence hall. 2. During their junior year
I facilitated 3 focus groups of 5-7 students each. These approaches enabled me to explore students’
interpretations of race between their first and junior years of college. This usually hidden interpretive process
will offer educators critical insights for curriculum development and foundational approaches to racial
justice education. Additionally, findings may be used to enhance opportunities for positive cross-racial
experiences.
I designed my study to engage in participant observation, in-depth interviewing, and focus groups
of a particular cohort of incoming students to the university, asking:
1. What ideas about race do students bring with them to university campuses? How did they
develop these ideas? How do they go about confirming or questioning them?
2. How do students negotiate the racial diversity of their collegiate experience with home
and past?
3. How do language and ideas from campus programs emerge in the students’ voices? What
kinds of collegiate experiences and environments do students find significant?
4. If students come to think of race as a social construction, what do they begin to do with it?
Do they still speak of “race” as something “real” or do they begin to say that there is no
such thing or that it does not exist? How do they attempt to construct race for themselves?
How do they describe the real consequences of racism?
Chapter 3 of this document explains my methodology in detail.
CONTEXTS:
National Contexts:
In the United States, “race” is one of the most engaging and contested topics. While diversity has
become a buzz word in several arenas, including higher education, race remains a significant element in the
negotiation of collective identities and other social relations. One notion of “race” is the essentialist notion
that people are born with a fixed identity, even a fixed race identity; and the essence of that identity is shared
with every person of that same race (Omi & Winant, 1994). For example, an essentialist could argue that
all Black people have or do X; and not to have or do X would mean that a person is not Black. Biological
essentialism can be found in the origins of the race concept, generally referred to as “scientific racism”
(Malik, 1996). However, modern biological research has demonstrated the genetic variability within the
subgroups of human beings we call races, with most of the variation found within groups and only about 2
percent variation between the major races (Graves, 2004). This fact has strengthened the anthropological
stance that race is a social construction, something humanly constructed. However, essentialist notions of
this construction may still emerge if races of people are thought to involve some common essence of being
that other races do not hold. Social essentialism, focused on the notion of an essence of behavior, can be
constructed. A more critical understanding of race highlights the concept as a
“complex of social meanings constantly being transformed by political struggle” (Omi & Winant, 1994).
This study illuminates the meanings students make about race and how these meanings are transformed in
the college arena. The struggles and experiences that inform and transform students’ interpretations of race
are revealed.
This study reinforces research that demonstrates a “color blind” society and examines the persistent
formulations of racism in contemporary America. Students negotiate the ongoing assimilation and
acculturation of dominant racial discourses in their everyday lives. They discuss how family, schooling, and
popular culture provide platforms for various expressions of white supremacy and racism. These
expressions, though clearly providing evidence, are not understood by students—Whites or people of color-
- as white supremacist but more ambiguously presented or understood as benign stories and articulations.
Yet, they shape and reinforce the racialized experiences of students on university campuses across the nation.
Higher Education Contexts:
Higher education in the United States began with two purposes in mind: to educate civic leaders and
provide training for clergy. Hence, the earliest colleges and universities -- which we now regard as leaders
in higher education -- were established with a focus on the most privileged classes of the U.S. American
citizenry (Lucas, 1994). White people have continued to benefit from institutional and social arrangements
in all arenas of U.S. American society where litigation, like Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, supported notions
and formations of race that denied educational and other opportunities to non-whites.
While the 1896 legal affirmation of “separate but equal” discourse was overturned in 1954 by Brown v.
Board of Education, Jim Crow segregation validated the status quo (Baker, 1998). Therefore, by 1960 the
higher educational landscape was still largely a white populated enterprise with very small numbers of the
racialized “other” on campuses, except for historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) which
began forming in the mid-1800s (Brown, Donahoo, Bertrand, 2001). Significant gains in the diversity of
American college and university campuses were not realized until the Civil Rights Movement. Some
estimate that only about four thousand Black students attended predominantly white universities in the
northern region of the U.S. in 1954, while approximately twenty thousand Black students attended the
HBCUs (Clotfelter, 2004). The proportion of Black students enrolled in full-time undergraduate studies
rose steadily from 3.9 percent in 1954 to 10.7 percent in 1998 (Clotfelter, 2004, p.53).
The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s resulted in greater access for African American
and other racial and ethnic minorities to post-secondary education (Seidman, 2005), allowing for more racial
diversity at predominantly white institutions. The most recent available statistical reports show that
minorities (Black, Hispanic, Asian/Pacific Islander, and American Indian/Alaskan Native) compose 30.9
percent of students enrolled in degree-granting institutions (“Digest of Education Statistics,”
2007) in contrast to 15.4 percent in 1976. Federal policy has been particularly instrumental in this growth.
The Higher Education Act and other amendments of the late 1960’s included the development of federal
TRIO (just three in the beginning) programs that assist in providing access and support to “disadvantaged”
students. Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965 delineates all the legislative requirements for these
programs. However, the first of the federal TRIO programs, Upward Bound, which prepares low income
and first generation students for college, emerged from the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964. Since then
the Student Support Services, Educational Opportunity Centers, Ronald E. McNair PostBaccalaureate
Program, and other programs were developed to increase access and participation in postsecondary
education. TRIO programs provide competitive grants to institutions that demonstrate a need and
commitment to the program goals in their applications. Two programs at Findings University—the Student
Support Services and Higher Educational Opportunity Program—are TRIO initiatives. However, beyond
federally funded initiatives, predominantly white colleges and universities have employed a number of
localized recruitment strategies to diversify their student populations as well. The quality of efforts will
vary among institutions as does their interest in and understanding of diversity. Findings University has
been nationally recognized for its diversity initiatives and concern. Utilizing more of its own resources and
strategies than state and federal governments provide, Findings has increased its percentage of
underrepresented students in recent years. Additionally, the theme of diversity is promoted and engaged in
many of the university’s initiatives and some of its curricula. “Pre-First” is one of those
initiatives.
Pre-First is a six-week pre-freshman program that provides participants the “opportunity to become
familiar with the academic, social and cultural life at “Findings University” before getting caught up in the
fast pace of the fall semester” (program website). Participating students take 7-10 credits, have an advisor,
live on campus in a residence hall, and engage in co-curricular activities designed by the program staff.
There are three types of students in the Pre-First program—Higher Educational Opportunity Program
(HEOP) participants, Student Supportive Services Program (SSS) participants, and “regular admits” who
choose to attend Pre-First. The HEOP is a program for New York State residents who would have met
certain eligibility requirements, including being “initially inadmissible to the degree program for which they
applied” and who have been economically disadvantaged. Participants must attend Pre-First. Similarly,
SSS has income guidelines that suggest assisting students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds
and first-generation college experience as a priority. However, while SSS students would have demonstrated
need for academic services, they have met all academic requirements for regular admission to the university.
SSS is a federal program and participants at this university must attend PreFirst. Both programs (HEOP and
SSS) respond to the reality of educational inequalities in the pre-college experience. Pre-First was of
particular interest to this researcher because of the mix of students that would be present- racially,
economically, academically, and regionally diverse.
The Pre-First pre-freshman summer program requires TRIO students’ participation and welcomes
“regularly admitted” students to attend also. During the six-week Pre-First summer program, student
enrollment is about two-thirds students of color (underrepresented students or statistical minorities in the
larger nationwide context) and one-third White. However, during the regular academic year (Fall and Spring
semesters), Findings University enrolls 72 percent White students and only 28 percent students of color in
its undergraduate population. Hence, the Pre-First program presents an unusual Findings student
composition. In an effort to prepare all participating students for the demographic change they will
experience in the Fall semester, the statistical reality of Findings as a predominantly white institution is
discussed openly by Pre-First faculty and staff throughout the summer session. African American and Latino
faculty make up 10 percent of the overall faculty. At Findings University, diversity is officially recognized
as a value of the institution and the campus discourse suggests that the campus community engages and
struggles with related issues (such as race, culture, sexuality, gender, religion, etc.) on an everyday basis.
Since I conducted interviews and focus groups with those students whom I observed and interviewed in the
Pre-First program during their junior year, these elements of the university were especially inviting for my
research project.
THE RESEARCH:
Phase I
Due to my interest in a process of meaning making over time, I collected data at two separate
intervals. Over the course of six weeks in the 2005 Pre-First program, I conducted participant observation
in the main lounge of the Pre-First program’s residence hall and held 25 in depth interviews, to allow for
more complete data than interviewing would provide (Becker & Geer, 1967). Participant observation helped
me to contextualize the data collected in the interviews as I observed some of the interactions in the common
space shared by Pre-First students. From my observations, I chose individuals who seemed significant to
talk to (interview) and after each interview, continued in similar purposive sampling (Cuadraz & Uttal,
1999).
Emerging Themes from this phase:
1. Students talked about race as groupings of people based on skin color and reflected
some confusion about what it means. Some students, who were exposed to discussions
about race in a seminar course, expressed some ambivalence about its reality. Yet they
described racialization in high school until their first summer as Pre-First college
students.
2. Students spoke about racial diversity at the university as both an attractive quality and
one that created some apprehension. While some informants, Whites and students of
color, discussed being attracted to Findings University for its diversity, they also
discussed the challenges presented by the need to find a racial niche and not be confined
by one.
3. Some students described their parents’ racial ideology as an “old” view that students
saw as incorrect, outdated, or somehow limited in its contemporary application. All of
the parental views that were described as “racist” involved the parents’ response to a real
or hypothetical friendship or dating relationship.
4. Some White students and students of color used colorblind styles in their language to
explain racism or describe racists, seeing racism and those who perpetuated it only in
extreme terms, “like the Ku Klux Klan.”
5. The discourse of individualism trumped race. This meant that, in the end, students
wanted to feel as though race was not a burden to them. A strong sense of individuality
was expressed by each of the students. They did not want to see race as having the
potential to hinder their own aspirations or experiences. For students of color, race should
not matter. For White students, race did not matter. They were not interested in accepting
any responsibility for race or racism.
These themes were interrelated. For example, some students’ desire to explore intimate relationships
with a racial other was both tied to their curiosity about diversity and their need to explore individual
independence, pulling away from parental ideologies. They reflected the students’ perspectives expressed
in the interviews I conducted in phase I (participant observation and individual interview phase) of this
project. These themes were analyzed and considered with the focus group data from phase II of the research.
Phase II
In the Spring and Fall 2008 semesters, I conducted the second phase of data collection which
utilized focus groups with some of the same informants from the first phase, at the end of their third year in
college. Focus groups are important for examining how diverse students produce and reproduce race when
they are together, and make gestures in speech about race as an object they reconstruct in their local
environment. I constructed focus groups that were racially diverse in composition, without tokenizing
participants of color, to promote a robust discussion to get at (1) shared vocabularies among the students;
(2) points of connection and separation and how they negotiate the differences; and (3) how these students
negotiate their conceptions of race as a central theme of conversation from their diverse racial locations and
perspectives. I obtained their informed consent and protected the identity of each participant with
pseudonyms. The focus groups were tape recorded and transcribed. Both strategies (interviews and focus
groups) allowed me to follow up with emerging themes from the data in the first phase of the research.
The second, third, and fourth research questions provided the particular focus of this phase of the research.
Overview of the Dissertation
Chapters 1, 2, and 3 introduce this dissertation and set the foundation on which the data rest. This
dissertation draws on literature in critical theory, critical race theories, critical whiteness studies, and race
and racism. After a review of the relevant literature, I outline my research methods and reflect on my role
as the researcher. Then I offer three data chapters that present my findings from the individual interviews
and focus groups I conducted at Findings University.
Chapters 4, 5, and 6 of this dissertation present the rich data I collected and the analyses I made that
tell the story of students who entered college with particular ideas about race. In Chapter 4, Colorblind
Entrapments, I demonstrate how my informants reflect a particular frame of colorblind discourse that
minimizes race and racism as a societal ill. These students also wrestle with postmodern identity
constructions and attempt to negotiate their family’s racial discursive legacy, while denying their own
strivings with race and racism. Chapter 5, Talking Race, Racing Talk, explores the mechanics, nuances, and
challenges of race talk among and between groups of students. Relying on focus group data, this chapter
demonstrates persistent racist ideologies, denial of such ideologies and behavior especially among White
students, and how discourses are used to maintain communities of race group insiders, while excluding
others. White students engage methods of denial while students of color employ talk that generates
interrogation of identity and the social order. Finally, I examine the changes in students’ conceptions of
race, their complex understanding of race identity, and the experiences that shaped their understanding of
racism after two to three years in a diverse college environment in Race: Shifts, Stays, and Drifts (Chapter
6). I demonstrate how students’ core ideas about race stayed the same from their first summer in college
(phase I) to the junior and senior years (phase II). Students of color tended to minimize race less than they
did years before as a result of their campus experiences, while White students demonstrated more aggressive
denials. Most students were faced with significant identity constructions and interrogation of their group
identity race labels. Yet, White students in the focus group disengaged from interrogating or considering
the meaning of their identities in deeper ways.
The final chapter (7) summarizes the dissertation as a project that reveals students’ negotiation of
colorblind discourse and constructions of identity and racial meaning. This chapter underscores the critical
conclusion that students were still unable to talk about power explicitly, even as students of color made
references to power dynamics in their interpersonal relationships and experiences cross-racially.
Further, the implications of this study shatter notions of great progress in anti-racist education in diverse
environments and expose the impotence of higher education in this area. Students are making meaning and
maintaining the meanings they already have when they matriculate to college. Racial justice education
requires a clear curriculum that does not take colorblind practice in its pedagogy and that challenges all
learners to do the hard work of seeing racial structures of injustice in order to develop a new order of equality.
CHAPTER 2:
LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter presents the collection of literature that provided a foundation of scholarship to
frame my dissertation work. This literature review covers four main topic areas: race and racism; critical
race theories, colorblindness and microaggressions; college student development, adjustment and identity;
and critical whiteness studies. Race and racism are two core concepts of my research. Students often
conflate race and racism, or discuss their experiences with racism in order to interpret race. Recent
scholarship on this topic discredits scientific racism and examines race as a construction to be debunked
(Graves, 2004; Katayama, 2002; Olson, 2002; Omi, 2001 ). Hence, this dissertation approaches the
concept of race from a constructivist perspective. From this foundational viewpoint, it was important to
examine various race theories that provide critical insight to the operational manifestations and
consequences of race as a construction. Critical race scholarship, including the specific body of work
called Critical Race Theory, provides a useful lens through which colorblind discourses and other
contemporary racial manifestations can be analyzed.
I chose to reference college student development literature which provides context for the
college stage of life where my informants find themselves. This literature, which explores theories related
to students’ adjustment to college and their development as individuals and groups in that context, helped
me to appropriately understand the thoughts and experiences of my informants over time, with specific
interest in diversity related topics and concerns. Here my focus was on psychosocial development in
terms of the students’ connection with the university, rather than internal or strictly psychological
development. An example of this approach is to explore how students described their racial identities as
they relate to students’ interpretation of race and racial or ethnic community membership, while not
relying on racial identity development literature and models. Such an approach does not center on the
students’ thinking about their own identity or focus on their psychological development in terms of
identity. My interest is not so much about students looking within but how they interpret and describe
looking out toward their communities and society. Hence, the scholarship I engage for the exploration of
identity is not focused on racial identity development, but rather the literature that frames how identity
itself can be understood or approached. For this reason and the critical observation that whiteness
dominates the institutional context of a predominantly white institution, I examined Critical Whiteness
Studies to help make the context as well as the actors in that context more visible in my analyses. The
selected literature reviewed for this and all the topics aim to explore the relationship of individuals to
society, to examine the prospect of student interpretations.
Although I do not present an exhaustive review of the literature for these broad areas of
scholarship, I present a concise review of the most important literature in terms of their influence on my
dissertation research and writing. The literature presented here should be read as selections from the
larger scholarship. Much like the very broad topic of race, which this dissertation is about, there are
narrower threads that can be explored and focused on. That is the approach of this literature review.
Throughout the dissertation, other literature is engaged that compliments the backdrop offered in this
review or refers to it
Race and Racism
Race. It has been defined in numerous ways by social theorists, educators, philosophers,
sociologists, anthropologists and others. The great American sociologist and first African American to
receive a doctoral degree from Harvard University, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1995), described
race as a “vast family of human beings, generally of common blood and language, always of common
history, traditions and impulses, who are both voluntarily and involuntarily striving together for the
accomplishment of certain more or less vividly conceived ideals of life” in his essay “Conservation of the
Races” over one hundred years ago (p. 21). Since then, race has been described in other ways that have
suggested race is a biological fact. However, many scholars and scientists alike have shattered the
biological “fact” of race as myth (Graves, 2005). Human genetic variation is not clustered in any
significant way for us to agree to the common non/sense of race. Race is a social construct and so is
racism. Yet both constructs have material consequences in the lives of raced people. Omi and Winant’s
(1994) description of race as “a concept which signifies and symbolizes social conflicts and interests by
referring to different types of human bodies” is central to this dissertation (p. 55). This definition
acknowledges the phenotypes that society uses to symbolize and embody the social and historical
processes that define race. This definition neither essentializes race nor minimizes its social significance
as a simple “illusion.” Rather, Omi and Winant emphasize the social and historical processes that create,
inhabit, transform, and destroy racial categories. This is a project they call racial formation which is
linked to the organization and order of society. A racial project is simultaneously about racial dynamics
and the redistribution of resources.
Racial formation is both a macro-level and micro-level social process. At the macro-level, racial
formation is manifested in legislation, governmental activities, and other dimensions of the social
structure. At the micro-level, racial formation is people’s “common sense” about race or their application
of various discourses that the structure helps to provide about different human bodies and groups of
people. Racial discourse highlights where people’s understanding of race comes from. Biklen (1995)
describes discourses as “institutional ways of understanding relationships, activities, and meanings that
emerge through language” and regulates people’s framework of truth (p.81). Discourses determine what
people can see and how they see it because discourses are concerned with meaning. To describe anything
as an action is to engage in interpretation (Bavelas, 1994). People are able to interpret racial meanings
because of the notions provided by the racialized social structure that conditions them. There is a critical
and active link between the customs, laws, and impositions of the social structure and the conception of
race that people develop. People are racialized. Races are the results of the racialization process. The
racial classification of people or the racializing of people is a political act (Bonilla-Silva, 1996). “Indians”
as savages, Europeans as “civilized,” “nigger,” “mulatto,” and “Negro” are all social inventions for
political purposes (Allen, 1994; Berkhoffer, 1978; Graves, 2005; Marabel, 2003; Roediger, 1991).
Likewise, the current terms utilized for identification through box checking on the U.S. census are
politically driven (Baker, 2004; Hodgkinson, 1998).
Racism has been defined by social scientists and other theorists and scholars in ways that come
up short (Bonilla-Silva, 1996). For the past fifty to sixty years, most scholarship on the topic of racism
has defined the concept in dogmatic and ideological terms. One of the earliest definitions of racism is “the
dogma that one ethnic group is condemned by nature to congenital inferiority and another group is
destined to congenital superiority” (Benedict, 1945, p. 87). Graves (2005) outlines five pillars of racism or
racist thought: (1) that biological races exist in the human species; (2) races have genetic differences that
determine their intelligence; (3) races have genetically determined differences that produce unique
diseases and cause them to die at different rates; (4) races have genetically determined sexual appetites
and reproductive capacities; and (5) races have genetically determined differences in athletic and musical
ability (p. xxx). Yet Bonilla-Silva challenges definitions of racism that focus on “beliefs,” “dogma,” and
ideology. He asserts that racism must be understood as a structural concept, within “racialized social
systems” (Bonilla-Silva, 1996, p. 469). Racialized social systems place people in hierarchical race
categories that positions them as either superordinate or subordinate in the system. These classifications
“partially organize and limit actor’s life chances” which develops racial “practices of opposition” (Bonilla-
Silva, 1996, p. 472). Whether these racial interactions are overt, covert, or inert, they produce economic,
social, political and discursive practices that characterizes “us” versus “them.” With the structure as a
foundation, a racial ideology develops that serves as an “organizational map” to direct the actions of racial
actors in the society (Bonilla-Silva, 1996, p.474). This inevitably leads to “racial contestation” or strife
between the races.
Andersen (2001) has suggested that power and domination are central factors to our
comprehension of race relations and that analyses that focus only on ethnicity “runs the risk of eclipsing
the ongoing power differences that define groups’ experiences in the United States” (p.196). Hence, I
utilize a definition of racism found in the work of William Julius Wilson (1973) which reflects racial
contestation within the social structure. Wilson explains racism as “a principle of social domination in
which a group that is seen as inferior or different because of presumed biological or cultural
characteristics is oppressed, controlled, and exploited—socially, economically, culturally, politically,
psychologically—by a dominant group” (as quoted by Mubiru, 2008, p. 108). This definition
acknowledges structure, discourse, a system of unequal power, and various levels of society and aspects of
existence. While other scholars discuss various types of racism and widening conceptions like “white
racism” and “reverse racism” (Blauner, 2006), the definition offered by Wilson offers a sober
understanding of the dynamics of racial structure and discourse that address all actors in the racialized
social system and further clarifies the motives and results of other terms that have emerged out of racial
contestation. One such term, that I use periodically in this dissertation, is white supremacy. I use this term
almost interchangeably with “racism,” as white supremacy is how racism is manifested in the United
States. Ansley (1997) describes white supremacy as “a political, economic, and cultural system in which
whites overwhelmingly control power and material resources, conscious and unconscious ideas of white
superiority and entitlement are widespread, and relations of white dominance and nonwhite subordination
are daily reenacted across a broad array of institutions and social settings” (p. 592). Further, white
supremacy as the manifested reality of racial dominance in the United States makes “reverse racism” an
impossibility and an unsound proposal when non-White people do not have power as racial/ethnic groups
to control resources and do not have institutional dominance in this society.
Critical Race Theories, Colorblindness, and Microaggressions
This study draws on the critical race theorists’ theme of race as a “social and political construct”
(Guinier and Torres, 2002) using Critical Race Theory and other theories and principles that expose race.
Critical Race Theory (CRT) views race as both a product of social thought and relations; and a product of
the dominant society’s endeavors to manipulate resources (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001). Hence, though
socially constructed, race has material or real social consequences that shape the experiences of different
groups of people within the societal structure. Another tenet of CRT proposes that racism is an ordinary part
of social life and experienced everyday by most people of color in the United States.
Critical Race Theory emerged in the late 1960’s or early 1970’s, largely led by lawyers, law scholars,
and activists who were concerned about the increasing ideological shift in how race and racism were
addressed by society and in particular, the law. Critical Race Theory started in the community of legal
scholars (of color) to account for the role that racism plays in American law and the effort to eliminate racism
and all form of oppression (Matsuda, 1991). As a scholarly movement, CRT draws on diverse traditions
such as Marxism, the Black power movement, radical feminism, post-structuralism and postmodernism. It
attempts to comprise an intellectual and political practice that is both “a left intervention into race discourse
and a race intervention into left discourse” (Crenshaw et al., 1995, p.xix). CRT has extended its influence
and appropriations into fields like history, sociology and education, where it challenges normative texts,
traditional methods, and pedagogical practice while underscoring race and racism in research (Ladson-
Billings & Tate, 1995; Matsuda, Lawrence, Delgado, & Crenshaw, 1993; Solorzano, Ceja, & Yosso, 2000).
Specifically, Ladson-Billings (2009) calls our attention to how race and racism pervades the history of U.S.
American education and persists in management and methods of schooling today. CRT helps educators to
examine issues in education like assessment, desegregation, school funding, and other policies.
The basic tenets of Critical Race Theory include: (a) racism as an ordinary part of U.S. American
life; (b) interest convergence describes behavior of the majority group to tolerate racial justice when it meets
their interests as well; (c) races are social inventions, derived from social thought and relations; (d)
differential racialization describes the ways that different minority groups are racialized in society based on
current needs of the dominant group (such as labor market needs); (e) the history and experience of people
of color with racism gives them a unique voice to share knowledge (tell stories) that their White counterparts
could not; (f) anti-essentialism and intersectionality capture the condition of individuals having multiple
identities that may be overlapping and conflicting (Delgado & Stefanovic, 2001). CRT is concerned with
the law’s role in social domination and illuminates “unconscious racism” or colorblind ideology that
maintains the subordination of non-White people in our society (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001; Crenshaw,
Gotanda, Peller, & Thomas, 1995).
The critical race theory frame is an important analytical tool to bring students’ interpretations of race
to the fore, highlighting the dominant racial ideology’s impact on all students. Although CRT focuses on
the operation of race and racism at the macro levels of society, its utility for this project is in its ability to
illuminate students’ ability or resistance to place themselves within the larger nexus of power relations in
society. One of the ways race and racism are maintained and reproduced at the macro and micro levels is
through the perpetuation of ideology that safeguards their interests.
I draw on other theorists and scholars, who are not CRT, to further outline how race and racism
work in contemporary society. These selected scholars include Bonilla-Silva (2003), Hall (1996), Moya
(2000), and others who contribute significantly to analysis I conduct in this study. In Racism Without
Racists, Bonilla-Silva, a sociologist who studies race, demonstrates how color-blind ideology is reflected in
the language of Whites in particular. Using a narrative survey, Bonilla-Silva examines ideology, Whites’
racial ideology, and how it is “produced and reproduced in communicative interaction” (p.11). Additionally,
the author highlights the subtle linguistic styles of this ideology that color-blind users employ within today’s
normative climate. This work provides useful conceptual tools for my own project, which interrogates
“gestures” through communication as well. Bonilla-Silva sets out four principal concepts or central frames
that set interpretive paths for the structure of color-blind racism. They are abstract liberalism, naturalization,
cultural racism, and minimization of racism. Bonilla-Silva’s summary of each is outlined below:
1. “The frame of abstract liberalism involves using ideas associated with political
liberalism (e.g. “equal opportunity,” the idea that force should not be used to
achieve social policy) and economic liberalism (e.g. choice, individualism) in an
abstract manner to explain racial matters.” So when a student says “You just can’t
force people to live together” in response to questions about inequality in housing,
abstract liberalism is at work. Liberal language is used to mask the stance, not to
oppose the racism of today.
2. “Naturalization is a frame that allows Whites to explain away racial phenomena by
suggesting they are natural occurrences” (p.28). We see this when a student might
say that “it’s normal for a manager to hire someone that looks like him.” Such
statements are intended to rationalize racist behavior as normal, expected behavior
for everyone.
3. “Cultural racism is a frame that relies on culturally based arguments such as ‘Mexicans do not put
much emphasis on education’ or ‘Blacks have too many babies’ to explain the standing of minorities
in society” (p. 28). Cultural racism employs old biological racist ideologies to denigrate culture and
justify racial status quo.
4. “Minimization of racism is a frame that suggests discrimination is no longer a
central factor affecting minorities’ life chances (‘It’s better now than in the past’ or
‘There is discrimination, but there are plenty of jobs out there.’)” (p.29). People using
this frame would accuse people of color of being too sensitive and would only see
the most extreme cases of discrimination as racism.
These central frames of color-blind ideology wrap together to form a wall that shields Whites from
the reality of race and racism in the United States. Drawing from Bourdieu, Bonilla-Silva discusses the
“white habitus” created by this wall that maintains an obscured view of race. Bonilla-Silva points out that
this wall is both “impregnable” and elastic (p.211). The elasticity of the wall guides its impregnability,
allowing users to hold on to the central frames in a variety of ways, including the use of exceptions rather
than absolutes, and both crude and gentle stylistic attacks. Rather than reproducing a racial stereotype in
absolutes, color-blind frame users may say that “Not all Blacks are dangerous, but most are.” To make an
even more crude statement, Bonilla-Silva observes the ‘I am not prejudiced’ preface used to temper a
statement’s malice. Other researchers like Garrett A. Duncan (2002) explicate “liberal ideological
underpinnings” of care or “false empathy” (Delgado, 1996) applied by the more privileged toward
marginalized populations in research methodology and educational service. Duncan notes the “pathology
language” that emerges in educational research, based on racialized education discourses that normalize
rhetoric of Black students (young people of color) as academically and socially deficient.
Bonilla-Silva’s study also examines the impact of colorblind ideology on Black people. He
concludes that Blacks generally oppose colorblind ideology. But it is more complicated than that. On the
one hand, they support affirmative action and view discrimination as a central factor that affects their quality
of life. On the other hand, they are indirectly affected by color-blindness. Blacks sometime invoke abstract
liberalism to explain some racial phenomena and make limited use of the rhetorical style. However, their
use of style is not to hide racism but to make distinctions between their perceptions of the way things are
and the way they should be. For example, Blacks and Whites might both say “you can’t force people to
live together in the same neighborhood.” However, the meanings each group makes are different. Blacks
may go on to say “when we move in, Whites move out,” explaining that discrimination still exists and needs
to be overcome. Bonilla-Silva also clearly points out that color-blindness is the dominant racial ideology of
U.S. American society and hence the impact of its transmission to the subjugated is reflected.
Color-blind ideology insists on treating all persons “equally” without regard to their race by
seeking to explain racial inequality in non-racial terms (Bonilla-Sylva, 2006). Thus, color-blindness as an
ideology ignores the history, consequences, and persistence of racism in contemporary U.S. American
society. Gallagher (2003) describes color-blind ideology as a race neutral perspective that “removes from
personal thought and public discussion any taint or suggestion of white supremacy or white guilt, while
legitimating the existing social, political and economic arrangements which privilege whites” (p. 1). For
example, a 1997 Kaiser Family Poll found that 64% of Whites did not believe that White Americans
benefited from past and present discriminations against African Americans. White privilege is maintained
by negating racial inequality while converting color to an expression of style or culture for consumption.
Guinier and Torres (2002) outline three rules that govern the colorblind world. First, colorblind
ideology recognizes race as all about skin color, a “false construction of phenotype.” Second, recognizing
race is viewed as an inability to let go of racism. Third, color-blindness does not connect racism to power
and privilege within the structure of society; and relegates it to individuals who are not so nice to others. In
other words, color-blind ideology ignores the institutional power and regime of power in our society and the
material consequences of the construct of race. Further, such ideology could be the result of
“interest convergence” (Derrick Bell) because people tend to believe what is beneficial to them to believe.
For elite Whites, color-blindness benefits them materially. For subjugated people, like working class Blacks,
color-blindness may benefit them psychically. Yet research has shown that Whites and Blacks endorse
colorblind racial ideology to varying extents (Judd, Park, Ryan, Brauer, & Kraus, 1995; Ryan, Hunt, Weible,
Peterson, & Casas, 2007). The Ryan, Hunt, et al. studies showed that participants, who were members of a
diversity program, showed stronger support for multicultural ideology over colorblindness than participants
not involved. However, Blacks had a stronger tendency to endorse multiculturalism, while Whites had a
stronger tendency toward believing colorblindness would improve intergroup relations. Still, these beliefs
do not necessarily translate into anti-discriminatory behaviors or intergroup togetherness.
In White-Washing Race (2003), the authors outline three tenets of colorblind ideology that explain a
rationale for those who adhere to it: (1) the Civil Rights Movement was successful and Whites
wholeheartedly accept the principles reflected in Civil Rights law; (2) vestiges of racial inequality, if there
are any, only persist because Blacks have failed to take advantage of the opportunities afforded them as a
result of Civil Rights; and (3) the United States is rapidly becoming a colorblind society and therefore has
little need for “color-conscious” policies like affirmative action. These authors point out that while
colorblindness was championed by liberals in the 1960’s to oppose Jim Crow, today it is used by Whites to
delude themselves and the entire society that race has become insignificant and there is no hierarchy of
power along race lines to examine. “It is power that confirms and normalizes the particular perspective of
White Americans (p. 64).” In a society dominated by colorblind ideology, some people even claim that our
society has encouraged black hatred (rather than white racism) and such an investment in racism has
increased the financial earning of Blacks while victimizing Whites, who have been deemed far less
prejudice. Such arguments have been made by authors (journalists and scholars) like Jared Taylor (1992),
Charles Sykes (1992), and Dinesh D’Souza (1995) who have contributed to the national discourse and
interpretation of our race situation in the United States. Such claims are aided by colorblind discourses that
dismiss and perpetuate the subtle operations of present day racism.
Another subtle form of racism is microaggressions. Microaggressions underscore one of CRT’s
tenets that racism is pervasive and an “ordinary” part of life in the United States and demonstrate one of the
ways racism is masked within a “colorblind” society. Racial microaggressions are defined as “subtle,
stunning, often automatic, and non-verbal exchanges which are ‘put downs’ of Blacks” (Pierce, Carew,
Pierce-Gonzalez, & Willis, 1978, p. 66). They stem from unconscious attitudes of white superiority that
reinforce Black subjugation. Microaggressions often escape examination because they are unconscious,
subtle and pervasive (Delgado & Stefancic, 1992; Pierce, 1974). Solorzano (1997) examined racial
microaggressions in education, especially in education scholarship and media that re/produces stereotypes
about students of color. He called for the use of CRT, and an understanding of microaggressions specifically,
in teacher education programs as a framework to challenge deficiency theories and examine institutional,
macro and micro, conscious and unconscious forms of racism. Solorzano and his colleagues (2000)
demonstrated how microaggressions impact African American students’ academic and social life on a
predominately White campus (PWC). African American students in that study described being made to feel
“invisible” in the classroom when their thoughts were not validated by professors or their peers, being shut
out or reluctantly invited to study groups, subjected to low expectations from professors, being watched as
they entered various social and academic spaces, and the additional administrative hoops they were expected
to jump through to coordinate activities that their White peers were not obligated to do.
The cumulative affect on these students is one of despondency and exhaustion.
Although many studies have focused on the African American experience with racism, other studies
have been developed to unearth the impact of racism on Asian American and Chicana/o people (Lee, 2003).
Sue and his colleagues (2007) defined racial microaggressions as “brief and commonplace daily verbal,
behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile,
derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults toward people of color” (p. 271).
Racism as endemic to American society and manifested through aversive forms is difficult to quantify
(Alvarez, Juang & Liang, 2006; Sellers & Shelton, 2003).
College Student Development, Adjustment and Identity
Race has been an important theme in the broad scholarship about college students. Whether such
scholarship is about the retention of students of color (Seidman, 2005) or student experiences on
predominantly White campuses and cross-racial attitudes (Aguirre & Martinez, 1993; Alvarez, 2002; Helms,
1994), there have been robust discussions that have sought to capture the varied interpretations,
categorizations, approaches, and nuances to race in higher education (Buenavista & Jayakumar, 2009;
Echols, Hwang, & Nobles, 2002; Harper, 2009; Kuh, 2005; Museus, 2008, 2009, 2010; Villalpando, 2002;
Yosso, Parker, Solorzano, & Lynn, 2004;). Other race themed scholarship in higher education has focused
on identity development among students from various racial/ethnic groups. Another important empirical
project, conducted by Cowan (2005), examined the relationships and interactions of students across race and
analyzed the number of inter/intra-group interactions among groups at six southern California State
University campuses where Whites were not the majority of students. Additionally, while other scholars
have investigated student perspectives about race and/or diversity and campus climates (Villalpando, 2002),
few studies have examined how students interpret race across racial categories at a predominantly White
institution.
A critical race theory framework uncovers how ideas about race develop, especially during the
college years. Previous research has demonstrated that perspectives about race are developed in early
childhood and that parents have significant influence in determining how their children will respond to issues
about race (Gollnick & Chinn, 1998). Chickering (1969) made significant contributions to college educators’
understanding of students’ development and identity adjustment as a critical process in collegiate life
through his theory which offered “seven vectors of college student development:” achieving competence,
managing emotions, becoming autonomous, establishing identity, freeing interpersonal relationships,
clarifying purposes, and developing integrity. There have been numerous studies on college student
development that cover a range of topics that highlight the various experiences and factors that contribute
to college student success (Astin, 1984, 1993; Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991; Sanchez, Marder, Berry & Ross,
1992; Terenzini & Wright, 1987) Additionally, there have been many studies that explore college student
development factors in race/ethnicity comparative ways—from faculty-student interactions (Ancis,
Sedlacek, & Mohr, 2000; Colbeck, Terenzini, Cabrera, Bjorklund, & Parente, 2001; Cole, 2006; Kim, 2006;
Lundberg & Schreiner, 2004; Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005), roommate compatibility and conflict (Fuller
& Hall, 1996; Grossman, 1997; Towles-Schwen & Fazio,
2006; Shook & Fazio, 2008; Sillars, 1980), family attachments and involvement (Armino & McEwen, 1996;
Sanchez, Mardner, Berry, & Ross, 1992; Tinto, 1993; Tierney, 1992) and student perceptions of campus
climates (Ancis, Sedlacek, & Mohr, 2000; Cabrera & Nora, 1994; McClelland & Auster, 1990), to name a
few.
Other literature highlighted the first-year experience as an important period for the success of college
students and stages of adjustment to include “separation, transition, and incorporation” (Gardner, 1986;
Tinto, 1988), and the positive impact of diversity and multiculturalism on campuses for all students (Cowan,
2005; Gurin, Dey, Hurtado, & Gurin, 2002). Students on college campuses may be exposed to three types
of diversity. Structural diversity represents the simple diversity experiences among students that help to
enhance critical thinking, degree aspirations, intergroup dialogue and relations, civic engagement and
cultural awareness (Bowen & Bok, 1998; Duster, 1993; Gurin, 1999; Tierney, 1993). Pascarella, Edison,
Nora, Hagedorn, & Terenzini (1996) further examined these implications to determine how students’
openness to diversity and challenge is influenced by background, academic and nonacademic experience,
and the environment of the institution he or she attended. They focused on firstyear students and measured
their “end-of-first-year openness” to diversity, as well as offered recommendations for institutional policies
that enhanced the institutional environment. Hence, an examination of students’ interpretations of race using
a critical race theory framework seems most appropriate as they transition from direct supervision of their
parents to more freedom, during the first year of their collegiate experience when they are subject to the new
environment of their institution. The second phase of this research project aims to capture the students’
perspectives when they have presumably been incorporated in the culture of the institution.
Kuh and Whitt (1988) defined campus culture as “persistent patterns of norms, values, practices,
beliefs, and assumptions that shape the behavior or individuals and groups in a college or university and
provide a frame of reference within which to interpret the meaning of events and actions on and off the
campus (pp. 12-13).” This definition highlights the broad complexity and significance of institutional
culture. Research has demonstrated that campus cultures of predominantly white institutions (PWIs) can be
especially challenging for students of color, who are often devalued and excluded (Gonzalez, 2003; Museus,
2007). Often students of color report being excluded from social networks that their White peers access and
thrive in (Lewis, Chesler, & Forman, 2000). To help negotiate their college experiences to find a sense of
belonging or positive psychosocial adjustment to college, students of color utilize community involvement,
family and peer support to assist them (Choi, 2002; Guiffrida, 2003; Hurtado & Carter, 1997). Asian
American and African American students at PWI’s utilize ethnic student organizations, to create campus
subcultures, to assist them in their adjustment to the larger campus community (Museus, 2008). Students of
color participation in these organizations are often a first step for campus involvement and provide
opportunities for these students to develop or enhance skills for cross-cultural interactions
(Harper & Quaye, 2007; Sutton & Kimbrough, 2001). Rather than cultural suicide through complete
detachment from their communities, these connections foster cultural integrity and help these students to
persist (Tierney, 1999; Kuh & Love, 2000). However, while student organizations help to make large
campuses feel smaller by providing more intimate experiences for students, not all of them encourage more
diverse experiences and support the implementation of diversity goals that institutions may have. Research
demonstrates that some student organizations, particularly White Greek-Letter organizations
(WGLOs), reproduce systems of dominance and exclusion (Morris, 1991; Sidanius, Van Laar, Levin, &
Sinclair, 2004; Torbenson & Parks, 2009). Many fraternity and sorority activities encourage homogeneity
and have negative impact on interactions with diverse student peers (Laird, 2005; Muir, 1991; Sidanius et
al., 2004).
Locks, Hurtado, Bowman, and Oseguera (2008) made a significant contribution to the scholarship
on student adjustment and my work in terms of understanding campus climate and student experience with
diversity. Research has shown that students have a greater sense of belonging on campus when they have
had positive interactions with diverse peers (Bollen & Hoyle, 1990; Hoffman, Richmond, Morrow, &
Salomone, 2002; Hausmann, Schofield, & Woods, 2007). Locks et al. affirmed this scholarship and further
demonstrated that these positive interactions have a stronger effect on sense of belonging than the cumulative
amount of time spent socializing (Hurtado et al., 2007). In other words, the quality of experiences with
diverse peers is more powerful than simply being present on a campus where diversity is represented
statistically. Of greater significance to my work was the finding that precollege experiences and
predispositions also have strong influence on the collegiate experience with diversity. Specifically, the
proportion of Whites in precollege environments influenced students’ ability to have positive crossracial
interactions. For White students, it was more difficult to have these positive interactions if they grew up in
neighborhoods or attended schools where Whites were a significant majority with few experiences with
peers of color. Whereas for students of color, cross-racial interactions were easier and if their precollege
experiences reflected situations where their White peers were the majority. A major factor in students’
decision to engage with the other is fear based anxiety (Stephan & Stephan, 1989, 1996). The current
research found that students (White and People of Color) who grew up in predominantly White contexts
tended to perceive less racial tension. The research of Locks and her associates also reinforced the idea that
college students are predisposed to continue the same interactions they had in high school, whether or not
their social interactions included diverse peers (Saenz, Ngai & Hurtado, 2007). These predispositions are
accentuated over time and include the selections students make for classes, activities and venues of
involvement, peer groups. Locks and her associates also found that women in their study had a strong
predisposition to being involved in diversity activities.
Perry (2002) discussed the “currents” of racial identity formation for White students based on their
proximities of association with other racialized people. In her work, Shades of White, Perry presented her
research on White students at two different high schools; one white homogenous (or predominantly so) and
one multi-racial. White students who had little to no association with racial difference constructed their
identities as “normal.” The White students in the multi-racial school who had more contact with difference
were challenged to define “white” more frequently. Hence, they either searched for ethnic pasts or adopted
what Perry calls “postcultural” selves—a present or future oriented “self-concept that dismisses all relevance
of and indebtedness to the past” (p.93). Yet, both school environments yielded “white is normal” discourses,
whether because of homogeneity or in more diverse situations where white is rationalized as a normative
cultureless-ness.
Identity
Outlined here are some of the analytical tools or theoretical frameworks that shape conceptions
of a racial identity. Norton (1997) refers to identity as the way “people understand their relationship to the
world, how that relationship is constructed across time and space, and how people understand their
possibilities for the future” (p. 410). Identity cannot be understood apart from larger social networks and
relationships, which may be unequally structured (Bourdieu, 1977; West, 1992). Most of the arguments
about identity began with two streams of contemporary thought about race identity that help to define it in
either essentialist or non-essentialist terms. Essentialism, with its notions of fixedness and universality, is
heavily critiqued by feminist scholarship as an imposition and exclusion of identity difference and
“otherness” (Harris, 1990; hooks, 1991; Jhappan, 2006; Williams, 1991). Other scholars have argued
against cultural essentialism or what Appiah calls “racialism” (Appiah, 1989; Narayan, 1998). These
arguments have been made with postmodernist thought as the better alternative that views identities as
fragmented, “conditional, lodged in contingency,” (Hall & Du Gay, 1996, p. 3) “fabricated and constructed
rather than self-evidently deduced from experience” (Mohanty, 1997, p. 203).
Stuart Hall (1990, 1996), a sociologist and cultural theorist, offers important ideas about the
fluidity of identity that is significant to my research. In an introductory essay to a reader on the topic of
Identity, Hall (1996) discusses the ambivalence of identification that emerges at the intersection of the
subject and discursive practices. Hall critiques the interiority of identity and suggests that identities are
constructed through difference, within the “play of power and exclusion” (p.5). Identities are constructed
within specific historical and institutional sites where the subject is hailed through discourse. This process
of “interpellation” presents temporary points of attachment where identities are produced. In his work on
“Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” Hall (1990) suggests that we should think of identity as a “production”
that is always in the process of being represented or re-presented. His critical thesis, that identity is
constituted within representation, also engaged the notion of diasporic identity as recognition of hybridity
in identification. Cultural identities, which are unstable productions within historical and cultural
discourses, present and respond to positionalities and narratives. There is no oneness in identity and
experience.
An epistemic status of cultural identity validates the significance of experience—varied and
ruptured. Moya (2000) explained that physical realities will inform the contours and contexts of theories
and knowledge in profound ways. Using realist theory, she claims that people who are or have been
oppressed have epistemic privilege—“special advantage with respect to possessing or acquiring
knowledge about how fundamental aspects of our society (such as race, class, disability, gender, and
sexuality) operate to sustain matrices of power” (Moya, 2000, p. 81). This is because they have
experiences that can provide information we need to analyze structures in society, and people who are not
oppressed in the same way usually lack these experiences. Individual and group experiences will
influence a person’s cultural identity. How the person interprets the experiences will depend on what
theories and/or discourses s/he has access to. Hence, colorblindness will shape students’ experiences and
their interpretations of those experiences, ultimately shaping their expressions of identity.
Further, the literature I have reviewed thus far underscores the idea of reified colorblindness and
discourses that deepen the effects of oppression. To clarify, colorblind discourses work to hide realities of
white supremacy or racism in the United States. These dominant discourses, that impact all people within
the society, strengthen their views and interpretations of race behavior because colorblindness does not
allow for racist acts to be named and interrogated as elements of a pervasive contemporary reality in
society, but only to be interpreted as occasional breaches from a well ordered
“post-racial” society. The dominant discourse of colorblindness reinterprets racist realities as rare outliers
from an otherwise just society. Hence, Whites, with the privilege of a society working in their favor, would
only and continually view society from a solely individualist perspective that would not allow them to
interrogate their exclusive race-based privileges that they receive as a group and would otherwise think of
as normative. (See the next section on Critical Whiteness Studies.) Also, people of color could adopt these
discourses and interpretations, and be limited in their ability to provide counter-frames to colorblindness,
the racial structure it upholds and vice versa. That is, without the critical engagement and appreciation of
experience, particularly the epistemic status of the oppressed to analyze the oppressive structure, resist it,
and provide information that can offer reinterpretations for various agents in the structure. Hence,
contemporary social realities, including racism, and dominant discourses like colorblindness create tensions
that inform the interpreted experiences of Whites and People of Color and establish the messiness of these
identities while providing subjugated people (People of Color) with an anchor to negotiate meaningful social
identities.
Critical Whiteness Studies
For almost two decades, Critical Whiteness Studies (CWS) has been a growing area of
academic inquiry into the construction, consequences, and responsibilities of white identity. Critical
Whiteness Studies scholars include Ruth Frankenberg, Cheryl Harris, Noel Ignatiev, David Roediger, Peggy
McIntosh, T. Allen, G. Lipsitz, Zeus Leonardo, Kincheloe, and others. Critical whiteness scholars can be
generally classified as preservationists, who explore aspects of whiteness that can be preserved without
privilege and oppression and seek to rearticulate whiteness (Apple, 1998; Winant, 1997); and abolitionists,
who believe that whiteness cannot exist without white supremacy and should therefore be abolished
(Ignatiev, 1995; Roediger, 1991). Roediger has called for abolition of whiteness by noting that “It is not
merely that whiteness is oppressive and false, it is nothing but oppressive and false.” The construction of
whiteness in the United States began with what Whites were not—slaves and Blacks—and further developed
into a collection of elaborate strategies and themes of existence that avoid identifying with a racial group or
experience, and further deny racism and its legacy (Frankenberg, 1993; Harris, 1993; Roediger, 1991).
Whiteness involves position, worldview, property, power, privilege, and discourse. “White” as a description
of people is distinctly different from, though connected to, “whiteness” as a collection of strategies and
discourses that are supported by institutions and material practices that benefit White people and oppress
others. Although whiteness is not easily defined in a concise way, it is understood to benefit people who
have it with enormous and “relatively exclusive” access to the privilege it reproduces (Chubbuck, 2004).
Whereas “whiteness” is racial discourse, “White” people represents a socially constructed racial identity
(Leonardo, 2002).
Frankenberg (1993) describes three dimensions that comprise the terrain of whiteness. First,
whiteness is a location of structural advantage that affords privileges to some people based on their racial
identity as white citizens. Whiteness then is a location of structural advantage socially, politically, culturally
and historically. White privilege is maintained within a system of dominance that renders whiteness
unnamed. Drawing on feminist theory, Frankenberg describes the second dimension as the position from
which White people see themselves and others, called standpoint. Standpoint highlights the connection
between one’s societal standing and his/her perceptions. The third dimension of whiteness is the set of
cultural practices that are usually unmarked or unnamed. These cultural practices are often “invisible” in
the sense that they are considered normal; which reflects the dominance of these practices.
In “The Souls of White Folk,” Leonardo (2002) draws on similar important traits of whiteness
discussed by Frankenberg, but as a global phenomenon that accompanies global capitalism. One of the traits
of whiteness that obscures its globalization from view is its “unwillingness to name the contours of racism.”
This trait underscores people’s denial of racism when faced with the truth about inequity and their diversion
to any other factor but racism or what White people (and institutions) have done. White denial has
formidable strength because of all the assumptions and ideas that are taken for granted (Van Dijk, 1998;
Wise, 2004, 2009). Also, the minimization of the legacy of racism is a trait that neglects the barbarity of the
past and disconnects it from present inequities. This minimization and neglect of global white hegemony
obscures the shared history of distinct White nations and their oppression of Black nations. Leonardo aims
to help us see that current globalization efforts viewed in historical context tracks the worldwide moves and
effects of whiteness.
Cheryl Harris (1993) uncovers the historical construction of whiteness and its critical characteristics as
property. Race and property were conflated through the system of slavery that treated Blacks as property
and constructed Whites as not slaves. White was a marker for freedom, while Black meant possible
enslavement. Whiteness then is a legal right to white identity that offers all a person’s rights, including
inalienability, the right to use or enjoy, reputation, and the right to exclude. With these rights, whiteness
developed with entitlements, the ability to be experienced and used to exercise power or will, status or value,
and the ability to exclude others from those benefits. Further, the Naturalization Act of 1790 restricted
citizenship to persons who were White and other laws ensued to maintain such privilege for the first 200
years of the United States. With legislative changes that have removed explicitly expressed white privileges,
Harris argues that whiteness retains a “consolation prize” that ensures that, rather than Whites will win,
Whites will not lose by not being on the bottom of the hierarchy of races (economically and socially).
Whiteness as a position and exercise of power has a certain “hidalguismo” or “alpha and
omega” status (Rimonte, 1997; p. 42). Such claims to superiority and almost divine status, centers whiteness
as an ideal and orders the Other to the margins of abstraction. This allows whiteness to avoid positional
interrogation and to present itself as the socially informed, morally accurate, and logically desirable
perspective. Whiteness is global. Leonardo (2002) argues that just as capital transcends national boundaries,
multinational whiteness is engaged in a process of globalization whereby there is a neocolonization of
nations and domination of (non-white) Others. This global view of whiteness also allows for greater
interrogation of the monolithic whiteness that U.S. immigrants, such as the Irish and Jews, are said to have
adopted. Goldstein (2006) argues that Jews “became White” with great difficulty in the preWorld War II
era; and that although they have become a part of the white mainstream in the United States, Jews still
wrestle with whiteness as it conflicts with some key elements of Jewish identity. The “price of whiteness”
may be a loss of self.
In communication studies, Nakayama and Krizek (1995) contributed to the interrogation of the
discursive space of whiteness as an invisible, normalized, and unarticulated position. They propose that the
central space that whiteness holds allows it to make itself visible and invisible while exerting enormous
influence on everyday life. By looking at whiteness through discourse, we can avoid the trap of
essentializing it. Whiteness is constituted through its strategic rhetoric of universality and invisibility.
Nakayama and Krizek identify six strategies of the discourse of whiteness. There is the naked truth of
whiteness tied to power as the “majority,” while it hides historical construct of itself. The power of this
“status” remains stealth. Another strategy affirms whiteness when Other-ness is negated. White is the
absence of other ethnicities or color, so it becomes the default. For example, “White-non-Hispanic.” A third
strategy makes white a simple scientific category without any meaning; it is just a label. Historical and
experiential knowledge of whiteness remains masked. Another strategy is to confuse whiteness with
nationality, i.e. “white” means “white American.” This conflation of race and U.S. citizenship has
significant discursive political power. The fifth strategy emphasizes individualism over subjectivity by
resisting the term “white,” which denies any ethnic heritage and makes white invisible again. Other ethnic
heritages become labels while white is not and simply assumed. Finally, a discourse that embraces
“European descent” as a label demonstrates a symbolic ethnicity that camouflages or does not necessarily
recognize power. These discourses demonstrate the dynamic nature of whiteness that presents and masks
itself at different moments (pp. 298-302).
In the field of education it is important that whiteness is recognized for the power inherent in
its operation, the unearned privilege it bestows on Whites, as well as its system of domination and oppression
of other people. Further, White people must recognize how they are “implicated in systems of oppression
and privilege” and learn how to engage in the “fact of racial inequality” in our society (Applebaum, 2007,
p. 455). Much of this awareness could be developed in the classroom to prepare all students to be agents of
anti-racist change (Blum, 2002; Delpit, 1988; Lawrence & Tatum, 1997). However, classrooms reify the
construction of education for good white, middle class students while they pathologize Black students.
These constructions must be challenged, especially in teacher education programs where the next generation
of teachers is trained to be effective educators. Case and Hemmings (2005) showed how White women
teachers utilized color blindness and race neutrality as distancing strategies to not confront race and racism.
White complicity as a matter of being, with or without any intentional action or behavior, demonstrates the
hegemonic system that benefits all Whites (Applebaum, 2007; Bartky, 2002).
Chubbuck (2004) demonstrated that whiteness is difficult to disrupt—among individuals and
institutions. Whiteness is often “enacted” in a way that’s intertwined with personal identity. This can lead
to stated intentions and meaning well to be anti-racist while reproducing racism. Further, knowledge of
racism and cultural understanding do not necessarily “disrupt” the persistence effects of whiteness among
people. Also, within institutions where people function, abolitionists and preservationists/ rearticulationists
can re-center whiteness while attempting to argue their approaches to dismantling it. Hence, educators must
be vigilant in their interrogation and offering of solutions. Chubbuck recommends that whiteness must be
disrupted in a community where “honest scrutiny” and “challenging
accountability” are essential aspects of support.
Applebaum (2010) has made significant contributions to CWS with her book, Being White, Being
Good: White Complicity, White Moral Responsibility and Social Justice Pedagogy. She thoroughly
critiques “white privilege pedagogy” for its simplistic analyses that encourage White students to offer
solutions to racism that disregard the privilege constituted in their being white. While White students’
acknowledgement of systemic privilege suggests a positive step in learning, rather than denials of such
privilege, awareness does not go far enough. White privilege pedagogy, Applebaum contends, works to
protect “white innocence.” She explores how “white ignorance,” a type of white privilege that safeguards
such privilege with a sense of authority not to know and count such unknowing as knowledge, helps to
reproduce white supremacy and racial injustice. Such ignorance is “willful” not necessarily because of
intention but because it is in the interest of Whites to accept the benefits of it. White ignorance “parades as
knowledge” and develops a “refusal to consider” other knowledge or perspectives. Hence, white complicity
in a system of white supremacy is denied as normative and common sense. This manifestation of whiteness
protects White people’s moral innocence in discussions about race.
Applebaum argues that white moral “response-ability” for racism can be taken by White
students when white complicity is understood as a form of structural injustice. This responsibility can be
taken without taking liability as traditional models would suggest. The focus is not on blame or guilt.
Drawing on Iris Marion Young’s Social Connection Model (2006), Applebaum argues that Whites must take
responsibility for their complicity as agents who by their actions and their being (White) contribute to the
structural processes responsible for injustice. So, White people did not necessarily have to be there at the
inception of white supremacy to take responsibility for it in the present. These ongoing, rather than terminal,
structural processes continue to produce injustices that Whites could potentially lessen by doing whiteness
differently (Warren, 2001). This difference in whiteness, Applebaum argues, involves understanding that
white complicity manifests through white bodies and discursive practices, being vigilant about how
whiteness seeks to maintain its invisibility, and listening to hear the anger and criticism from Others. The
white complicity pedagogy that Applebaum outlines aims to present an effective approach to help White
students do whiteness differently without being affirmed to believe they have arrived.
Summary
This literature review discussed the significant literature that serves as a backdrop to the work of this
dissertation—to explore the meaning students make about race. It highlights scholarship on race and racism,
the philosophy that undergirds identity, colorblindness and its manifestations in microaggressions, and
critical whiteness studies. The specific literature engaged here works to provide a foundation for the central
topic of race. Race is a social and political construct, with formations at the macro and micro levels. Racial
formations and processes create racialized social systems around a principle of domination. This principle
is clearly expressed in the United States as white supremacy. Then the literature provides frameworks and
lenses through which race can be analyzed and its meanings made visible in the discourses that students use
or interact with in some way. Critical race theories expose the normative reality of racism in society and
how colorblind discourse is used to maintain the subordination of people of color through various strategies.
The select scholarship of this literature review demonstrates that race, as a concept and
process, is dynamic in all its manifestations. From identity to experience, race is contested and convicting
of human bodies and the environments in which these bodies act. The approach to understanding identity
must not be removed from social relations or networks, but examined as a messy concept that is shaped by
experience and structure. Student bodies present learners in higher educational contexts who engage in the
process of interpreting their own racialized selves as well as other selves while finding membership within
a university community. Universities, especially PWIs, reflect white dominance present in society, even
globally. Whiteness as property, denial, and power shapes perceptions and seeks to maintain its invisibility,
presumed normalcy, and supremacy. The literature demonstrates the ongoing process of race and the
struggle for subjugated people to live meaningfully and justly in a racist society. This society is dominated
by whiteness and maintains white supremacist inclinations while cloaking itself with colorblind discourses.
CHAPTER 3:
METHODS AND PROCEDURES
In this chapter, I articulate the methods and procedures I utilized for this research project.
First, I offer important considerations for the methodology of this work and its significance for
research in education. Additionally, after the methods and procedures are delineated and some
research challenges are reviewed, I offer insights about the researcher and his experience that
enhances the methodologies employed in this project. My experience with this project offers key
insights for other qualitative researchers who may conduct similar work about race. Finally, I
present a brief summary of the chapter.
My interest in this study was to explore how students make meaning of the object- “race.”
I was particularly interested in how they assign meanings to race, how they make various
gestures about race to one another, how they have interpreted the gestures made by others to
them about race, and how the constructions and negotiations of these meanings interact, and
specifically within the context of a multiracial yet predominantly white university. Hence, I was
interested in conducting a qualitative research project that would uncover these meanings. I did
not remove myself from this process of meaning making and recognized that meaning would be
made during the course of my research as well. My social location was important to this process.
CONSIDERATIONS FOR MY WORK
According to Bogdan and Biklen (1998), qualitative research involves five essential
characteristics: 1. it is naturalistic, having an actual setting where the data is found; 2. it is
descriptive; 3. there is a focus on process rather than outcomes; 4. data analysis is inductive; 5.
“meaning” is the essential concern. Hence, as a qualitative researcher, I was concerned with how
people (and in this case, students) make sense of their experiences. These perspectives, the
meaning participants make of their lives, were central to the analysis and interpreted results of
this study. While all research involves some imposition of the researcher’s interpretations on the
researched, understanding the research participants’ point of view offers the least distortion and
privileges the informants’ perspectives. Context was also critical. I desired to capture the
perspectives of the students themselves within their social context.
Much of the development of qualitative research was influenced by George Herbert
Mead’s conception of symbolic interaction in Mind, Self, and Society (1934). This contribution
was important for my project that was primarily concerned with meaning making within the
context of the college/university. In Blumer’s discussion of symbolic interactionism (1969), he
summarizes three premises of the concept. First, human beings act toward things on the basis of
the meanings they have assigned to these things. Second, the meanings of things are derived
from the social interaction between human beings. Third, the meanings are modified or
otherwise managed in an interpretive process used by the person who interacts with these things.
In summary, symbolic interactionism sees meaning as a derivative of social processes, rather
than being inherent in an object itself or only in the mind of an individual (psychological
perspective).
Meanings have material manifestations as they determine action and reaction in the world
that human beings share, interpret, shape and are shaped by. Symbolic interactionism, then, is
highlighted by “gestures” and response to the meaning of those gestures. A gesture is “any part
or aspect of an ongoing action that signifies the larger act of which it is a part” (Blumer, 1969,
p.9). Thus, speech and the vocabulary one chooses to use is a gesture. Symbolic interaction
involves interpreting the action of another. Mead (1934) offers a “triadic nature of meaning”
that: 1. signifies what the person to whom it is directed should do; 2. signifies what the person
making the gesture will do; and 3. signifies the joint action that will be produced by the acts of
both parties. In the context of my research, I wanted to understand how students would express
the interpretations they made of race from their experiences on a college campus, how they
would respond to those experiences based on their interpretations, and how they would make
meaning together from their articulations of those meanings in focus groups. Qualitative
methods are particularly useful for my project, which draws on Critical Race Theory (CRT) and
its support for storytelling to “analyze the myths, presuppositions, and received wisdoms that
make up the common culture about race” (Delgado, 1995, p.xiv). CRT’s view of race as a
product of social relations and social thinking provides a lens by which I could view the process
of race “construction” in my research and analyze the data through that lens. Leaning on CRT
and other theories helped me to think critically about my analyses and make important
connections between individual thought and action, and larger social phenomena; specifically the
persistence of race in our society.
My work is also informed by a post-positivist philosophy of research which guided me to
explore the world constructed by my informants rather than discovering a world fixed in any
particular set of facts (Lather, 2001). My critical inquiry into higher education through this
project, while not a feminist project, draws on feminist approaches to research practice. For
example, I approached my work with a strong sense of the complexity involved, the various
angles to consider, and with constant questioning or reflection about my place as a subject in the
research. In other words, I drew on feminist methodology within my research even though I did
not undertake a feminist project or employ feminist methods necessarily. Harding (1987)
distinguishes method as techniques for gathering empirical data while methodology describes the
theory and interpretive framework that directs the project. My methodology reflected frames and
lenses through which I approached and viewed the procedures and methods of my own project.
STUDY DESIGN
I designed my study to engage in participant observation and unstructured interviewing of
a group of incoming students to a large university in the Northeast region of the United States.
Due to my interest in a process of meaning making over time, I wanted to collect data over the
course of 2-3 years. I was also interested in the transition from high school to college.
Therefore, incoming students who were participating in the Pre-First Program were of great
interest to me.
After speaking with the director of the Pre-First Program and receiving written
permission to conduct my study, I prepared and received approval for my IRB proposal. I asked
that Resident Advisors of the program be informed that I would make visits to the residence hall
where they were housed. Resident Advisors were to inform students at their initial floor
meetings that a doctoral student would be in the residence hall. I obtained program materials and
information about some of the activities that would take place during the initial days of the
program. I passed by the registration process that took place in the student center, then helped a
student who was the younger sister of an old friend to move in. These activities allowed me to
enter the world of these incoming students subtly. Then I prepared for my first day in the field.
My plan was to conduct both participant observation and interviewing to allow for more
complete data than interviewing would provide (Becker & Geer, 1967). Participant observation
would assist in contextualizing the data collected in the interviews. Hence, my first priority was
to simply observe. I spent my first day in the main lounge of the residence hall, on the first floor,
and soon chose this as my major site for observation. It was in the lounge that students played
pool, studied, ate snacks, napped, watched television, talked, sat, and observed each other. From
my observations, I would choose individuals who seemed interesting to talk to (interview) and
after each interview, continue in similar purposive sampling (Cuadraz & Uttal, 1999). I would
choose people based on the emerging themes surrounding my interest. (See the Procedures
section for more details.)
After this first phase of data collection during the six week program, I planned to collect
data a second time during the students’ junior year at the university. Between the initial data
collection and the second phase, I would begin to transcribe and review the tape recorded
interviews and type up my field notes. The second phase would utilize focus groups with key
informants from the first phase of interviewing to discuss experiences at the university and their
interpretations of “race.”
PROCEDURES
SELECTION OF THE UNIVERSITY AND PROGRAM
In the U.S. American context, most colleges and universities are predominantly white and serve
as spaces where our nation’s racial ideologies and discourses are engaged or even performed. Hence, I
was especially interested in a predominantly white institution (PWI) with a significant level of diversity
that might offer the potential for a very dynamic interface of race constructions and negotiations.
Findings University has been nationally recognized for its diversity initiatives. Through its own
commitment of resources and strategies that compliment what the state and federal governments provide,
Findings has increased its percentage of underrepresented students in recent years. Additionally, the
theme of diversity is promoted and integrated in many of the university’s initiatives and some of its
curricula. “Pre-First” is one of those initiatives.
The Pre-First Program at Findings University offered me a unique opportunity to engage
students in the midst of their early transition from high school to college. This important period
in the lives of young people has been given less attention in published higher education
scholarship, especially due to the spatial challenges of these students not being on either high
school or college campuses during the traditional academic year. Yet, the post-high school
graduation summer before full-time college matriculation is critical to student development and
retention (Arnold et al., 2008; Attinasi, 1989). Hence, as a transitional program located on a
college campus, Pre-First was perfect for facilitating my initial fieldwork.
During the Spring 2005 semester, I approached the Pre-First Program director and
discussed my interest in conducting an ethnographic study utilizing Pre-First students as
informants. The idea was well-received, although the director might have been more interested
in a study that would provide more immediate data that could be used for the program’s benefit
sooner. In the meeting, I clarified the longitudinal nature of my research design and the
sociological and educational issues I hoped to understand. With the director’s permission, I
prepared to begin my work in July of that year.
DATA COLLECTION- PHASE I
During the first phase of my research, I engaged in participant observation at the
Roosevelt Hall, where Pre-First students were housed. For six weeks, I spent five to six days of
each week at the residential hall observing and interviewing my informants from approximately
6:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. or 11:30 p.m. from Monday through Thursday. On Fridays, I attended
for a few hours starting at 4:30 p.m. On Saturdays and Sundays, I spent several hours during the
day and later in the night, depending on the schedule of residence hall programs or interviews
with students. I also attended some social activities of the hall such as “Open Mic Nights.”
Although I sparsely visited the cafeteria, I spent the balance of my time in the main lounge of the
residence hall. This participation in the lives of the students helped me to share in their
experience, becoming changed while remaining unchanged by it (Bruyn, 1963).
I focused on building rapport and gaining the trust of potential informants during the first
week of the program. I did this by being visible, showing up everyday and spending time
reading, writing and observing the main lounge of the residence hall. I also hung out in the lobby
and sometimes just outside the hall where two short rows of picnic tables facilitated small group
gatherings. On a few occasions, I played pool with a student when the lounge traffic was light.
Although I worked on campus from 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. (4:00 on Fridays) in the Student
Affairs division, I was able to avoid Pre-First students while in that role. This meant adjusting
some of the work assignments that would normally require me to present workshops to the
students within the first 3 weeks of the program. I am grateful to my supervisor for being
gracious with me during these arrangements. I was able to dodge similar assignments until the
5th week of the program when I presented workshops for two class sessions in the Engineering
school. Otherwise, I quickly returned home after work and changed out of a shirt and tie, to
casual attire (often jeans, t-shirts, short-sleeve casuals, khaki’s, shorts, sneakers or sandals). As I
learned from reading other ethnographers, conducting research about students or young people
required thoughtful strategies to share in their experience (Dolby, 2001; Eckert, 1989; Ferguson,
2001; Perry, 2002).
As I engaged in participant observation, I noted the frequent use of the lounge. Some
students played games or watched television. Others studied there as a way of making new
friends as well. Males and females flirted with each other. Groups began to form but with
tangents or bridges to other groups. Sometimes the concentration of people in the lounge seemed
to favor one group or another—more White, more Asian American, more Black, more male,
more female—but such majorities never lasted. Mostly, there were usually cross-cultural student
interactions taking place.
After several days, I began to ask various students who I saw often in the main lounge if
they would be willing to participate in my study by allowing me to interview them. Observing
helped me to understand the students’ context, but talking to them would help me to understand
their lives and how they made meaning of their experiences (Kvale, 1996; Seidman, 1998). The
responses I received were always positive. The challenge we faced was finding time to sit and
talk for 45-60 minutes. Many students expressed that the Pre-First program was intense and they
wanted to do well. I always expressed that I had respect for their time and I would be flexible in
finding a time that would work for both of us.
My first 5 or 6 interviews were with African-American or Black students. Although I had
begun to build some rapport with a more diverse set of students, I intentionally began
interviewing people who shared the same “race” as I did with the thought that they may be more
comfortable discussing race with me than other students who identified differently. I would
observe from the experience that there was little noticeable difference in comfort levels among
my informants. This continued until I had spoken with 6 Black informants. At this point, I
began to evaluate the direction of my study. Did I want to explore the meanings that Black
students made of race in higher education? Did I want to focus on male students in particular?
Could my study just focus on Black and Latino males? Or did I want to focus on male and
female students from multiple racial categories as I anticipated before my first day in the field?
As I considered my options, I reflected on the unique opportunity I had with the Pre-First
Program to engage a diverse group of students who were not yet fully matriculated in a full-time
credit offering semester at the university in discussions about race. I was driven by the desire to
understand the various meanings students make from diverse racial backgrounds. An additional
consideration was the importance for me, personally, to engage in work about race that expanded
my reach beyond Black subjects only, especially as a researcher who is Black. Hence, I
continued my work as planned. The total 25 informants that I interviewed reflected African
American/Black, Asian American, Hispanic/Latino, and White racial categories.
Each interview began with my inquiries about how the student was doing or their
schedule for the day. I always expressed my gratitude for the student’s willingness to participate
in the interview and offered an overview of expectations. I informed participants of my doctoral
student status, the interview as part of my research, the tape recorder’s purpose for transcribing
the interview, and the importance of being open, relaxed, and honest. I also shared that they
could terminate the interview at any point if the discussion seemed too uncomfortable. After that
preliminary discussion, the interview began. I attempted to make it an almost seamless process
between the overview and the interview itself and simply suggested that now we would be
recording.
The following chart describes the racial/ethnic composition of my informants.
African American/Black Asian American Latino White
Male: 5
2
4
3
Female: 3
3
3
2
Portraits:
The following are portraits of my informants, using pseudonyms. As each informant is
introduced, the racial description that is presented will reflect their self-identification and other
details they shared about high school demographics and where they lived prior to attending
Findings University. Hence, the ways that I describe their race may not be consistent in terms of
the academic, legal, or politically correct categories for describing one’s race in the United
States.
Amy is a Chinese American Asian female student. She attended high school in Brooklyn, NY.
She described her school as largely White with about 50 Asian Americans, “perhaps 2 or 3”
African Americans and “very few Mexicans.” Amy is an Engineering major.
Angela, a White female from Long Island, New York, played lacrosse while she studied at
Findings. She intended to major in Communication and Rhetorical Studies. However, she did not return
to the university after her first year. She reported that 50% of her high school population was White,
30% Black, about 5% Hispanic, 10% Asian, and another 5% who were Indian or “Hindu.”
Ariel is an African American male from Northeast City, majoring in Sociology. He attended a
predominantly White, private religious high school. There were approximately 100 Blacks, less
than 10 Latinos, and approximately 13 Asian Americans out of the 720 students at his school.
Ariel reported that his school offered challenging “social pressures” for many of the Black males
who attended. Ariel acted as a “big brother” to many of them.
Billy, a Caucasian male from Amherst, New York, was majoring in Engineering before he
transferred out of the university. He reported there being “probably 10 or 15 Black kids” in his
mostly White high school, with a graduating class of 400 students. Billy is a skilled guitarist and
singer, which allowed him to become well known after the talent show at Pre-First.
Brian is an African American male student from Patterson, New Jersey. He attended a religious
high school which was predominantly Black with few Asian Americans, Latinos, and Whites.
Brian is majoring in Political Science.
Choon-yei is an Asian student. She sees herself as distinctly Asian, rather than Asian American.
She attended a predominantly White high school in Oregon, where she learned that to even say
“race” was taboo. Choon-yei (or Choon) was born and raised in South Korea. She is very outgoing
and frank in her discussions about any subject.
Christine is an African American female student from White Plains, NY. She reported that her
high school was “very mixed” with Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indian, Black, White, Spanish and
Muslim students. She is majoring in African American Studies and Public Relations. She sings,
writes and recites poetry.
Deirdre is a Black female from Patterson, New Jersey. Her Caribbean heritage was important to
her. Deirdre attended a Black high school. She reported that “the only Whites were the teachers”
and that the six or so White students who were present when she began high school were all gone
by her senior year. Deirdre returned to New Jersey after her first year to study Nursing, a program
that was discontinued at Findings.
Don is an outgoing White male, from Union, New Jersey. He reported that his high school was
75% White. The other quarter of the population was Hispanic and Black, with a small Indian
representation (of about 5 percent). Don was an intended Chemistry major before he left Findings
after the first year.
Geoff is a Caucasian male from New York City. Geoff was interested in all visual and performing
arts but he is focusing on Photography for his major studies. The diversity at Findings and the
campus location on the east coast were two important factors that helped Geoff to choose the
university. He said that he “needs” to have a lot of diversity. He reported that the students at his
high school represented 50% Whites and the other half were “minorities,” including Blacks,
Hispanics, and Asians.
Jennifer is a Hispanic (female) from Puerto Rico. She reported that there were only Puerto Ricans
at her high school. Although her high school peers reflected different shades of skin color, they
were Puerto Ricans. Jennifer was a Broadcast Journalism major at Findings before she returned
to Puerto Rico after her first year.
Jossette is a Latina (female) from the Bronx, New York. Jossette is majoring in International
Relations. She decided to attend Findings University because of the diversity statistics, which she
reports being “higher than most colleges.” High school was diverse, but predominantly “Black
and Spanish,” according to Jossette. She was president of the Latino-American Club in high
school. At Findings, she is very active in a “multicultural” sorority.
Julia is a Latina (female) student from Bronx, New York. She attended a diverse Catholic high
school that, when she began there, almost seemed to share an equal percentage of Blacks, Latinos,
and Whites. However, by her senior year, she reported Whites were only about 10 percent. Then
there were slightly more Blacks (45 percent) than Latinos (40 percent) and a scattering of other
ethnicities and cultures in the rest of the population. Julia’s parents exposed her and her siblings
to their racially diverse group of friends, she said, and as a result Julia has sought cross-cultural
interactions at Findings. Julia is a majoring in broadcast journalism.
Leslie is a Black Asian male from Queens, New York. He identifies more strongly with his Black
racial heritage. He reported that he was “one of twenty Black people” and 15 Latinos at his high
school. “It was Asians and just Whites; that’s it.” Leslie is a Political Science major.
Mei is an Asian female student. She recently migrated with her family to the United States (a year
before matriculating at Findings). She belongs to a Chinese ethnic minority group. She is majoring
in Finance.
Natasha is a Black American female from Patterson, New Jersey. She and Deirdre are best
friends and attended the same high school together. Natasha is majoring in Social Work.
Richard is a Latino male from New York City. He was valedictorian for his high school graduating
class. Richard reports that his high school was diverse, with Whites, Blacks, and “Spanish”
students representing a “pretty equal” portion of the population. Richard struggled as an
Engineering major and changed it to Information Studies in his third year.
Rolando is a Latino male student. He was born and raised in Ecuador until he migrated to Queens,
New York four years before matriculating at Findings. His high school was predominantly
attended by students of color, mostly Black and Hispanic, with some Chinese and Indian students,
and “maybe one or two” Whites. There were conflicts between some Latinos, specifically
Dominicans, and African Americans in his high school. Rolando majors in Engineering.
Terrence is a Black male, Sports Management major from Northeast City. He attended the same
predominantly White, religious high school as Ariel; and describes it as a “fancy” and “preppy”
education. Terrence shared that he wrote a letter of appeal to enter the school for 9th grade after
one of his 8th grade public school teachers “inspired” him by telling him that he would not amount
to anything.
Tom is a White male student from New Orleans, Louisiana. He attended private school before
matriculating at Findings University. He reported that he chose Findings so that he could
experience more diversity than the “mostly White” schools he previously attended. Although
financially privileged, he said that he was raised not to think of himself as “better than anyone
else” because of his family’s resources. He is active in one of the National Inter-fraternal
Conference fraternities on campus and lives in his chapter house. Tom is majoring in history and
Political Science.
Tyson is an African American male who took great pride in being an official student athlete during
the Pre-First Program. Tyson reported that he attended a predominantly Black high school, with
some Whites and a couple Asians. He was undecided about his major before he left Findings to
attend another university and play football.
Wes is a Latino male student from New York City. He is majoring in Industrial Design. He
attended a diverse New York City public high school that he perceived to be more or less populated
by a similar number of Asian Americans, Blacks, and Whites; then a smaller number (10 percent)
of Hispanics/Latinos.
Wilson is a White male from Sarajevo, New Jersey. He reported that his high school was very
diverse with 40 percent of the population being White, about a third was Black, and the others
were Latino or Indian. Wilson is a Chemical Engineering major.
These portraits present details that explain the social location of each informant in terms of their
race and/or ethnicity, hometown, and the diversity they were exposed to in schools prior to
attending Findings University. These details were important to help this researcher understand the
perspectives they shared and an appropriate analysis of their interpretations. The interviews
covered a series of questions that moved from personal to more thoughtful and perhaps risky. They
end with thoughtful questions about the future. These questions were designed to provide
background information about each student and to elicit their thoughts and experiences about race.
A sample of the questions that were asked is listed below:
1. Why did you choose to participate in Pre-First?
2. What do you expect from the Pre-First experience?
3. What do you think about the racial diversity of students (and staff) in the program?
4. How does this “diversity” compare with your high school experience?
5. How do you identify yourself in the multicultural context?
6. A. What do you think about “race”? B. Have you always thought that?
7. What do you think your parents think about “race”?
8. How does race matter in college?
9. How did race matter in high school?
10. How does race differ from culture?
11. What were your friends in high school like?
12. Tell me about your friends in Pre-First.
13. When you are not in class, how do you spend your time here?
14. How are you growing in this new experience?
15. What do you think your first semester will be like?
DATA COLLECTION- PHASE II
The second phase of my research utilized focus groups to gather data during my
informants’ junior year at the university. In this phase, I aimed to understand how students made
meaning of race over the course of six semesters in college and how they would express these
ideas in each other’s presence. Morgan (1996) defines focus groups as a “research technique that
collects data through group interaction on a topic determined by the researcher” (p. 130). This
definition highlights the importance of focus groups as a research tool and the researcher’s active
role in developing the discussion. The increased use of focus group in research among social
scientists points to the benefit of data collected from group interaction. Focus groups help
researchers to explore topics of interest, validate findings, and clarify content domains (Smith,
1995; Strickland, 1999). As the researcher, I gave critical consideration to group size, cultures of
the group membership, and location of the focus group to accommodate eye contact and a
comfortable level of intimacy. These important elements should be considered and decisions
made based on the goals of the research (Duffy, 1993; Knodel, 1995; Ramirez & Sheppard,
1988). As was the case for interviews, informants were invited to speak openly, honestly, and
clearly for the tape recorder to capture the discussion. I tested the recorder before we began each
session. Also, I offered water, juice, and snacks if the group desired to eat.
Ideally I wanted to have three focus groups of very diverse informants- gender and race.
Further, I had hoped for particular informants to be present. However, I knew that over the
course of three years, I risked not having all the informants I took special interest in for
participation in the focus groups to be present on campus or desire further involvement in my
study. This risk proved significant in terms of my ability to gather focus groups of 7 participants
and with my key informants. However, with 25 informants from Phase I in my pool of potential
focus group members, I was still able to gather groups that worked out well.
I conducted three focus groups with 5-6 members each, including this researcher. Each
group was diverse in its own way. Group One: one Asian American female, one Latina, and two
Black males. Group Two: Two African Americans (1 male, 1 female), one White female, and
one Asian American female. Group Three: one White male, one Latina, one Asian American
female, and two Latinos. Each focus group lasted 75-90 minutes with robust discussion among
its members. My key informants were students across the racial spectrum who provided nuanced
data and interesting stories about race, or who demonstrated high interest in sharing experiences
and views.
The focus group interview protocol is below:
1. How have you connected with other students since Pre-First?
2. What has happened with the ideas (about diversity) that you learned about during
PreFirst? Where do you talk about those issues now? What is that talk like?
3. Given your grounding with Pre-First, what kinds of challenges have you faced as a group
since then? When? How?
4. How have you come to see people’s racial differences since Pre-First?
5. How do you identify yourself by race?
6. What kinds of interactions have you had with students who are different from you
racially since Pre-First? How have you thought about those interactions?
7. What kinds of extracurricular activities have you gotten involved with? Are any of these
activities based on race or culture? If they aren’t, how do issues of race or culture arise in
your activities?
8. Some of you have said in your interviews that race is a human invention or simply
differences in skin color and geographic background. What is RACE to you? It has been
two years since I first interviewed you during Pre-First; are you aware of how your ideas
about race have shifted since then?
9. Have you experienced racism on campus? Have you experienced racism off campus
since you’ve been a student at Findings?
10. What is the relationship between race and racism?
11. How did the Pre-First experience shape the rest of your time on campus?
12. How do you talk about race when you talk about it? Who do you talk about race with?
How do you talk about race differently in different spaces? In class? Out of class? With
friends? With others of your peers?
By engaging triangulation of methods—participant observation, interviews, and focus
groups—I obtained rich, thick data that would strengthen my understanding and representation of
the participants’ perspectives (Biklen & Bogdan, 1998; Denzin, 1970; Dobbert, 1982). That is, I
desired to understand the realities of my informants from their point of view, the way they saw it.
Participant observation allowed me to understand the environment and context in which my
informants lived their daily lives during the first phase of the research and to be engaged in that
social interaction. Interviews provided each informants’ viewpoint and story from past to
present. The focus groups allowed me to understand viewpoints as they interacted with several
others after more time and experience had developed. All three methods deepened the empirical
possibilities of my study.
DATA ANALYSIS
Data analysis actually began during the first phase of my research as I recorded field
notes and conducted interviews. After each session in the field and each interview, I spent time
thinking about my informants, their environment, and the data they provided. These important
moments in the research process kept me engaged in a dialogic way with the emerging data and
guided me in my efforts to understand how students interpreted race in their everyday lives.
Interviews, focus groups, and field notes generated approximately 400 pages of
transcriptions and notes for analysis. After phase I of the research, I transcribed the interviews,
included my observer comments, and developed a list of general themes that emerged. As I
listened to interview recordings and read the transcriptions, I thought about trends and themes
that connected the language and interpretations of my informants. These general themes helped
me to formulate the interview protocol for the focus groups in phase II. Similarly, after phase II,
I transcribed each focus group recording, included my observer comments, and reflected on the
emerging themes.
Themes in the data reflected the “regularities and patterns” (Bogdan & Biklen, 1998, p.
171) and subjects that helped me to see the story that these students were telling. Themes
emerged through comparisons of informants’ statements and observations I made in the field and
created categories and subcategories (Bogdan & Biklen, 1998; Charmaz, 2000; Glasser &
Strauss, 1967). Many of these codes focused on perspective, ways that students thought about
race, context, social structure, etc. For example, some informants expressed their perspective
that race is used to create divisions. Others expressed how race is handled within their family
situation or structure. In phase II, strategy, activity, social structure, and process codes were
especially visible and interesting. For example, rich themes about how some students talked
about race, their involvement on campus, informants’ explanation of student social etiquette on
campus, and their changes or maintenance of the same perspectives they had in their first year
emerged in focus groups.
Codes, categories and sub-categories were developed and written on lists and index cards,
as I worked through an understanding of the matrix of themes present. For example, initial codes
included items such as: “race history,” “white talk,” identity,” “fraternities,” “interracial dating,”
“expectations,” “divisions,” etc. However, throughout the process of analyzing my codes, larger
themes emerged as I came to understand various ideologies these codes meant. Hence, there are
many codes within larger themes that express the meanings made by informants and by the
researcher throughout the interview process, recording of the interview, and interpretation
(Holstein & Gubrium, 1995). Therefore, my first data chapter comprised these sections:
I. Colorblind Discourse and the Minimization of Race
II. Family Portraits
A. Friendship and Dating Frames
B. Negatives
III. Wrestling with Whiteness, Asian Ambivalence, Black Reconnaissance:
Homes, safe houses and host bodies
A. White Resistance
1. Homes and Safe Houses
2. Host Bodies
B. Asian/Asian American Ambivalence—Finding Home
C. Black Reconnaissance—Conflicts and Conflations
Drawing from the students’ language and perspective, I creatively formulated titles for sections
that expressed the interpretations of my data and hopefully provoke further interpretations by my
readers.
The two phases of my research guided my approach to writing the “realist tale” that I
researched (Van Maanen, 1998). I decided to write one chapter on the descriptive data on the
colorblind ideology expressed in students’ discourse from the individual interviews in phase I. I
would write a separate chapter on the data from the focus groups. By taking this approach, I
would demonstrate the role that time played in the meaning making process for my informants.
However, I began to see that “talk” about race was increasingly significant in my coding scheme.
My informants were not only sharing their reflections about race talk among their friends and
classmates, but they were talking race in very interesting ways during the interviews and focus
groups. So, I decided to write a separate chapter on this as well, thereby highlighting some
processes of race talk and some challenges to engaging in that process. The final data chapter
explores how race shifts, stays, or drifts in meaning and construction for these informants
between phase I and phase II of the project.
CHALLENGES
The challenges to my research process included my job, the duration of my project, and
student life schedules. As noted earlier, during the first phase of my research I was working
fulltime on the Findings University campus. Hence, I was not able to be a participant observer
during the hours of business- generally from 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Generally, students were in
classes during those hours. However, I wished that I could have observed them at lunch and at
other times and locations during the day. This was not possible. Additionally, by phase II of my
project, some informants’ awareness of diversity education as an aspect of my work on campus
may have influenced their willingness to participate or “chilled” some of what they may have
wanted to say. For example, some informants may have been more politically correct in their
statements because of their awareness that I was not a “graduate student” only, but a university
administrator who had some connection to the facilitation of diversity on campus. The
duration of the project, spanning three years, may have contributed to a loss of motivation by
some informants to re-connect and participate in focus groups. While informants seemed
interested, schedules presented difficulties for finding a common time to meet and some
informants did not seem to be as motivated to follow-up with me as I coordinated the logistics of
these focus groups. I also noted that the everyday schedules of these juniors were quite hectic.
Many of my informants had jobs and were active in co-curricular activities of the campus.
Hence they were quite busy. I conducted one focus group during the fall semester of the senior
year because a couple of the informants participated in study abroad the year before. There were
others (3 White students in particular) who were no longer on campus. This was disappointing
for me as researcher because it really limited my ability to have the broadest demographic mix I
had hoped for in all the focus groups.
STRENGTHS
However, the longitudinal nature of this project was important and beneficial for my
research by providing data about the ways students made meaning of race in the college arena.
Beyond phase one of this project, students had more time to experience college life and more
interactions with their peers from diverse backgrounds. Students also had more opportunities to
engage in academic and co-curricular learning experiences that might influence their thinking
about race. The longitudinal approach of this project allowed more time for students to reflect on
the subject of race and make connections to their everyday experiences. The second phase of
data collection allowed this researcher to analyze change in perspectives about race or to
understand more clearly how the university’s structure and efforts may have impacted the
meaning making process of my informants. Additionally, this researcher could approach
working with focus groups with the benefit of already being acquainted with the participants.
Data from phase I offered background information that helped to shape the direction of the focus
groups without taking any additional time. The project was worth its challenges.
RESEARCHER PERSPECTIVES
I am the researcher and the research. I approached this research project with an
awareness of my self as a subject in the process. As I engaged others in conversations about race,
I knew that “I” was a part of the terms and methods of the conversation. I was not the neutral
and invisible researcher. Instead I was very much the raced human being who belongs to the
“raced people” (Dyer 1997, p.2) we call African-American or Black. Hence, I was always
conscious of the fact that each of my informants was having a conversation about race with a
Black man. I was aware that as a Black man, I might be perceived as threatening and dangerous or anti-
intellectual or patriarchal (hooks, 2004; Hutchinson, 1996; Mudhabuti, 1990). I was also aware that
African-American or Black informants might think that I already understood their perspectives because
of our shared race while other informants might think that I was judging them because of our race
difference. Whatever the perspective, race was present because we were present, even before we spoke
the word- race. For example, I was particularly conscientious about my first interview with a White
male student. My strongest desire was to obtain useful descriptive data, so I wanted to negotiate my
racial identity in a way that would allow my informants-- and especially non-Black ones-- to be
comfortable enough to share openly.
This negotiation of my race presentation was important. I could not and would not
change the color of my skin, but I could somehow portray some kind of neutrality. This meant
wearing clothing that did not particularly reflect my culture. I did not wear t-shirts with political
statements, of which I had many. I kept my clothing simple—a basic pair of blue jeans, khaki
shorts, plain t-shirts, casual shirts, sneakers, and sandals. More than anything, my hair (in locs)
seemed to make me “cool.” I kept a light tone of voice and was careful to present open and
relaxed body language.
Yet, I was a part of their race talk. A section in the “Race Talk” chapter (5) describes how
I was involved in the talk of a focus group with students of color. The shared sense of
understanding about culture and our experiences with race/racism shaped our conversation. In
that case, it was a matter of comfort. However, in another focus group where Nic and Tom
shared lively discussion about racism, the shared understanding that caused Nic to exchange
stares with me as he argued points with Tom was particularly uncomfortable for me as the
researcher. As a Black man, I intuitively understood the stares to mean/communicate the
following at different points of the conversation: (1) Can you believe this? (2) Say something!
(3) Am I making sense? (4) Help me out here; (5) You understand what I’m saying, right? In
return, I communicated nothing. Looking away to view the tape recorder or returning blank
stares while allowing the exchanges between Nic and Tom to continue were likely unsettling to
Nic, but helped me to obtain rich data for analysis. However, it also left me with a feeling that I
had betrayed Nic in some way. This was the most unsettling feeling during my research
experience. I long for and resist the opportunity to share with Nic that I understood where he
was coming from.
Additionally, there were other moments, especially during interview sessions with my
informants individually, that I pondered how I might be perceived by every one of them. More
than my attempts to suspend or play down my race, were my efforts to connect with my
informants as students. This was an important reason for utilizing participant observation as a
research method also. I introduced myself to students (potential informants) as a “student”
conducting research. I was a “grad student” or a “doctoral student.” I talked about the
dissertation as an “assignment” that I was required to complete to earn my “Ph.D.” This use of
shared language (student, assignment) and the connotations I implied (that someone more
powerful than I was making me do something to get my degree), seemed to resonate with my
informants. Many of them wished me luck and cheered me on after our talks. I discussed the
“hard work” involved in accomplishing this assignment and they engaged me in conversation
about my educational journey. Yet, I wondered many times if my role as “doctoral student” and
researcher, and the ways that I presented my self made me “conceptually white” (LadsonBillings,
1998, p.9) in their eyes. How might this conception impact the ways that students spoke with
me? As some informants told me about their families and views their families held about race, I
wondered how visible my race was to them. I wondered if my conceptual whiteness had been at
work or their use of “distancing strategies” to defend their own “antiracist self concepts” (Case &
Hemmings, 2005, p.607). These considerations would direct my probing questions and add to
the ongoing analysis within the process of the interviews themselves. This additional labor to
understand how one is being raced within a research process about race is particularly significant
to this work. It is what I call meta-race labor. This labor includes the work of analysis without
offense, the ongoing work to suspend identifying with myself or seeing myself in relation to
others. It is an interception of identity and individuality. It is placing a pause on my
positionality, while considering its potential for prejudice. As a researcher who has had practice
with this through other projects during my studies, this labor sometimes becomes less conscious
and in that way less difficult. However, the labor of analyzing the analysis and the analyzer
requires a particular kind of energy and multi-layered thinking. As I listened to informants, I
considered their language, their positionality, my positionality, the interface of my race and
theirs, the related discourses and narratives that contextualized their meaning, the response of my
suspended yet un-dismissed racialized self, and what all of this meant for my research. Such
labor continued throughout the duration of this project.
SUMMARY
This chapter described the methods and procedures I used for the research I conducted for
this dissertation. It explained the two phases of my data collection during the Pre-First summer
program and the junior year of my cohort of Findings University students. Utilizing qualitative
research methods allowed me to collect descriptive data that exposed the meanings students
make about race. My methodology also allowed me to offer critical insights as the ‘researcher
and research’ in this process. This project draws from post-positivism, symbolic interactionism,
feminist methodology, and Critical Race Theory.
CHAPTER 4 [DATA CHAPTER]
COLORBLIND ENTRAPMENTS
This chapter explores discourses, the understanding and organization of knowledge that
emerges in spoken (and written) forms of language and is used as social practice (Wood & Kroger,
2000, p. 19). I use the vocabulary of social practice to describe what people do. This chapter
highlights the discourses that are present in students’ language to show how they construct
meaning about race. I especially demonstrate how some students minimize race and racism
through their “discursive formations” (Foucault, 1972) and how they negotiate racial identity and
post-racial dreams within the dominant context of colorblindness.
Foucault (1972) presents discourse as a way of representing knowledge in particular
historical moments as an exercise of power that regulates people’s understanding and behavior.
Further, language in discourse acts; it does something and has force (Hall, 1996; Potter &
Wetherell, 1987). Discourses discipline people’s thoughts and actions. As Biklen (1995) notes,
discourses are institutionalized and “shape how people understand the world and therefore how
they act in it” (p.81). Discourses determine acceptable ways of thinking, speaking and behaving,
while restricting other practices that do not fit those acceptable ways. Hall (1996), drawing from
Foucault, describes discourse as “a group of statements which provide the language for talking
about…a particular kind of knowledge about a topic” (p.201). So, for example today I overheard
a conversation between a group of friends—three men and three women—where a particular
discourse of masculinity was presented. The group had a brief debate about the movie “Jumping
the Broom.” One of the men maintained that it was a “bad” movie while another maintained that
it was “a good movie that dealt with issues.” The man who suggested the movie was “bad” said to
the other man: “You cannot say that was a good movie or other brothers will think you’re soft.”
Hence, meaning is constituted through the practice of language, through discourse. This works
through a shared relationship or pattern of the language used, the style and message in the
statements-- or discursive formation. It was not clear to me whether or not the speaker who framed
the discourse was aware of how he may have silenced critical dialogue and evaluation of various
themes from the movie being discussed or how he presented a particular kind of masculinity as
acceptable or that he made a particular discussion of a movie a subject that could measure
masculinity; but all of those actions were taken in his phrasing of what the other man could/not
say in order to be thought of in a particular way. As Foucault (1984) has noted: “People know
what they do; frequently they know why they do what they do; but what they don’t know is what
what they do does” (p. 95).
The discourses that shape the talk of 18 informants presented here offered critical insight to
my understanding of how students negotiate and construct their own meanings of Race. These
discourses reflect the U.S. racial hierarchy that places Whites at the center, makes them the norm,
or locates whiteness as the highest ideal, creating and perpetuating white dominance over all
Others. These discourses also articulate colorblindness that pervades our society. Sampson
(1993) states: “Talk is constitutive of the realities within which we live” (p.1221). What Sampson
means by this is that talk or the language of discourse is not just simply expressive but that it
shapes the way we understand our lives. Hence, I explore these discourses to understand the lived
race realities of these students. The discourses that students draw on are constitutive of their
everyday lives. All the data in this chapter are from the first phase of my study, where each
informant was interviewed individually during the summer preceding their full matriculation at
Findings University, during the Pre-First Program. In this chapter, data are organized to highlight the
themes of contemporary and color blind notions of race, as well as the spectrum of ideas reflected in the
students’ responses to questions about race, the diversity present in the Pre-First program, race matters in
college, and how their parents/family members think about race.
In this chapter, I argue that students are negotiating various constructions of race and
racism. We see this through their use of colorblind discourses that minimize race and racism, how
they frame relationships through family portraits, and how they express identity or their
aspirations for identity. The first section of this chapter presents data that demonstrate students’
articulation of colorblind discourse and desire for a “post-racial” society. The second section
reveals how race is made visible and confronted by the myth of colorblindness within
relationships. In the third section, the data exhibit the ways that Asian Americans, Black
Americans, and White Americans wrestle with or affirm their identities in response to the racial
environment. In this process, students’ talk reflects and re/produces postmodern racial selves—
fractured and destabilized. The students articulate re/constructions of what it means to be
identified with their race category and their desire to take charge of new constructions. These
identity and discourse constructions reveal how Asian/Asian American students negotiate their
place in the Black-White binary of U.S. racial politics and how Black students examine the racial
landscape in search of a new blackness, in their attempts to negotiate colorblindness. These
constructions also reveal how White American students resist their whiteness as a way of imposing
colorblindness. Before I move to the first section, I give an overview of colorblind discourse.
Colorblind discourse asserts a race-neutral society where race does not matter. Differences
associated with race should be ignored as unimportant. In this context, people who attempt to
discuss race or the inequalities that result from racism are stigmatized (Bonilla-Silva, 2001, 2003;
Crenshaw, 1997). Yet, colorblind discourse allows for cultural explanations to replace biological
explanations for racial disparities. Several studies indicate that colorblind discourse is
prominently used and sanctioned by educators in diverse school environments as well as “almost
white” school environments (Lewis, 2001; Pollock, 2004; Schofield, 2001). This approach
disallows any productive attention to race and diminishes the realities of social life and evidences
of patterns of racism or racist thinking and their reproduction in schools.
Bonilla-Silva (2006) argues that “frames” comprise one element of racial discourse.
Colorblind racial discourse has a frame or “path for interpreting information” that minimizes
racism (p. 26). This frame suggests that discrimination is no longer a central factor that impacts
the lives of people of color. Within this frame of minimizing racism is a strategy of downplaying
race as a significant social element within a system and society that is perpetually racist/white
supremacist. By downplaying race as a significant element in society and social relations, people
can minimize the discourse that comes with it, i.e. racism and its real consequences for subjugated
people in the racial hierarchy of this country. The racial hierarchy is ignored or confused. Power
is masked by colorblind discourse.
I. Colorblind Discourse and the Minimization of Race
One aspect of colorblindness is a discourse of sameness that trumps all difference that
racial hierarchy and history have created within the experiences of people who identify differently
across the race categories. For example, opportunities for acquiring a college education and
substantial wealth are presented as equal opportunities for every American regardless of their race.
The history of segregation and unequal labor laws and practice based on race is ignored as having
no impact on the present. Hence, with the presupposition that there is equality in the present
(which is not true), neglecting the past suggests that we are all the same with unimportant
decorative differences. Similarly, acknowledging a racist past while denying its legacy in the
present or its contemporary persistence superimposes a fantastical notion of social truth over
current race realities. Our social reality of race is reduced to the arbitrary variances in skin color
among different groups of people. Colorblind discourse insists that it is the acknowledgement of
race that creates differences or divisions among human beings. In this study, informants from all
racial backgrounds tended to minimize race in their initial responses to discuss their thoughts on
race, or to identify themselves racially. This is what is expected in a society reliant on colorblind
discourse. However, the meanings of this minimization differed for students depending on their
own racial identities.
In this section, I explore the discourse eight informants used to minimize race. These
students, who represent a cross-section of racial and ethnic backgrounds, demonstrate talk about
race as an arbitrary social element that does not or should not matter. Some talked about race as
inconsequential. Others talked about it as something that is “overemphasized,” or a misnomer to
be dismissed as inaccurate and passé. They used common themes of race as an unimportant label
to categorize people, or referred to the sameness of all people. Yet the meanings of these
discourses are not common among them. Many students took a defensive approach in their
comments and others, who attempted to embrace difference, demonstrated wavering commitments
to sameness and difference. Students of color attempt to neutralize racism by proclaiming the
humanity and inherent equality of all people. White students attempt to diminish the visibility of
race and minimize the present reality and effects of racism, using colorblindness to maintain white
dominance. The informants’ narratives amplify negotiated discourses of colorblindness. These
discourses are so pervasive and dominant in our society that every individual must negotiate them
in some way.
We’re just human…
Rolando lived in Queens, NY four years before matriculating at Findings University. Born
in Ecuador, he lived there until migrating to Queens, NY. Rolando, whom I observed as having a
lightly tanned complexion, described the racial mix of the Pre-First Program students and staff as a
“good thing” because it provided an opportunity to learn “more about the world, more about other
cultures, more about other people.” With these global interests, Rolando took a universalist
approach to identifying himself racially. By universalist, I mean the approach that sees all as one,
without individual differences. Rolando identified himself “as a human being.” He resisted race
as an identity marker for himself, stating
I don’t think race can change you, can make you different. I think that everyone
is similar even though we speak different languages or have different cultures. We’re still
human beings so…
Rolando seemed committed to humanist, universalist notions of race or racelessness, as he
continued on to say that “Your skin color don’t make any difference. You’re still being a human,
you’re still a person, so it doesn’t matter.” However, when prodded to share what he thought of
race more directly, he responded:
I think that it’s something that defines an individual. The culture, the customs, something
like that. I guess it’s that. Or something to separate human beings, like to separate
different races, like White people, Black people, Spanish people. Like something just
used to separate people.
Rolando saw race as a social instrument with the distinct function of separating or categorizing
people. He frowned on this idea of making distinctions between people. Although Rolando was
the only one to identify himself as a “human being,” there were other informants who responded
that race was something used to separate people. That would be racism.
No big deal…
Bill, a Caucasian male from a “really white” suburb outside of Buffalo, NY, also
minimized race as a social element used to create distinctions and divisions. He noted briefly that
race “kinda divides people a lot” and he tried not to separate himself from interacting with others
who are identified racially as different from him. For Bill, race was no longer significant because
he did not allow it to separate him from people with racial identities different from his own. His
thinking about race is connected to his ability or the ability of others to interact freely.
I like to mingle, so I don’t see [race] like obstacle as like, like it used to be. Like I read
history books and stuff about segregation and divisions in schools and all that kind of stuff,
but um. I don’t know. I tend to get along with all different kinds of people so it’s not a big
deal for me in my life…. I think it’s not a big deal anymore.
Bill described race as something that is no longer a “big deal” because he believes that it no longer
segregates people, solely based on his desire not to allow race to prevent him from interacting
with difference. He sees race as having a historical past of dividing people without such effect in
the present, based on his choice as an individual to mingle with others. Hence, race is no longer
significant, Billy claimed, because he was able to legally and conscientiously interact with people
of color. Billy relies on colorblindness that presents contemporary race relations as a “new day”
of erased racial differences and harmonious integration. He speaks from his own experience,
shaped by white privilege where race is “not a big deal for [him] in [his] life.” Billy reflected on
the abolishment of segregation and the amicable cross-cultural interactions he has experienced as
a post Civil Rights young person as symbols of the end of racism.
This theme of race no longer having significance was the most pervasive theme in the
interview data. Most students (from diverse backgrounds) expressed that race was not important
to them personally and that it no longer mattered in society as it did in the past. All of these frames
were used to minimize race and racism in contemporary society. The following responses
demonstrate this view from a White male perspective:
…It’s not an issue for me, to be honest with you. Um, I guess, I don’t know, I don’t
really know how to describe it. It’s just been a problem. Like, there are stereotypes,
granted, but I don’t think much of them…
Well, I think in Pre-First [diversity is]…probably overemphasized. All of our classes
have like a theme of dealing with race and like I don’t think that’s a bad thing especially
at a school as diverse as Findings…. Cause I guess it’s good but I think it’s just
overemphasized.
- - Tom, White male
I think race is, I think race is an exaggerated issue at times. I think a lot of people give
too much thought into it. In the end it’s like, if somebody’s cool they’re cool. You
know? Who cares, I think, ah, I think there’s a lot of racism in the world and it kind of
makes me sick at times ‘cause I never had, um, not friends but a lot of people who I
know I hear them throw around racial slurs and, um, it , I don’t really say anything to
them but it kinda just makes me look at them like they’re ignorant.
- Don, White male
Don and Tom talked about race as an overemphasized topic in the Pre-First Program. While both
White males also recognized the perpetuation of stereotypes and the ongoing use of racial slurs,
they minimized these realities and suggested that less discussion and attention on race would be
best. This kind of double talk to minimize race and racism is further explored in Chapter 5.
In the past…
Geoff, a Caucasian male from New York City, used similar language as he concluded his
ideas about race.
It has history to it, um, I think the more we move on, I think race is becoming less and less
of a, is more and more of a non-issue…It’s a really dead issue… So you walk around and
it’s just, race is just, it’s like another word almost. (laughs) And it might as well just be,
become a sound, not even a word. It doesn’t mean anything.
Geoff’s language suggests that race did mean something at one time. But it no longer does. It has
“history” but now it is “dead,” meaningless and hardly utterable. This idea of giving race
utterance becomes an important theme in some informants’ talk, which I will explore in chapter 5
(Race Talk). Geoff later gave examples of the “non-issue” that race has become, citing the
interracial dating he has experienced and associations he has made with biracial people that
contribute to his cosmopolitan friendships. Geoff stated that he “needs” diversity because New
York City has always offered that to him.
This discourse of race as passé was presented by Black informants as well, though
expressed differently, from a different stance, and with other motivations.
I know the past about race and prejudice and all that stuff, but I say, you know, let the
past be the past. And race, I see you as a family member, you know… If you’re willing
to sit down, you know, [converse] with me, I consider it like a friend, a family member. I
don’t’ look at your race no matter what you are…
- Terrence, Black Latino male
Race, I just see as something that…It’s just a word. Like, ok, you’re Black, you’re
Spanish. But what are we after you look past that? What are we? People. And we all do
the same things. A lot of us like the same things no matter what color, what race, where
(we) come from. We like to do…a lot of us play basketball, softball…whatever the case
may be, we like to have fun the same way. And of course we’ve got a few areas where we
like to do different things. But same things, it’s just the color of our skin. We just happen
to have more melanin than some people, but that’s just how it works out.
- Natasha, Black American female
Terrence expressed his blindness to color and his desire to develop authentic relationships
with anyone across racial categories through dialogue. He spoke about race and prejudice as a
past reality. He talked about race as a static symbol of past injustices that has no relevance today.
Natasha, a Black American female, shared her thoughts about the insignificance of race as skin
color. She emphasized a discourse of sameness shared by all human beings. When Natasha said
that race is “just a word,” she explained that she views it as nothing more than a way to label or
categorize people based on skin color. Natasha chose to focus on ways that different “races” of
people are the same, for example in their appreciation of sports and fun. While she acknowledged
difference, she maintained that people of different races as we understand them are only different
(in perhaps a visible though insignificant way) because of skin color. Melanin is the cause of this
difference; and Natasha’s use of the term reflects some understanding of how biology is used to
affect people’s thoughts about race generally.
At first, these discourses of race as passé and insignificant terminology seemed to be only
wrapped up in the discourse of colorblindness that pervades society and the educational
experience of these students. Not only were White students impacted, but Black, Latino, and
Asian American students as well. This demonstrates the power of colorblind discourses to
discipline the ways that these students talked about race. However, there was a nuanced difference
in the way that these students of color, including Rolando, spoke about their intention and desire
for colorblindness. Terrence urged us to “let the past be the past” with the memory of historical
American racism that positioned him as a less-than-human subject and a threat to overt white
racial power. So, he talks about “friendship” and “family” as present possibilities against the
backdrop of color as an “enemy” of whiteness, racial purity, and civility. Likewise, Rolando
asserts humanity to discount the dehumanization of people of color based on their darker hue. The
humanity and commonality among human beings to socialize and enjoy similar activities are
presented by these students to defend their equality as persons, rather than discount the inequities
produced by racism. “We just happen to have more melanin than some people” is a statement that
can be read as resisting racism and white supremacy because it at once recognizes a shared
biological substance among human beings (melanin) and suggests that the varying amounts of it is
what some have used as a foundation for belief about “races” of people. Presenting melanin as a
common element in biology and the amount of its distribution as a minor effect in genetic
processes, makes racial determinism and white supremacy seem petty. These students are
delivering a neutralizing, pro-equality message that asserts humanity over race.
Essentially Speaking…
Even when students could acknowledge race, they simplified and minimized it in
essentialist ways. For example, two informants talked about the dividing or separating function of
race without negativity. However, they viewed differences between groups of people in
essentialist ways, believing that that there is some essence shared by various groups of people that
should not matter enough to make one race better than another. This view is represented by both
Amy and Jossette, who spoke of race in essentialist terms.
I think it’s very distinguished. It’s something that’s part of you, but it’s nothing that should
impair any kind of judgment [of people]. Like, I have huge respect for everyone, for all
life…. To me race is not an issue. It should not be an issue. It should be something that
identifies people not the other way around where it’s stereotypical at all. That’s what I
think.
- Amy, a Chinese American Asian
Race? Distinguishes who you are. I like going to things like I don’t know. Asian and like
Chinese food… Ah, I don’t mean, like, I mean food distinguishes like each other, like
culture. Like, you know, dancing, or hip hop, you know what I mean?
- Jossette, a Latino and American female
These comments were grounded in the idea that race as a characteristic of identity that sets
one individual apart from another; that race does the work of distinguishing someone.
Essentialism suggests that race has an essence, some fixed, object thing that makes one “race”
essentially different from another. The ideas Amy and Jossette express resonate with an
essentialist approach to understanding race. Much of the critique on race essentialism focuses on
fixed notions of race established in biological science, i.e. skin color (Omi and Winant, 1994;
Moya and Hames-Garcia, 2004). However, race as essence can be applied to other characteristics
as well. Jossette, who was president of the Latin-American Club in high school, began to talk
about culture as she tried to make sense of her thoughts regarding race. She based her perspective
on cultural artifacts like food, dance, music and lifestyle to explain how we can distinguish
between the races. In her comments, Jossette conflated and essentialized culture with/as race.
This approach is problematic because it raises further questions about race and could be used as a
tool to uphold racist ideas. Is an individual less Asian if s/he does not eat or cook Asian cuisine?
Do dancing and Hip Hop allow us to determine if an individual is Black?
Jossette did not essentialize race with skin color as many of the other informants did. She
suggested that cultures provided the difference between races. However, she went on to reinforce
the sameness discourse even as she acknowledged difference.
Ah, it doesn’t distinguish them because we’re all, you know, the same…But, I mean like,
diversity can be, you know, it would be boring if everyone was just one thing. Like, every
distinct, not distinct, but it makes you different, in a good way.
Like Amy, Jossette believed that these essences of difference are “good” and should not make
people treat each other differently. The struggle to negotiate discourses of sameness on one hand
and race difference that celebrates diversity on the other hand was apparent in Jossette’s comment.
This struggle to make sense of race as a concept without an essence but having a social function
(significant or not) seemed to be the critical activity for these informants, reflecting the tension
between unity among and division between groups of people. Yet, the students were aware that
constructions of race are built on skin color, geographical or national origin, tastes, culture, and
customs, among other things.
In this section, I demonstrated how informants from across the racial spectrum minimized
the salience of race. They employed discourses that upheld the notion of a colorblind society.
These discourses included discounting the social significance of race by concealing it in the
humanity of all people, viewing race as an artifact of society’s past, and articulating race as a
positive descriptor of cultural essence. Some students of color used similar language that White
students employed in their minimization tactics, but for the purpose of neutralizing racist
discourse. The informants took an individualized or personalized stance regarding the
significance of race and presented sentiments of race insignificance based on their desire to project
a self-image that was “colorblind,” though with mixed motives. Their language reflected a
discourse of post-racial desire (all informants) and present racial denial for themselves and society
(especially White informants).
Minimizing race and racism is just one of the colorblind entrapments demonstrated in the
discourse of my informants. In the next section, I will show how dysconscious racism, which I
will define below, operated within family portraits of these informants to maintain a less visible
racial hierarchy of eligible associations and relationships. The family backgrounds of these
informants reinforce racism and reveal the racialized picture of the informants themselves. I will
also show how racism, when internalized by people of color who claim colorblind perspectives, is
contorted to meet the demands of colorblind discourse.
II. Family Portraits
In this section, I present informants’ representations of racism through six sets of parents
or family members as they were portrayed by the informants. These informants provided the
richest data and compelling stories about their family’s or parents’ views about race. Their
comments were in response to my question: What do you think your parents think of race? The
themes that emerged from all the informants’ responses are captured in the data presented here. I
have chosen to use the motif of portraits- negatives and frames- to convey underlying themes
about the picture of race, through the informants’ eyes. The critical conclusions that are drawn
must center on the informants themselves. While providing a snap shot of their family’s views,
the informants widened my view of their racial pixilation which includes their family discourses
on race matters. How informants negotiate these discourses animates their own racial
constructions. I assert that the informants reflect “dysconscious racism” and “internalized racism”
in their family portraits (King, 1991; Watts-Jones, 2002).
King (1991) describes dysconsciousness as “uncritical habit of mind” that accepts the
existing order of things or the status quo and dysconscious racism as a form of racism that “tacitly
accepts dominant White norms and privileges” (p. 135). This form of racism does not mean a lack
of consciousness but an uncritical identification with the social order. This kind of racism does
not allow subjects to recognize injustices in the world much less to act against them. Such
dysconsciousness also serves to hide beliefs that govern interpersonal dynamics from evaluation
as racist, even if there are messages that counter such beliefs, i.e. colorblind ideologies. Watts-
Jones (2002) describes racism as the “institutionalized emotional, cognitive, behavioral, and social
policy practices that assume and/or promote the cultural, biological, and socioeconomic
superiority of people of European descent (p. 592).” Watts-Jones suggests people of color may
either actively reject racism or internalize it. Internalized racism can be described as the
identification with or the incorporation of racist beliefs, white norms and Eurocentric views; as
well as accepting negative messages about subjugated people in the racial hierarchy (Akbar, 1996;
Fanon, 1963, 1967; Jones, 2000; Watts-Jones, 2002; Yamato, 1998). Though the term is mostly
used to describe the phenomenon experienced by some people of color, racism can be internalized
by Whites as well (who are commonly called “racist” when this internalization is evidenced).
Internalization of white superiority for Whites suggests belief and commitments to racism as right
and natural. For Whites, internalizing racism may be empowering and enjoyable. However, for
people of color it leads to self-degradation, assumptive inferiority, and self-hatred. Hence the
internalization of racism has different consequences for Whites and for people of color,
consequences that have severe repercussions. Examples of internalized racism among people of
color include engaging in risky health behaviors as a result of devaluing self-worth, attempting to
look or act more white by bleaching the skin or disconnecting socially from other race/ethnic
group members, or implementing “colorism”- the social stratification by gradations or skin tone
(light to dark) in communities of color (Herring, 2004).
These issues are present in the family portraits outlined below and clarify my analysis of the
informants’ views. Negotiations of discourses, ideologies and worldviews are illuminated as a
result. This demonstrates the ongoing racial formations and constructions even at the micro levels
of society.
A. Friendship and Dating Frames
Here I introduce the portraits of 3 families as described by the students who reflected on
friendship and dating codes in response to my inquiry about their parents’ views about race. In
section A, I present data from three informants (two White males and one Latina) who describe
their family’s or parents’ view about friendships or dating relationships. Then in section B, I
present data from three students of color who interrogate their family’s or parents’ views from a
particular generational stance. Rather than a response to direct questions about friends,
boyfriends, and girlfriends, these comments were offered as key pieces of evidence to (un)frame
their parents/grandparents as racists. The family portraits examined here demonstrate that the U.S.
American racial hierarchy dominates people’s psyche in conscious and dysconscious ways that set
parameters for friendship and dating relationships within family practice. “Friendship and dating
frames,” as themes of my study, suggest that these relationships were used to define the picture of
race that these informants developed with their parents.
Don’s Family-
Don’s discussion of the views of his parents revealed his own views and reflected the types
of social interactions that were acceptable in his White family. Race was framed in binaries and a
false notion of a purity that should be protected to perpetuate the family racial portrait.
My parents, I think, ah, that some of my parent, my, um, my family is a little bit racial but
my parents, no. My parents, ah, my parents just have one request, I don’t, it’s not racist
it’s just I think they want a similarity in the family and one request was, don’t bring a
girlfriend of, um, pretty much the opposite color. Don’t bring home an African-
American girl. That’s pretty much my mother’s only request as far as race goes. She said,
you can be friends with them, all kinds of races but when it comes, but, you know. I want
some grandchildren who will remind me of me. So, that’s what she kinda said.
Although Don described his larger family as being “a little bit racial,” he juxtaposed that his
parents are not so. Then he described the “one request” made by his mother to perpetuate the
family’s racial legacy. He continued to qualify the behaviors in his narrative with modifiers such
as “it’s not racist it’s just,” or “pretty much my mother’s only request.” These modifiers were all
part of Don’s strategy to minimize the power of his family’s racism in the portrait he shared.
“Don’t bring home an African American girl,” his mother said. I asked Don what he thought of
this view. He replied that he agreed and that he did not prefer African American women so his
mother “didn’t really have anything to worry about.” However he continued to explain a structure
of preferences that reflect a system of racial and color hierarchy in his family that he tacitly
accepted. Don “preferred” White women and told me that he could “possibly” date a Hispanic
woman. He explained that his preference was based on “similarity.”
The majority of people I’ve seen in my, as growing up because, you know, you grow up
at home with brothers, sisters, parents of your same, um, of your same race and so then I
think you can actually develop a greater attraction to that race.
I believe that on the majority scale, um, you don’t see too much of white interaction with
black when it comes to dating. Not that there’s anything wrong with it but it’s just not
common but when it comes to Hispanic, ah, people from Hispanic descent they can go
traditionally, tend to go either direction. I mean sort of like, like neutral, like a neutral
race thing. Pretty much has never been judged of going either way.
Don attempted to present a normalized and uncritical view of “allowable” interracial dating. He
tried to explain that same race attraction is based on familiarity, that he was inclined to reproduce
the racial composition of his family in his dating life. Yet African Americans were the problem.
Don was mystified by blackness. He claimed not to see White-Black couples as much as other
interracial dating scenarios. He viewed Hispanics as a “neutral” ethnic group that is allowed to
date the racial polar opposite groups: Black and White. However, Black-White interracial dating
was off limits.
Before I asked Don what he thought his parents think about race, I asked what he thought.
Don diminished any significance of race in his own life in terms of relationships with others.
I think race is, I think race is an exaggerated issue at times. I think a lot of people give too
much thought into it. In the end it’s like, if somebody’s cool they’re cool. You know, who
cares…
Supposedly, Don didn’t care about race. However, after he shared his parents’ views, which
reflected his own, and I asked for other thoughts he might have about race, he said he did not have
much else to offer. This talk demonstrates how Don not only exposed but shifted his family’s
code regarding race but also used this code of conduct to frame his parents as the ones who were
more concerned with race than he was. In actuality, he used his parents’ views to mediate his own
racially narcissistic ideas. Although Don demonstrated dysconsciousness about his (and his)
family’s racism, he sought to negotiate these ideas in the context of a society and campus program
where colorblind discourse dominates political correctness. By doing so, he aimed to distance
himself from racial exaggerations that are white supremacist or racist in their construction.
Jennifer’s Family
Jennifer, a Latina raised in Puerto Rico, framed her mother in a different way than Don did.
In Jennifer’s case, her mother’s views did not match her own and created problems for their
relationship. However, similar to Don’s parents, Jennifer’s mother had clear ideas about a racial
hierarchy for Jennifer’s dating life.
My mom is the only racist person in Puerto Rico I have ever met…
And we had a lot of conflicts because of that because I’m a very open person and my
exboyfriend was Black and yeah a little bit of conflict there. She says, she says, it’s funny
what she says, she says, I’m not racist but I don’t want to see my daughter with a Black
guy. Well what are you then? You know?
Jennifer called her mother out as a “racist person.” Later in the conversation, Jennifer also shared
that her mother is “open” with Black men in friendships but when it comes to romantic
relationships, “she doesn’t let it pass.” This was a similar stance that Don and his parents took,
permitting interracial friendships but placing clear limits on sexual or romantic interactions. As a
Latina, Jennifer’s mother adopted racial ideologies and discourses that she utilized to set social
parameters for herself and her daughter. Noted below is a thread of the conversation that
demonstrates the recurring theme of racial hierarchy and colorism that is present in the Latino
community.
I asked: How does your mom feel about that, if you were to have a white boyfriend?
She’d be great with it. The first thing, it’s weird, the first thing she asked me when, before I
had my boyfriend well I’m going out with this guy. The first question she would ask me is,
is he White, is he Black, is his, is his hair? ‘Cause in Puerto Rico we say bad or good. Is
his hair bad?
But what kind of hair would be bad?
Like her definition, like straight hair would be good and like curly hair would be bad. Like
that, bad hair good hair.
This theme of “good” and “bad” hair is an old recurring trope among people of African descent
and racial/ethnic groups that serves as identity marker, status and race identity politics. A Latina’s
rejection of curly hair as “bad” demonstrates a rejection of Black or African connections and
preference for White. These comments only affirm a hierarchy and normalcy of White superiority
in notions of beauty. Jennifer’s mother even displayed a racial aesthetic phobia in the choosing of
a dating mate for her daughter and herself. Jennifer’s mother’s issues reflected an internalization
of racism, which Jennifer rejected.
Geoff’s Family-
Finally, Geoff discussed the dynamics of his family around racial themes, including his
White grandfather’s and mother’s responses to his Black and Hispanic friends, as well as his
grandfather’s relationship with Geoff’s Jewish father. In this case, we find that although he
recognized the racialized frames in which his grandfather operated, Geoff retreated from
challenging his grandfather on his angles of racism. Further, Geoff resisted calling his family
members racist and used more neutralizing terms that helped him negotiate all the relationships he
wished to maintain.
My mom, though, who’s influenced a lot from my grandfather, who’s 93 who she
basically, yeah her father. Who she basically nurses, he’s so conservative it hurts. Like I
have, I went, I’ll bring, ah, I’ll have a few friends over, black and Hispanic whatever and
he’ll say to my mom, which my mom will relay back to me, that I had some thugs over to
the house…
Geoff chose to characterize his grandfather’s stereotypical criminalization of his Black and
Hispanic friends as “conservative.” He went on to provide a specific example of another
interaction between his grandfather and one of his friends where his friend was stereotyped again.
His example demonstrated his grandfather’s commitment to seeing young people of color in a
particular way, framing them as people of the streets- gangsters and thugs.
If I’m not at the house and my friends, this actually happened, this one friend of mine, ah,
he is Columbian. He came over to my house in a pair of jeans, like a big jersey, like a
throwback jersey, you know, style and a, um, and a baseball cap on. I come home like 5
hours later, he was told that I wasn’t there. My grandfather who lives with us, he, um, he
told ‘em I wasn’t there but I come home and my mom says, your grandfather told me that
a gangster came over here looking for you and I’m like, and that’s no shit, like. (laughs)
First of all I don’t know any gangsters and secondly, how, when I do find out, when I did
find out who it was he was talking about when I realized it was my friend Todd. I said,
how can you generalize my friends especially him who, who of all people is not like
closest to the streets of all the people I know. How are you gonna call him a gangster?
Like, he just came here looking for me. I called up Todd, what did you ask, what did you
say when you came to the door? He said, I just asked if Geoff was there. Because he, he
was intimated when my grandfather was at the door. An old white man, like, I’m not sure,
I’m not trying to make it a race thing but my friend from Columbia from Queens comes
into the city walking in the neighborhood where I live coming into the apartment where I
live, having the door opened by an old white man is not the most welcoming thing. So, I
was like, I went back to my mom and I said, you have to tell him something. You have to
tell him not to, not to generalize people like that, like that’s not. He’s not a gangster, he
has no reason for him to think he was a gangster. He didn’t ask for any money, didn’t
have a gun in his pocket he didn’t do anything. He just, he was not trying to do anything
but find where I was.
Geoff described how the grandfather stereotyped his friend as a street thug without reason (except
racism). Geoff shared that most of his friends are Black and Hispanic (or Latino). Therefore, his
mother had to be exposed to them as Geoff participated in a variety of activities with his friends.
After one of his spring break trips with his friends, his mother actually thanked him “for letting me
see what they’re really like.” However, Geoff’s grandfather’s “conservative” and racist thinking
seemed to be well internalized.
I don’t know what my mom thinks anymore, I mean after that, whatever. (laughs) It’s, it’s
really, it’s not brought up too much ever at all. But I know that my grandfather, he, old-
fashioned as hell, he’s 93, old-fashion as hell. He, ah, very conservative. All he cares
about is White, Christian, straight people, that’s about it and I just don’t know where my
mom is. (laughs) She’ll sway back and forth, sometimes she’ll agree with him sometimes
she’ll agree with the rest of the world. She’s a White, Christian…
Geoff painted his grandfather in interlocking frames that suggest a narrow view on race, religion
and sexuality. It seemed Geoff’s mother shared similar views. The grandfather was
“oldfashioned” and “conservative”—coded language for a man who maintains old explicitly racist
ideas that he vocalizes. Geoff is unable to admit this, however. Geoff’s mother was influenced by
the ideologies represented by her father and embodied in her person as a White Christian woman.
This is especially important to Geoff’s family experience when we consider that his father, the
man his mother was once married to, is a Jewish man. I picked up on this and encouraged him to
say more.
Yeah that came up, well my parents are separated for reasons relating to my grandfather
and again my grandfather. My mom takes a lot from my grandfather, meaning she takes a
lot of his views… she’s very easy to manipulate. I remember the almost like the last time
I really saw my mom and dad really together in an official marriage she says, she called
him a kike. I found out two years ago, they’ve been separated for like 8 years. I’ve had
like two, 12, 10, years, I find out two years ago that my grandfather, my mom’s dad wrote
my father a letter back like 15, no. Like, a couple of decades ago, it was when they first
got married or whatever and he told me the contents of this letter which were ridiculous.
He said, um, you’re marrying her, okay that’s cool. I just want you to know that I don’t
like it and I said, he would come over, he’d come over for my, my father would go over,
we all go over to my grandfather’s house, Christmas, like, whatever. My grandfather
would just basically slight him supposedly. He would say things like really nasty stuff
there in front of everybody in my mom’s family almost making him a scene, making him,
like. You might as well put him in the, um, a ___ ___ like in the street having his head in
arms locked up, tomatoes thrown at him and stuff like that. He was making him a public
mockery…
Geoff’s comments provided a clear sense of how these views have been shared within the family
and their impact on the current family structure—of major consequence to Geoff. He had been
witness to racial epithets shared between members of his family. Race and racism had been
present in the family’s history and exhibited at family gatherings. His grandfather was actively
anti-semitic toward his father and made a spectacle of him before the family. Geoff’s response
and awareness demonstrated his retreat from confronting all that his grandfather especially
represented. He would not take a stand for his father or his friends, while he framed his
grandfather’s old-fashioned, “conservative” views as persistent, permanent, and perhaps too strong
to do anything about. These perpetually racist views were in the fabric of his family structure, like
it is in our nation’s history; and perhaps the best way he thought he could handle it was to
negotiate his postmodern and liberal ideas around them.
He was making him a public mockery and like, whatever I don’t, I don’t think that. I
don’t believe in “an enemy of a friend is an enemy” and all that stuff. An enemy of me is
an enemy, a friend of mine is a friend, that’s all it is. So, I, I just, I let go but I think about
it and I just realize that people, people are gonna be the way they are. (laughs) And that I
just react to it, I’m not, I’ve learned not to let my grandfather see the friends that I bring
over sometimes. I’ll say to my friends, run into my room, don’t let him see you basically
and. But as far as my mom and my dad, my dad it’s again like race, it’s a non-issue like it
doesn’t matter to him so much. It’s just my grandfather.
By framing his grandfather as the only person with an issue, Geoff absolved himself and others of
any responsibility in the manifestation of racism. The cost to his friends or his father was not
measured in any way. Geoff was dysconscious about the injustices his father continues to suffer.
He denied complicity and collusion. The issue was not named, but excused. Although it may
have been difficult to negotiate the dynamics of family relations, Geoff took a passive position in
all the stories he shared. Families create environments for children and youth that are difficult to
challenge. Although Geoff expresses some disdain for the racism that his grandfather sometimes
demonstrated, he was unable to confront him directly without compromise in some way. He
settled it with “People are gonna be the way they are.” Therefore, when his friends came to visit,
Geoff hid them from his grandfather. Seemingly, Geoff protected his friends from the grandfather.
Or perhaps he protected his grandfather’s emotional stability from his friends. Yet another
possibility is that Geoff protected himself from the work of uncovering and dismantling the racism
within his family’s psyche and micro-interactions with others.
B. Negatives
“Racism is a principle of social domination in which a group that is seen as inferior or different
because of presumed biological or cultural characteristics is oppressed, controlled, and exploited-
socially, economically, culturally, politically, psychologically- by a dominant group.” - William
Julius Wilson
It is important that I revisit the definitions of racism that I utilize for this dissertation to
properly articulate the concept I introduce in this section. Racism as a principle of domination
underscores the element of power that provides the context for relationships and shared
understanding of race. This important element of power does not find a place in the families
portrayed in the following pieces. However, the internalization of some aspects of racism is
manifested in the stories that are told. These students provide insight into their understanding of
race and racism as they reflect on the views of race they believe their families hold.
In photography, “negatives” are those film strips that capture the image in color reversal,
making light images appear dark and dark areas appear light. I use this concept of the negative to
explore the family views as represented by the informants in this section and to provide a sense of
the skewed comprehension of racism and prejudice by students of color. I take a brief look at the
picture of racial discourse portrayed by the families of three African American informants--
Clayton, Leslie and Natasha. As I explore the views of their parents, grandparents or other family
members, I work to show the ways that generations experience and interpret race and its racism
differently.
Clayton’s Family –
Clayton discussed his parents’ views about race, locating their views geographically and
temporally. While time and place were reflected in ideas about race for his parents’ generation,
Clayton did not use these elements to let them off the hook but continued to question their
perspective on the matter.
Well, okay, like my mom is like, not my mom, but family, ‘cause the family thing seeing
that they’re from the south, they experienced race, racism is deep in the south. And so,
you know… they will say, oh, that’s a Black man or a White man, you know, they see their
face. They see difference.
Clayton seemed to understand that his family holds a perspective that differs from his based on
their experience with race and racism in a region of the country that has a history of overt
discrimination during the 1950’s and 1960’s. Clayton captured the particular brand of southern
racism as “deep.” Clayton’s comment that his family sees the faces of Black and White people
and sees the difference made a statement about his aspiration not to see race. He had been
impacted to some extent by colorblind discourses. However, I still wanted to understand more
clearly what he meant by seeing difference and more about his parents’ view of race and how it
has influenced or shaped his ideas in some way. The following excerpts of the conversation will
explain with greater accuracy just what Clayton meant.
[My family] knows what race is and it does play a part in their judgments of people. It
does. That’s what I mean by they recognize what race is and they know what race is. Ah,
there’s… That’s a White person, a Black person, a Japanese person. You know? They will
recognize it, they don’t just see it as a person.
Is that different from how you see race?
Is that different from what I see? Yes, the simple fact is I’m re-educating myself not to see
race. I’m trying to change myself not to see that, that’s just a white person so I’m expected
to be at this level and they need to be here. You know? Or that’s a Black person, expected
to be down here or, you know… still typical thing about race.
Clayton’s family saw race by their application of racial ideas, judgments, and discourses to those
raced persons they saw. Clayton did not simply wish to ignore race, but he wished not to
internalize the dominant messages that accompanied the racial hierarchy in this country—
messages that placed him in an inferior position. In contrast to his family, Clayton wanted to see
race without seeing racial status or associating people with racist ideas of who they are and the
kind of life they lead. He wanted to disentangle race from racist views. He explained further…
Well sometimes like, you know, sometimes my mom will see, not my mom, my parents,
my family would see, you know, a typical Black person and say well “Maybe he’s a
thug” or something like that. Or they see a certain White person and say “Maybe he’s a
businessman” or something like that. And I said, what does that mean? I mean, what is
that, and I’m trying to re-educate myself. No, that’s not White, they could be opposite,
you never know. So I’m trying to re-educate myself and sometimes my mom will see
that but most of the time, you know, she sees other things…
Clayton clarified that his family does not simply make judgments about different racial groups, but
that their judgments are reflections of a racial ideological structure. More than stereotypes of
racial groups, Clayton’s family members adopted binaries of good vs. bad or successful vs. failing
or superior vs. inferior. These values are aligned with a system of white supremacy and racism.
Clayton’s family members have internalized racism and Clayton desired to break away from that
kind of thinking that reflected an internalization of racial discourses which maintain the status
quo. This self “re-education” was about seeing others and himself in ways that were free of unfair
and inaccurate expectations. Clayton went on to explain that he had many eye opening
experiences that helped him to reevaluate some of his thoughts about race.
Leslie’s Parents-
“Sometimes they are racists.” Leslie portrayed his parents as similar to other people who
describe their experiences in racialized ways and who are in fact “racists” from his view. What
did this mean for Leslie, an African American and Asian male, to state that his parents are racists?
Well, for them they’re the ones who taught me that everybody is different. Like,
sometimes they, they are racists like they’ll say like. They’ll say little things like don’t
chill with these Black kids, they’re bad influences and stuff. But, I know where they’re
coming from ‘cause I’ve seen like some of these kids join gangs and stuff like that so I
see where they’re coming from but like they’re just like everybody else kinda if like they
still make those stereotypical comments and stuff, but, I understand it’s from experience.
Leslie both accused his parents then excused them when he said that some of the kids that his
parents warned him to stay away from actually behaved in ways his parents were concerned about.
However, it seemed that either prejudgment or the simple acknowledgement of race was “racist”
for Leslie. I wanted to understand more about these judgments, so I asked: “Who do they make
those stereotypical judgments about?”
Like Jews. Like my father he works in the supermarket with Italians and stuff and they
promote all the Italians even though they’re not like proficient in the knowledge of their
jobs, they’ll promote them ahead of them….So, sometimes we make stereotypical
comments like, “Italians they stick together.” And it’s just from experience. It’s not like
he’s saying it out of nowhere. He’s actually experienced this racism so sometimes like
my father he’ll make some racist comments. My mom, she’ll tell people like stuff like
“Germans, they’re, they’re hateful people but they pay well” ‘cause she works with, for
them as, ah. She’s worked for them as a nurse’s assistant. So, she’s worked for a couple
of Germans and she worked for lots of different people and she’s telling me like this
group of people are nice to us while those groups of people aren’t as nice to us kind of
thing. So, you pick up on it sometimes.
As Leslie’s parents shared their interpretations of negative and positive interactions with different
races of people that they worked for or with, they presented ideas in ways that Leslie interpreted
as generalizations that suggested whole groups of people were a particular way. Leslie recognized
the personal experiences of his parents while resisting the temptation to generalize these
experiences as expectations he should have for any particular group. Interestingly, he at once
acknowledged that his parents experienced racism and he denied the conclusions they drew as a
result. Leslie sees them as racists.
It seemed that neither Leslie’s parents nor Leslie had the vocabulary to clearly describe
being victimized by racism and responding to that victimization without being viewed as
perpetuating racism themselves. As subjects in a society where colorblind discourse is dominant,
this family had not yet figured out how to talk about the reality of racism in the parents’
experience, the relevant and similar experiences that Leslie could potentially encounter, the reality
of contemporary racist manifestations, and the possibility of progressive change. Leslie did not
use the term “prejudice” to describe his parents’ responses to their experiences. Leslie did not
understand or consider the reality of some group’s historical and perpetual power (by their
identification with whiteness) to oppress other groups in contemporary society. He viewed racism
as an activity that everyone could equally participate in, yielding the same consequences (the
Crash-syndrome). Yet, he demonstrated commitment to resisting stereotypes and generalizations
that he heard from his parents. As a post-Civil Rights era student of color in the color-blind era,
Leslie is not sure how to interpret race or racism. Colorblind discourse suggests to him that
everyone, including his parents, has fair opportunity to be racist even by simply acknowledging
race or racism.
Natasha’s Grandparents-
Natasha did not call her grandparents racists. However, she presented their views as
markedly different from hers. Similarly to Clayton’s assessment of the importance of history,
Natasha placed the views of her grandparents in the context of Jim Crow racism that dramatically
shaped their lives.
Since I grew up around my grandparents you couldn’t really take in what they said
because of the time that they grew up in. You know they saw things differently from how
somebody my age or somebody your age or you know, old enough to be my parent,
which is like a second generation compared to my grandparents. We’ll dig up things that
are totally different because they grew up probably around the time of slavery they see
things differently (chuckle). So they still on that type…they still on that aspect of blaming
the person that is White for their downfalls and stuff like that. But, how I see things you
can’t blame anybody else for what you can’t achieve right now cause right now, you
know, it’s still some racism going on out there, but we still have opportunities to make
ourselves successful just as well as anybody of a different race. White doesn’t really
matter. But they still on, you know. But they’re still on [the idea that] you know, the
White person got it and I didn’t because they’re White and this and that. And the reason
they’re raising our taxes is because we’re Black and stuff like that. So it’s like you got
the wealthy…White people still seem to be the wealthy ones, so you know, they’re still
blaming White people for a lot of things that I don’t think that that’s what it is right now.
Natasha described the age of her grandparents with some humor, as they were not over a century
old to have experienced slavery. However, she created a picture with her words that portrayed her
grandparents’ views as old, even archaic. Yet she seemed to respect her grandparents’ views that
“blame” Whites for barring their achievement in the past while challenging that such a view could
not be true today because there are greater opportunities now. She invoked the discourse of
individualism. Natasha spoke as a post Civil Rights generation member who believes she has
access to new opportunities that were not available to her grandparents. However, she did not
analyze the current state of racism, although she admitted to its existence and impact on her
generation later in our discussion. Natasha mentioned White wealth but seemed not to understand
that wealth translates to economic and social power. Neither did she understand the consequences
of White economic entitlements and maintenance to other people. Like Leslie, Natasha is
ambivalent about race and racism today. By contrasting her experience to that of her
grandparents, Natasha attempts to position herself as more racially responsible and better able to
succeed on her own merits as an African American woman.
The family portraits that we have just explored illustrate how “colorblind” students
reproduce, resist, reinterpret, and reflect their family’s thoughts and ways about race. The
constructions they made of family—whether “good” or “bad”—are within the context of
colorblind discourse. This discourse guides how students frame family members as “racist” or
“racial” or not; and serves as the catalyst for casting themselves as choosing the more enlightened
or progressive way. Black students especially attempted to accommodate the reality of a
particular kind of racism that shaped the lives of their parents and grandparents in their own
narratives. However, past challenges or even current challenges of their parents are interpreted
through the lens of a “new day,” when racism is not how it was. Race is different, they say. Part
of the difference is the lens of interpretation. This younger generation of Black people is hopeful
for a post-racial society that moves race from the center to the periphery of their experience.
Colorblindness is the discourse of the day. Its impact reaches every ethnicity within the borders of
the United States. The silent claim all these informants make is that they do not think of race in the
old and barbarous ways of their parents or the rest of the world. Hence, students wrestled with
identity scripts and development of a racialized self within a society that has a racial power
structure that it denies with its racial ideologies.
III. Wrestling with Whiteness, Asian Ambivalence, Black Reconnaissance
Homes, Safe houses and Host bodies
In this section, I explore how some informants negotiated identity in their discussions
about race. I demonstrate how students from different race locations position themselves to
embrace, reconstruct, criticize, or suspend identity. By this I mean that these informants vacillate
between a self-determined racial identity, connected to and distanced from historical and collective
identities, or resistant to perceived parameters, or fixed racial definitions. In so doing, these
students helped to articulate a postmodern theory of Blackness, Whiteness, Asian-ness that
illustrated contemporary struggles of race formation within a colorblind society. Each subsection
will explore these identities and communities as they were approached by informants and the
definitions/theories they articulate. I highlight the theme of homes, safe houses, and host bodies
derived from the informants’ own language to elucidate the students’ personal negotiations of race
politics. Racial identity offers a “home” or “safe house” for some, while exiling others to a
foreign body. Home is the central place and argument that suspends or reformulates racial identity
for others. The complicated nature of identity and politics in the racially structured identity is
revealed.
White. It is usually unnamed in discussions about race and left in silent dominance as the
normative element by which Others are marked. Frankenberg (1993) argues that whiteness has
three linked dimensions: a location of structural advantage or race privilege, a standpoint from
which Whites look at themselves and the world, and a set of usually unmarked or unnamed
cultural practices. Whiteness is also property in the traditional sense as something to which value
can be attached and that provides rights to its owner; and in the modern sense as a host of
intangibles that define social relations (Harris, 1993). Hence, whiteness once determined one’s
legal status as a free person or slave. Today, whiteness is accompanied by a set of expectations or
privileges for those who own it. Further, white privilege, as a bi-product of the advantages of
white supremacy, reproduces black subordination.
The white “standpoint” or worldview is often not accounted for by Whites themselves.
They do not acknowledge seeing or projecting a white perspective. Studies have demonstrated
that White subjects struggle to find an ethnicity except to claim “American” (Phinney, 1989).
They simply claim their perspective as what is, normalizing their view as the natural state of all
things. Ironically, this white supremacist perspective often leads to difficulty for Whites to claim a
racial identity.
In the following subsection (A), I focus on two informants— Wilson, a Chemical
Engineering major from New Jersey and Angela, a Communications and Rhetorical Studies major
from Long Island, NY-- who present perspectives that highlight tensions in racial discourses.
They talk about race in ways that push against the borders of whiteness while reifying whiteness
and racism. In both cases, identity is an important element in my analysis of the data and the
critical messages about race that they reflect. They demonstrate that some students take a
selfdetermined approach to the concept of race, seeking to create their own definitions, and
thereby illuminating how one is raced and their resistance to it. That is, they do not necessarily
embrace the common (non)sense of race that would identify them as White students. Rather, these
students present fragmented, anti-essentialist, and rearticulated notions of racialized identities. In
part, they take a postmodernist approach to race that denies social location and power. On the
other hand, they reify whiteness with denials of it.
A.
1. White Resistance- Homes and Safe Houses
The Color of Fear (1995) was produced by Lee Mun Wah and records a focus group of
racially and culturally diverse men as they discuss their fears about racism and other forms of
oppression. Wilson, a White male, Chemical Engineering major from New Jersey, shared his
thoughts about the importance of holding on to identity as a “home” or “safe house” after he was
exposed to the documentary film The Color of Fear in one of his Pre-First courses. I find it
necessary to place most of the relevant portion of the conversation here without any breaks to
demonstrate Wilson’s standpoint in his discursive construction.
How do you identify yourself racially?
Uhhhm. How? I mean, after watching the “Color of Fear,” I’ve always first said I was
American. But after watching that you realize American is too much associated with white,
and how, I mean as horrible as it sounds, it’s true, you know. When anyone says they’re
American everyone first thinks white. So I don’t know. I mean my dad was Ger, was
Austrian. My mom who is European, she’s part Polish with Latvia. So, I mean if you
wanna ask, that’s where I come from, but I’m not really sure now where I’d actually
verbally state I am…
But if you were to say that you were a race, what race would
I’d have to say I was American. I was born in America, that’s my, I mean I can say I’m
mostly German so I could say I’m German, but. I mean, nowadays, I mean I don’t think
it’s as separated as it was in the past. So nowadays there’s so many people that are different
things, you really can’t classify yourself as one race, one being, because I mean you’ve
lived in America your whole life, in the United States your whole life, you’ve adopted that
culture. That’s part of your culture as well as what you come from. So… So, if we were
both born in the United States and lived in the United States for our entire lives, would we
be the same race?
No because you carry identities from the past as well. And I carry identities from the past
as well. We share a common, like, do you wanna think of it like a Venn diagram. I mean I
think that’s the perfect, the two circles are there the middle is shared, there’s one shared
section. But you can’t look at a person and say I’m the same as you. Because it’s, part of
me is the same as part of you. I mean, we have things in common but you can’t say that, I
don’t think you can really say that anyone here is the same. Cuz there’s much movement
that’s going on in the world.
What do you think about race?
I used to think that it caused boundary lines between people. But after watching the film
and thinking about it a little more and, having to separate myself from where I grew up to a
new area and a new environment and mixing with everyone, I think actually it’s kinda
good to hold on to them. I mean I’ve always thought why can’t everyone just say they’re
American if that’s what you are. But, that’s saying that everyone should act the same and
everyone, that’s almost forming a utopia. But I think when you acknowledge what you, if
you’re. If you feel you’re strongly one race over another, and that’s what you express. Or
if you’re gonna express all of them, it kina sets you up as an individual, as one person
working in one unit. So I think it actually helps us because we’re not really a melting pot
per se, because everyone still has their identities. So I think it more identifies yourself as,
it almost gives you a home. It gives you all your homes. You feel like, it’s almost like a
safe house that you wanna go back to. If you wanna call America your safe house. You’re
in one. If you wanna travel somewhere else, you can go to another safe house.
Wilson speaks from his social location as a White American male. He admits that he used to think
that race created boundaries between people, but he is saying more specifically that he used to
think that acknowledging other races than White created boundaries. He says, “I mean I’ve
always thought why can’t everyone just say they’re American if that’s what you are.” Wilson does
not consider the fact that many people of color claim their American national identity and
distinguish that from their racial/ethnic identity, while others do not view their nation and race in a
disconnect or distinct way. In his earlier comment Wilson also shared that he understood from the
Color of Fear that the term “American,” for many people, is associated automatically with
“White.”
… When anyone says they’re American everyone first thinks white…
Yet, Wilson refuses to say that he is White and that there is a difference in terms of race identity
between him and me (Black). But Wilson seems to be in a new phase of awareness about race.
He codes his need to maintain an identity niche, while sustaining connections to a shared identity,
in this case nationality – “American.” This would be the “home” that he speaks about. However,
he resists naming his whiteness and still suggests that race itself be hidden in nationality. For
Wilson, nationality serves as refuge, a “safe house,” for normative whiteness not to be
acknowledged. See my next question and his answer below:
So for you, your safe house is?
My biggest safe house would be the United States. Another safe house of mine would be if
I wanted to go to Austria and look at it. Another one would be if I wanted to go to Poland
and look at it…
To be sure I understood Wilson correctly, that his listing of countries was indeed connected to his
idea of the “safe house” as metaphor and not geography, I asked:
So you think race is determined by where you live, where you’re from?
I think race is determined by the individual who specifies it. I mean, it’s the individual’s
views of what, of what they are, who they are. You can’t just, I don’t think you can
classify race as anything. It’s one of those things that’s just up in the air and, how you
wanna view it is totally different than how I wanna view it, I think.
Wilson found refuge in postmodern thinking about race—erasing differences and dismissing
varied experiences based on social location—but with white supremacist reinscription. He
suggested that race could be constructed in whichever way an individual chose. However, this is
an especially advantageous ideological position for a White male to hold. Precisely because
whiteness is the dominant and normative racial identity in the United States, other bodies are
inescapably racialized. Wilson’s “safe house” is a strategy of white denial (see Chapter 5). This
idea of a self-determined racial identity was not unique to Wilson, however. Several students
suggested this philosophy of race determination in their discussions. Some stated this idea
explicitly as Wilson did and others made it implicit. Angela’s story suggested self-determinacy
implicitly as she describes race as something more than appearance.
2. White Resistance- Host Bodies
Angela is a White female Communications and Rhetorical Studies major and a member of
the lacrosse team from Long Island, NY, where she attended a predominantly White high school.
She describes the demographics of the school as 60/40, with Whites dominating and then mostly
Blacks (25%), Asians (10%), and Hispanics (5%) making up the other forty percent. Angela
resisted her whiteness by constructing its (in)significance as deceptive skin covering. She did not
re-conceptualize whiteness, but suggested that she did not meet the standards of white identity as
she understood it. When I asked Angela about the diversity represented in the Pre-First Program,
she made a quip about there being “a whoooole lot more white people” during her official campus
visit some months before. She then went on to say:
And I’m the type a kid who doesn’t hang out with the white people. I hang out with the
Black people…So I like it here. Cause basically, I consider myself Black under White
skin. No, seriously, because that’s who I hung out with when I was in high school, cause I
relate to them better than I relate to the White people.
Angela is a visibly White female with blond hair and blue eyes. Her self-identified “Black under
White skin” was stunning to hear initially. But what did she mean? Was this simply an issue of
social comfort from her high school years? Had she applied the proverbial “Birds of a feather
flock together” statement to race? What does it mean for a White girl to be Black? She
continued…
Because the white people were always stuck up on like “do-you-have-the-latest-bag or the
latest clothes.” Black people are just like…real. They don’t care what you have or don’t
have.
Angela generalized Whites and Blacks, as she reflected on her own experience in high school.
However, she described a clear association of race with class and related values. Further, she
identified with Blacks because she wasn’t scrutinized (at least not for fashion) by those Black
youth she knew in high school, as she was by Whites. At Pre-First, Angela said her closest friends
were Black, although she “talks” to everybody. I asked her to say more about what she meant by
this identity she embraces.
Basically that like my ways of viewing people and viewing situations is [sic] habits Black
people use to view them. Um, this school, they weren’t as motivated as the white people.
But like with materialistic things they didn’t care what they had, as long as they had like
clothes on their backs, food, and sleep in everyday. They didn’t need a car because they
had bus transportation. They don’t need like the newest type of fad or the newest like
outfit out there.
Angela believed that she sees the world as Black people do, shares Black perspective and values
that were not fixated on consumerism. As she continued to talk, her ideas become more
problematic. When I asked her to recall the first time she started to consider herself or say that she
was “Black,” she recalled that she started to think of her blackness when she started to rebel by
talking back to teachers or “giving trouble.” Angela equated rebelliousness with being Black. She
associated negative behaviors- missing class and talking back to teachers- with acting Black. For
her, giving trouble is “Black.” These ideas are problematic, as they are ascribed stereotypes and
pathological discourses about Blacks in schools. Angela appropriated and performed stereotypes
of Blackness. When I asked how her only sibling, a brother seven years her senior, relates to her,
she responded-
I don’t know. Because I used to dress like with big baggy sweatshirts and big baggy
jeans and like a matching t-shirt to match my shoes and like a hat, and like a ah bandana
or like a head band. And he’d be like “why do you look like a thug” (she gives a goofy
sounding voice) or like “why do you dress like that, why can’t you dress like a girl?”
So, how did you respond to that?
I’m just like this is who I am. This is how I relate to people. I’m not gonna like stop and
pretend I’m something I’m not.
Performing some aspect of blackness provides a privilege to Angela. She is able to relate
to people, certain people, through her behavior and ways of representing herself (clothing). The
clothing she describes can be either artifacts of Hip Hop lifestyle in popular culture, street “thug”
culture, or masculinity. Her brother’s use of the term “thug” is not necessarily criminal, but
gendered- “why can’t you dress like a girl.” At the time of our interview, Angela wore a large
tshirt, athletic shorts, and sneakers.
When I asked Angela directly about her thoughts regarding race, she invoked the theme
of sameness. However, she went on to reinforce performance or acting as the critical marker of
race identity.
I think everybody’s the same. It’s just that there’s black and white skin. And everybody
has the same red blood. Everybody has the same heart, feels the same thing. Everybody
has two feet, or most people have two feet, two hands, arms. We all breath the same
air…
So, as you believe everyone is the same, then how do you make sense of being a blonde blue eyed lighter
skinned, according to you ‘Black’ person?
Cause none of my friends had cornrows and …. It’s how you act, it’s not how you
look…Um, physically, like how you represent yourself. … And the people who live in
my town, well, the town that I live in is predominantly white. But the people in my
school were made up with like a lot of Black kids… So um, like the neighborhood that I
live in, people, they dress like, live with their money, act with their money. It’s like they
use everything, and that’s like who they are is like determined by their money. Me on the
other hand, I act how I wanna act, -----people who understand me. I don’t care what you
have or don’t have.
Angela underscored the point that representation is more than what one wears, but how one acts,
what one does. Again, Angela associated Whiteness with materialism and money. Blackness was
liberating for her, giving her the freedom to act however she wanted without concern for people’s
material possessions. Angela was committed to the idea that the external is insignificant, whether
it was a body or other material. Angela viewed her body as host of a different racial self than what
her biological traits suggested. She contended that her ways of thinking, behaving, and her
clothing expressed blackness, as opposed to the whiteness she saw demonstrated around her by
others with similar bodies in white skin. However, Angela also relies on the very skin privilege
she denies in order to represent herself as Black. She denies the power she embodies and exudes
in her own skin that pronounces her “black” performance.
B. Asian/Asian American Ambivalence—Finding Home
Amy’s clarification of what it means that race is “something that identifies people, not the
other way around” is in clear contradiction to Angela’s notion self-determined racial identity
within whatever host body one occupies. Further, Amy’s explanation may help to illuminate how
the “safe house” and “host body” concepts contradict what it means to have an identity of origin
that one claims, although both concepts highlight Angela and Wilson’s resistance of whiteness.
So when you say that race should be something that identifies people, what do you mean?
As a person, as a heritage, as the culture. That’s what it should be. It should not be I am
Chinese, but I like, for example, Italian: I embrace that culture, I act like that culture, and
you, know, and I want to be in that culture. No, I think you keep your own origins intact. I
think you should keep some respect for it because that is something that is passed down to
you.
Amy, an Asian American woman, sees a certain respectability and responsibility to owning one’s
origins. This idea is aligned with Wilson’s first phrase about race as a home when he says that
race “actually helps us because we’re not really a melting pot per se, because everyone still has
their identities. So I think it more identifies yourself as, it almost gives you a home.” Though
Amy conflates race with culture here, she is clear about the notion of respecting one’s own race as
home. Amy seems to advocate “visiting” or sharing different homes, but carrying an essence of
identity with you.
I don’t mind, you should open up to other cultures, but you should also keep your own.
It’s just I think it’s an identity. It’s part of your identity. So it’s like some people want to
run away from it because there are problem like racism and all that stuff, but I think you
should be prideful even if there are other people that don’t like or think a certain way.
Amy and Choon-yei, a Korean student, discussed their perspectives about race, their cultures, and
the American viewpoint that suggested they were wrestling with notions of “home” and
attempting to locate themselves intra- and inter- racially. This important struggle to locate
themselves within the U.S. American matrix of race and race relations was centered on their
orientation to “home,” the translocation of home, and how they expressed home as a point of
origin. Specifically, both women had to negotiate their identities around their place of birth—in
an Asian nation or in the United States. The importance of nativity for Asian Americans emerges
from and is complicated by the fact that they are racialized as “unassimilable foreigners” (Pyke &
Dang, 2003). In attempts to receive acceptance from the dominant culture, Asian Americans may
engage in expressions and behaviors against their coethnics to deflect stigma, a process referred to
as “defensive othering” (Osajima, 1993; Schwalbe, Godwin, Holden, & Schrock, 2000).
One way that defensive othering is expressed is through language, specifically name
calling or categorizing. Amy explains “FOB” (Fresh Off the Boat) and “ABC” (American Born
Chinese) as terms that are used intra-ethnically among Chinese Americans and Asian Americans.
Asian Americans’ use these phrases as defensive othering.
Ok, with Chinese people there’s this little acronym thing that goes um one’s ‘ABC’ which
is ‘American Born Ching’ or ‘Chinese,’ Ching for slang. And then there’s another one
that’s ‘FOB’ which is ‘Fresh off the Boat.’ And within the two they have different ways
they approach people, the way they act. Because ‘ABC’ (couldn’t understand) would be,
you know, the general population where you were born here and you would hang with
people who were like cool you know pool buddies, ping pong buddies, more into the
techno and rap, a little bit of rap, and um pop music…like the stereotypical response…
And plus we are considered disrespectful by it. …and then there’s the immigrant group
where they are very silent, they are very personal. They…have you noticed some people,
sometimes people especially they’re just very, very shy. They don’t like to talk to people
unless they’re introduced. Because in China, that’s how you meet people. You don’t
jump into a conversation like I do, but…and they have a lot of respect for a lot of things
like nature, people, so on so forth.
Amy provided an overview of the stereotypical sub-groups of Chinese and Chinese American
people. Chinese people (who were born in China) are assumed to have traditional cultural
qualities, as a generalization. In contrast American-born Chinese and other Asian Americans have
other “American” qualities, including disrespect for their traditional cultural ways and lack of
discipline, attached to them as generalizations. Amy discussed how she negotiated these
intraethnic categories.
I’m like a fusion of both. Like I have a lot of respect [for people] but meanwhile I’m
very open with a lot of people, so yea. And then, cause people they…yea I got asked the
other day by one of the immigrants…she’s and immigrant, but she’s been here for years,
like 3 years, 5 years I think. And she’s like, “Are you, ya know, like an immigrant or are
you like from here?” And I said from here. “Oh, that’s interesting.” Cause, and I’m like
what do you mean it’s interesting. She’s like, “You got a lot more respect and self
discipline for your own work, you know like your own priorities more than ABC’s.” I
was working. I don’t know, I guess I don’t fit the category. I don’t seem to fit any
category, but I don’t mind not fitting into category, so…
Amy expressed feeling confident about her identity although she felt that she did not fit into the
bifurcated categories that were presented to her. She was a fusion of both and a separation from
both. Choon-yei, who was born in Korea and lived in the United States for three years prior to
Pre-First, described her sense of what the American-born Asian American person experiences.
Um, I have some friends who [are] born in America but they’re Asians. I kinda saw them
going through like harsh times because umm I heard that they have more friends who
were white when they were young. Then as they grew up, they just stick around, like,
Asian people. I don’t know because I never been in that situation. But I think they are
having hard time identifying themselves because some of their friends are from Asia and
they are bilingual but they’re more fluent in their language. They are American but like
how they look is Asian, and the kinda culture they have is Asian because of their parents.
So I think they are [having a] really hard time identifying who they are. Because for me,
I’m born in Korea, my parents are Korean, I just came here to study. So, I’m not
American. I could just Oh I’m Korean, but for them, probably they call themselves Asian
American I’d say. But probably nobody calls them that. They just call them Asian.
Choon-yei described the challenges she saw her U.S. American-born friends facing as they
negotiated their identity within the Asian/Asian American collective. Choon-yei’s American-born
friends must negotiate birthplace, language fluency, and the U.S. American schema of race that is
ambivalent toward them. Choon-yei appropriately noted that her friends are viewed by many U.S.
Americans as not having a home here. American-born Asians struggle with a dilemma of identity,
not being American enough or Asian enough by traditional standards of their culture. Meanwhile
some Asian immigrants are ambivalent about seeing American-born Asians as ethnic equals.
Further, intra-racial conflict and confusion exist because Asians/Asian Americans must fit within
an American schema of race, even if it doesn’t make sense to them. Choon-yei shared a few
experiences that demonstrated to her and to me that race was complicated and illogical in many
ways. One story she told was about a visit to one of her professor’s office hours to get an
explanation of “minority” and “majority.”
And basically what he said was they just consider minority [in terms of the various race]
populations in the world. But, you know, I kinda disagree with that because there are a
lot of Black people in Africa too. I don’t know how many, like what’s the ratio of Black
and White and Asian. But, so when they say minority they combine Black and Asian
people. So I was thinking, you know there can be more of Black and Asian people so
they should call us majority. But in America they are called minority. So I just didn’t
understand….
Choon-yei attempted to understand U.S. American language around race and how educators could
explain these ideas and conceptions. For example, one of Choon-yei’s professors attempted to
explain “minority” in terms of the number of people associated with the group globally. However,
Choon-yei didn’t find this explanation to be satisfactory. With these explanations, she sought to
find a place within the discussion and to locate her own experiences as an “Asian American”
subject. She soon discovered that her experiences would not be quickly acknowledged by other
racial subjects, even in academic environments.
And then in my writing class they also talked about race but I was the only Asian in there
and there’s not many Asians in Pre-First but I kinda felt like when they say race they
think it’s White versus Black. Then there’s Asians, so I’m like “Ok, then, where do I
belong?”
The Asian/Asian American experience is further marginalized within race discourses, as
the group is often viewed as the “perpetual foreigner” or the “model minority” (Kim, 1999; Wu,
2002). They are placed within the racial hierarchy of the United States, kept out of the white
mainstream; yet also suspended from general discussions about race and racism. The ambivalence
with which other groups approach Asian Americans contextualizes their wrestling to demonstrate
a grounded identity and position within the national discourse of race that so often becomes
polarized by White and Black concerns and constructions. Latinos may be faced with similar
challenges. Yet the bipolar racial categories of White and Black can best be understood when we
consider that White represents a power that has positioned “Black” as the dominated other.
C. Black Reconnaissance-- Conflicts and Conflations
In contrast to the resistance demonstrated by Wilson and Angela to their own whiteness,
there were two Black students who discussed race in terms that suggested they were intentionally
examining race and its socio-historical meaning to understand it and themselves as racialized
subjects. Both students, African Americans, discussed their interpretations of race and its social
significance with themes of conflict and struggle. These students were fully engaged in a process
of learning about race and Blackness beyond discussions in the Pre-First seminar course.
Christine is an African American woman from White Plains, NY. In her diverse high school
where she could always see a fair mix of African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, and
Whites, race only seemed to be an issue in the classroom. Christine discussed how separate
Regents Exam Preparatory classes had a segregating effect along race lines. Additionally, she
described her experience in Advanced Placement (AP) courses as both an opportunity to get to
know a more diverse group of students as well as a situation that made her aware of being a
“minority.” Her classes would be filled with mostly “Caucasian” students with approximately 4 or
5 African Americans or Latinos.
Before describing her racial identity, Christine noted that “a lot of times I sit back and say,
what is race?” On the day of the interview, a portion of the film Race- The power of an illusion
was shown and discussed in Christine’s seminar class. This helped Christine to be more thoughtful
about our conversation.
My thoughts of race? (pauses) When I think of race, I think of conflict, um. Based on that
movie that we just saw, basically…. Most scientists, I guess back in the day they, they
based it on. Basically they took your race I believe in that was [what] legitimized slavery
and labeling of the based on your race, like. It’s the myth of your brain is more alert or
cannot hold as much sand as the Caucasian, you know, things of that nature. I think that,
ah in general, caused a lot of conflict and I think a lot of people especially this day and
age cannot accept what is different. Like, I don’t think the problem is seeing people who
are different, I love seeing people who are different cultures, different ethnicities, and
who come from different countries. But, I think where the problem comes in is that
people can’t accept that people are different. You know, you always have to other
someone because they’re different. Like, you can’t say they’re different and that’s okay.
They’re different, but I’m better, you know? That’s, that’s the notion that okay. You’re
mocking his turban, oh, he’s this, that, I’m better…. People cannot deal with differences
and it’s sad that when you see someone who’s different than you or, you know, comes
from another way of life. You automatically have to put yourself on a pedestal as opposed
to embracing them as well and I think that’s, that’s the problem.
Christine demonstrated an awareness of the functions of scientific racism and the fact that
biological myths were used to foster particular notions of race and racism. She also acknowledged
and complicated the discussion of difference by suggesting that acceptance or rejection of
difference was the key challenge. Christine suggested that some people recognized differences
and subjected those differences to various judgments of value such as better or worse, more or less
superior or inferior. Further, she implied the issue of superiority/inferiority with the word
“pedestal.” She goes on to explain further her thoughts on racism, which she conflates with race.
I think it’s still an on-going issue, um. I do think in terms, racism is such a strong, a. I
mean you can talk all day about racism and its effect but I, I’ve read Breaking the Chain
of Psychological Slavery and that really opened my mind. I’m like, oh my gosh, because
that I guess it, wow, it’s just so deep. It explains, um, the, the effect of slavery on African-
Americans, and I think in terms of, of race and racism I do think that has contaminated
our, our heads I believe.
Christine explains that notions of race and racism have “contaminated” the psychology of people.
Specifically, she draws our attention to the impact of slavery on the African American psyche.
Racism has contaminated Black thought to adopt Christine is fairly well read on matters of race
and/or racism as a student entering her first year of college. Throughout the interview she
mentioned various other books like the Willie Lynch Letter and the Making of a Slave and others
by Jawanza Kunjufu, a prolific educator and consultant on issues that impact the development and
schooling of African Americans. Many of these books were a part of her mother’s library and she
took an active interest in them. Hence, Christine expressed herself with a sense of confidence
about what she understood and believed as a young student. She was comfortable with the idea
that she was “different” and saw the “problem” of race as an issue of acceptance of difference
within society.
Similarly, Clayton, an African American male from New Jersey, admitted reading some
literature about race because he finds it to be a “deep subject.” His reading included Race Matters
by Cornel West and Facing Up to the American Dream by Jennifer L. Hochschild, which he was
reviewing for a paper. Clayton presented the most complexity in his response to the question
about race— noting the politics of race in education, home life, dating life, politics, etc. He
emphasized that race permeates our society.
I mean it’s very important, um, I think race plays a lot into everything. Um, you know,
W.E.B. Dubois said, the problem of the 20th century is the color line and he is so correct,
um, light, light versus dark and so race is in everything. Race is a lot, admissions
counselors, admissions to the college, race is, ah, that are the schools, race is, race is in our
homes. I mean you see a white couple and a Black couple or a Chinese couple and a Black
couple or whatever it is. It’s inter-racial things like that you take a second look at because
just 40 years that Black man would have been hanged, that Chinese man would have been
hanged, you know. During the civil right movements 20 years ago we just come out from,
you know, dogs being unleashed on and stuff like that. So, race plays a very important role
into everything. It’s in our politics; it’s in our Declaration of Independence if you want to
say. If you want to go that detailed. Race is in everything, I think race and what people
think of other people, you know, kinds of intertwine with how we are today…
Clayton explained that race permeates our society in significant ways, from college admissions to
romantic relationships, from politics to social psychology, with changes over time. As Clayton
continued, he emphasized the permanence of race in our society. He saw race taking permanent
residency in people’s minds. He suggested that most people struggle with bigotry in their thoughts
by acknowledging race.
But I understand a little bit and I take away from this that race will always be in our
minds. There’s no way of getting out of it. The only thing we can do is we can educate
ourselves about it. We can’t stop it. We can try to but deep down inside sometimes race
will always be there and we will always sometimes be looking at, oh, he’s Black and he’s
White or something like even though sometimes we train ourselves not to but we still
look at it. We still see it, it’s something that is always seen throughout the world and we
can try best not to acknowledge it and that’s great. I mean if you can say, you can sit here
and say, I’m not a racists. I, seriously I’m not a person who’s a bigot or I won’t have
bigotry in me, that’s great, that’s good and you acknowledge that you try to say that you
don’t have it. However, in some instances you’re lying. (laughs) You know, you might
say that you don’t have it but it can still be in there with you. You just don’t acknowledge
it as much as other people do and, you know, acknowledge as much as the Klu Klux Klan
or the Knights of Columbus or something out of that organization.
Clayton articulated a perspective that emphasized race permanence and pervasive racism. He
asserted that race is always present in people’s minds. He suggested that racism can be observed
on a continuum. Most people have it at some level and then there are those on the extreme end,
i.e. the Ku Klux Klan, who focus on race in barefaced and flagrant ways. However, as Clayton
continued this thread of the conversation, he said that he did not want to try to tackle “this idea of
what race is.” When I asked why, he responded-
No, because sometimes I refrain from trying to say what race is because like now I’d be
shooting myself in the foot…that’s why I read Dr. Cornel West, Race Matters. I want to, I
mean not fully understanding what race is, you know. I’ve experienced racism, I’ve
experienced racial division within our people. I’ve experienced racial division towards
others but I don’t understand and you can’t put it to or conceptualize what race really is
and, you know, it’s just too dangerous for me right now. So, I will be trying to do that
over in the next couple of years.
Clayton was clear about his experience with race and racism, but he was not certain about how
race is defined. He knew that race is real, that it matters. He knew that he has experienced racism
and witnessed others being treated in racist ways. He could reflect on the divisions that race has
created between and within groups of people. However, he was not yet willing to commit an
opinion or interpretation to something he did not fully understand. He recognized that race is
complicated.
I suggest that these students attempted to articulate a postmodern theory of Blackness in
their comments as they reflect pushback against their generational race thought. In the context of
a society claiming colorblindness and a generation seemingly less concerned with history and
historical attachments, these students were seeking to comprehend race matters and Black people’s
struggles. While they sought to resist stereotypical notions of blackness and embraced new
realities and possibilities for their generation, they were reading literature of Black scholars that
would help them to understand their historical connection and its meaning for the present and
future. Their approaches reflect the postmodern blackness musings of bell hooks (1994) who
discussed anti-essentialist, decentered blackness, commitment to the underclass of the Black
community, critical thought connected to finding new strategies for Black struggle, and a
“yearning” for all of these. In their comments, I sensed a yearning among these two informants to
find what “Black” could mean for them in this era.
Race is. Race is not. Race might be. These conceptions of race and race identity were
taken up by students in a variety of ways. The White students in this section tended to resist
naming or embracing whiteness. In Wilson’s case, he reinscribed whiteness in his “safe house” of
nationality as he attempted to negotiate new information about race he learned in class. Angela
reconstructed her racial identity as a Black girl hosted in a white body. However, the Asian/Asian
American students demonstrated “respect” for an identity space of origin called “home” where
traditions are honored. Home is a contested concept for Asians/Asian Americans who wrestle
with finding or maintaining it in the U.S. American society that holds them in exile continually.
Finally, Black students demonstrated their desire to deconstruct race and find their identity through
inspection of history and experience. Both Christine and Clayton began to explore notions of
hierarchy and the legacy of oppression based on race. Black reconnaissance for these students
meant reading to understand the historical impact and present articulations of race, as they sought
meaning for themselves as post-Civil Rights young people.
CONCLUSION
In this chapter, I have explored the discourses used by a portion of my informants who
offer critical insight to notions of race and racism as they see it. Colorblindness is apparently
embraced by many of the informants and is manifested in their language and interpretations,
including their understanding of race as a construction as well as their comprehension of events.
This was demonstrated by their minimization of race and racism, how they discussed their family
perspectives relative to their own, and the ways in which they negotiated conceptions of a racial
identity. Colorblind discourse, though present in a cross-section of the informants’ language, is
not uttered with equal motivations or aims. Some students of color utilize minimization tactics as a
way of neutralizing white supremacist or racist discourse. Black students do not embrace
colorblind discourse in the same ways that their White peers do, but they are impacted by it and
negotiate colorblind discourse for their anti-racism assertions. The element of power is elusive in
most of the informants’ explanations, reflecting the colorblind discourse and approach to
addressing race and racism. Further, informants expressed a lack of understanding about different
beliefs that make terms like prejudice, stereotypes, discrimination, and racism distinct. I also
explored the family portraits of some informants that exhibited their own racial ideas and how
they responded to family racial discourses. Through family portraits, we saw that racial hierarchy
and various race discourses that were either racist or denied racism were reflected in dating
preferences.
In the last section of the chapter, I explored the meaning of race for particular individuals
from their point of identity, which revealed how race functions differently for people, based on
their social location and ideological leanings. White students seemed to be taking on fragmented
identities that resisted white confinement and embodiment, disconnecting their bodies from their
identities. Asian/Asian American students wrestled to find their footing in the U.S. racial schema
that at once positions them within its hierarchy and holds them at a distance as “foreigners.”
Black/African American students on the other hand seemed to be seeking out an achieved Black
identity that allowed them to struggle, at least mentally, against racial imperialism.
I view these strivings in identity constructions to be intimately and inextricably connected
to the colorblind discourse that pervades society. Colorblindness conceals white hegemony by its
formation of an imaginary “sameness” and pseudo-equity among the races. Students, under this
banner of colorblind imperialism, understand inherently that race is passé and not an appropriate
topic to interrogate in contemporary political correctness. With this projection of race neutrality
or colorblindness, post-Civil Rights generation students are encouraged to reject racial
acknowledgements and perceive obvious acts of racism as aberrations. Hence they diminish these
social realities even as they recognize them right at home. This racial environment, with its racist
stealth, reasserts individualism over all groupings as the American way. At once, students across
all racial categories are given a sense of empowerment to see themselves and the world in any
number of personalized ways; and they struggle to find meaningful identities that are authentic
and meet multiple interests of desire and denial.
CHAPTER 5 [DATA CHAPTER]
TALKING RACE, RACING TALK
During the second semester of my informants’ junior year, I started to conduct focus
groups to again examine their understanding about race and how they might employ various
discourses in conversation with each other. Three focus groups were conducted. The third focus
group was conducted in the Fall semester of their senior year. Each focus group held 4-5
informants in engaging conversation from 60 to 75 minutes. This chapter examines data from
this second phase of the research.
Where do students talk about race? How do they talk about race? What meaning do they
make of such talk? I wanted the answers to these questions for a better understanding of their
interpretations and how they came to such meaning. They talked race in class, in their
recognized student group meetings, in their rooms and apartments with friends, with fraternity
and sorority members, with family, and even in the gym with their athletic teammates. This
chapter explores the mechanics, nuances, implications, and challenges of Race Talk.
Toni Morrison (1993) describes race talk as the “explicit insertion into everyday life of
racial signs and symbols that have no meaning other than pressing African Americans to the
lowest level of the racial hierarchy.” My work in this chapter uses a broader definition to include
any talk about race that either deciphers or resists contemporary ideologies about race in our
society. Race talk can be an insertion of active resistance to or re-articulations of dominant
ideologies about race, as well as reflections or expressions of those ideologies. For example, you
will read about Nic, a young man of color, who actively resisted surveillance by white authority
and the persistent racist suspicion of people of color in several contexts- whether they are
walking, learning, or talking. Also, race talk can be the re/production of social relations in the
matrix of domination. You will also read about Tom, a White male, who assumes a position of
(white) authority during the discussion with Nic and attempts to reproduce white dominance in
denial, while making visible the racial dynamics of the encounter.
In this chapter, I argue that students are talking about race and in their talk they theorize
about how race functions in society by calling on popular culture, humor, and utilizing
argumentation. They engage in race talk in the classroom, but also initiate race talk in their own
spaces on their own time. Race talk can be understood in utterances about race in content,
mechanics, and the style of my informants’ talk. This chapter analyzes such race talk that is used
by students to resist and to reproduce racism—whether or not students are aware of these effects.
Through an investigation of white talk, talk generated through Hip Hop, boundary making
through race talk, and race talk performance, I show that race ideology is continually resisted,
rearticulated, or re/produced by students.
All race talk either resists, rearticulates, or re/produces race ideology. As I examine these
students’ talk, I look for discourses about race, ways in which their positionalities are expressed,
and the dynamics between speakers and hearers of race talk. White race talk (defined below)
reproduces white supremacy by masking itself and actually demonstrating its power within
conversation. Other race talk is generated to resist and interrogate race and racism, to make
sense of them or to make visible the nonsense of them. For example, Terrence resists
essentialists notions of race by examining figures in Hip Hop and the wider popular culture. He
also resists colorblind notions of Hip Hop ownership and reclaims it as an artifact of Black
culture. Jossette and Greg discuss the use of talk to negotiate racial identity in different spaces,
and to question the determination of race identity through talk. Throughout this chapter, you will
observe that race talk is always acting in some way, demonstrating its power and strategy. I will
also illuminate the power of listening, a strategy used by students of color, to move white race
talkers into reflection. Listening emergences from and contributes to the particular gaze, or ways
of knowing and perceiving, that people of color develop in a racialized society. As subordinated
people, they acutely observe those with power as a way to survive. Listening to white talk is also
an exercise of gazing.
White Talk, Back Talk
McIntyre (1997) describes white talk as “talk that serves to insulate white people from
examining their individual and collective role(s) in the perpetuation of racism” (p.45). Some
race talk is light, subtle, and comedic. Other talk is less humorous, more serious, even tense.
Such was the case in Focus Group 1 (FG1) between Tom, a White male informant, and Nic, a
Latino/Black male informant, during our discussion about experiences of racism on or off
campus. By an examination of the exchanges outlined below we will see how Tom expresses his
social position and white talk throughout. Prior to this particular exchange, there were two other
discussions in the focus group where Tom asserted challenges against the interpretations Nic
made of his experiences with race/racism on campus. In these challenges, Tom argued that Nic
rushed to conclusions of racism; that his conclusions were not logical; that he was paranoid; and
that he should be responsible for finding common ground during racial conflict. In the following
exchange, I try to capture disruptions and pace of speech in the way I use line space for
informants’ comments. I want to show how energized the conversation was with overlapping
statements and interruptions from one speaker to the other.
P: Have you experienced racism off campus since you’ve been a student at Findings?
N: Yeah, I actually experienced another incident I forgot too, here during PreFirst. Uhm, we
were out on Foothill (Street). It was me and a couple other friends. We were going to
East (campus) to one of the football player’s house to hang out and FPS (Findings Public
Safety) stops us like “What are you guys doing here?” We’re like “Oh we go to school
here. We live right there in Roosevelt (Hall).” We were right across the street from um,
on this side like by Hoover (Hall). And the cop stopped us, like “What are doing here?”
“Oh we go to school here, we’re in PreFirst.” “Well you guys shouldn’t be out here?
Why aren’t you in the building?” …Like does it matter where I’m standing, where I’m
at? Like what’s the point?.. Like I mean, that was frustrating. Then also just not being
um, being stopped by the police like 3 or 4 times driving with friends, but that wasn’t up
here though.
P: Uhhm. Could you say more about that?
N: Well, recently I went home, like two weeks ago. And I was with a couple friends. And
they stopped us was like Oh we’re looking for a stolen car…Alright. I had all my papers
and everything. Then they was like “Can you guys get out the car?” It was me and two
other friends. They made us all sit on the back bumper, they said “Just sit there and
wait.” Searched the car, and then said “Alright you guys are fine.” And then they left,
and left us there. Then another time I was with some kids from this school, and we’re
coming
(OC: I notice Tom sighing and taking long breaths.)
home from the city and one of my friends was driving and we got stuck cause the kid
didn’t put oil in the car or something like that. So we were like right by [Warren City]
and like right before you get on the 270. And it was dark and then we were trying to wait
for a tow truck; they said they were coming. And the police came behind us, they come
to the car like, “Oh, you guys have alcohol?” Like, “No, we’re stuck.” They’re like, “Oh.
Give us your license.” They took everybody’s license that was in the car, like not just the
driver, they took everybody’s license in the car. They went back there, like fifteen
minutes. “You guys, you sure you don’t have alcohol? I smell it.”
T: Do you think that has
N: There’s nothing in the car. We’re
like We’re waiting for the tow truck cause we’re stuck. “Well alright, well I can’t help
you.” Left. They give us back our id’s and left.
T: Do you think that um that necessarily that has to do with race though? … Like I mean
like what makes you think like if I got pulled over with a bunch of like other friends, like
with a bunch of like 21 and 22, teenagers in their car late at night, there’s a bunch of us in
the car, on a highway. I mean like, I feel like the first instinct of any officer is to ask if
there’s alcohol in the car. Like I mean I don’t understand why he was taking down
everyone’s driver’s license
N: Why would that be the first question? Why wouldn’t it be “Are
you guys stuck?” Being that we’re on the side of the road in the middle of the night?
T: But I don’t think it has to do necessa(rily), I don’t think like. There’s nothing new. There’s
nothing for you to like, again like logically speaking that you can’t conclude that it was
race that did that. I don’t see like a right. It doesn’t logically make sense that it was. I
can’t say that it wasn’t race, but you can’t say that race was the factor for it.
N: So what’s the idea of taking everyone’s license?
T: Maybe in Pennsylvania like
Other Informants: No, no …
T: Or 2:00 in the morning. I dunno, maybe it’s just the way the cop does things. Every cop,
was the cop White?
N: Yeah. Both times.
T: …I mean, I dunno. I guess, I mean, maybe it was race, maybe it wasn’t. And if it was
race then that’s awful. But you can’t necessarily. I don’t think you can go on saying that
cop was necessarily racist cause you don’t know for sure. Cause you don’t know that cop.
N: When you grow up in a certain situation under certain situations, you understand race in
whole different, way
T: I understand that
N: And it’s like you know when you’re being targeted. Like it’s something that you learn,
something from experience. Like you know. And then you also know when people are
being genuine. But it’s a feeling, you can’t describe it (Tom says something while he is
talking- Like an instinct??). It’s an instinct. It’s almost human nature for us to know like
alright we’re being targeted.
T: Do you, but do you ever think? I agree like that there is that instinct that you’re being
targeted. I’m sure that, I know for a fact that that exists, but do you think it gets to the
point where that instinct is so ingrained into you that actually until one point that it’s like
you’re over-analyzing things and it’s just sorta like that instincts is like gotten to the point
where it’s kind of like consumed you to the point where you’ve gotten maybe kind of
paranoid about it.
N: No not at all. Cause I’m very down to earth as far as everything is. I always analyze a
situation you know a hundred percent for everything that it is. And in that instance,
everything was uncalled for.
T: Yeah
N: There was not one thing there that was called for.
T: I understand what you’re saying
N: That’s why with
the other one with the car, no. “We’re looking for a stolen car.” All my papers are legit.
You see my license, you see everything. “Well I still need to search the car”… Cause you
obviously see a group a kids you think, “Alright they’re up to something.”
T: Well I’m not, yeah he was definitely generalizing, don’t get me wrong, like he was
definitely being prejudiced, but I don’t think. I think that’s like what our cops like that’s
what cops do, in general. Like they see a group of kids, like they saw a group of White
kids in a corner or whatever, like on the street or pulled over. I feel like a cop would’ve
suspected that they were up to like the White kids are up to no good too. You know?
Like whatever. I don’t feel like it necessarily has to do with race (Author’s emphasis).
M: This is what
T: Granted I’ve never been in that position so I can’t relate. But it’s just like my, it’s
just what I’m saying.
N: Now this is my question. Why do you think you’ve never been in that position? And
I’ve been in it plenty of times… Plenty of times.
T: I don’t know. It’s a good question…. I mean, I just, maybe I’ve grown up, like I’ve. I
dunno. I just never thought that, me personally, I just never thought that people were out
to get me because of my. Like I, I, I was always thought that people were on my good
list, again, like going back to what I was talking about before people generally have like
certain core values that are all the same. Like a lot of people. There’s some people who
don’t. Don’t get me wrong. But a lotta people just have respect. You know, I just grew
up respecting other people. I just feel like no one was really ever out to get me. You
know, like no one really had a reason to come after me because of like me being Jewish.
I’ve had like anti-Semitic remarks like directed at me before, but I never like, you could
tell when, I mean, granted the joking is not good but so like, it’s still like insulting. But
you can tell like when someone genuinely means something, or kinda getting off topic,
but I never thought that someone was ever really out to get me. You know? Now maybe
it’s different, cause I haven’t had the same experiences any of you had. You know? I, I
just never thought someone was really out to like ostracize me or count me. Maybe, I
dunno…
In this provocative exchange between Nic and Tom, there was a battle of views and
positions. Nic was determined to share his experiences and the conclusions he drew from
analyzing them. Tom challenged Nic’s analyses and conclusions. The entire exchange was
engaging and allowed little space for other members of the focus group to share their
perspectives as well. The exchange was filled with disruptions of one by the other and very
quick responses by both Nic and Tom. However, it is their choice of language and sharing
strategy that is important in understanding the depth of the exchange recorded here. I now
analyze this interchange in more detail.
Nic’s Talk
Nic began telling the story of being stopped near the residence hall where he and his
PreFirst cohort were living during the summer and repeats himself as he relived the frustration of
being stopped by Findings Public Safety (FPS) officers and other police officers.
FPS stops us like What are you guys doing here? We’re like Oh we go to school here, we live right there in
Roosevelt (Hall). We were right across the street from um, on this side like by Hoover (Hall). And the cop stopped
us, like What are doing here? Oh we go to school here, we’re in PreFirst.
In this brief first account, Nic reflects a frustration often felt by people of color of being policed
and held under surveillance by White people in and out of uniform. Collins (1998) asserts that
people of color are under surveillance in white-controlled public space. People of color are
being watched and controlled. The White campus cop viewed Nic and his friends (who were
people of color) as “unwelcome intruders” even on the sidewalk (p.5). The campus cop
demonstrated surveillance in his language by suggesting that Nic and his friends did not belong
on the campus street to begin with. They are out of place in the cop’s view. His inquiry—“what
are you doing here?”—was actually a rhetoric of exclusion, of uninvited presence. Nic’s
frustration was the result of deciphering this rhetoric, this oppressive race talk.
Nic was able to quickly share one story and move to the next. Each report presented a
similar theme of racial profiling by law enforcement. However, each story that Nic narrated had
a different physical setting that expressed the universal nature of these experiences for Nic: on
campus (his academic home), in his home city where he grew up, and places between the two.
Nic shared his story in almost bulleted format, presenting the facts as he recalled them- the
setting, characters, sequence and quotations. However, when Tom interrupted Nic with his
questions and talk of denial, Nic was compelled to employ his own strategies for making his
points clear. I will explore these strategies after investigating Tom’s talk.
Tom’s Talk
Tom entered the exchange, after a few attempts to interrupt Nic, with a question: “Do you
think that necessarily has to do with race.” Tom did not question that the sequence of events
took place but questioned the interpretation that Nic asserted. Tom did not initially state outright
that he disagrees with the racism that Nic charges but questions Nic on what he thinks. Yet, Tom
shows in many ways that he disagrees. Tom utilizes three main strategies in his talk with Nic:
(1) Microaggressions through specific microinvalidations; (2) dominant denials; and (3)
retreating mechanisms. These strategies work in combination with white talk tactics such as
derailing the conversation, evading questions, interrupting the speaker, and dismissing
counterarguments (McIntyre, 1997). I will take the reader through each of these strategies Tom
employs.
The language Tom used was a part of his overall strategy to invalidate Nic’s experience.
D.W. Sue et al. (2007) describe racial microaggressions as commonplace verbal, behavioral, or
environmental dignities that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and
insults toward people of color. Microaggressions may be intentional or unintentional. They are
“subtle, stunning, often automatic” exchanges that are derived from attitudes of white superiority
(Pierce, Carew, Pierce-Gonzalez, & Wills, 1978, p.66). The subtleties of Tom’s exchanges can
be found within the language he used in his arguments. Tom questioned whether race was
necessarily involved. Then he asserted that he did not think it had necessarily to do with race.
To further invalidate Nic’s attestation that his experiences were informed by race, Tom argued
that Nic’s conclusion “doesn’t logically make sense.” Inherent in this conclusion is a
microinvalidation that “negates or nullifies the psychological thoughts, feelings, or experiential
reality of a person of color” (Sue et al., 2007, p.274).
The microinvalidations that Tom expressed were both subtle in language and sometimes
more direct in delivery. For example, in the first half of the exchanges, Tom insists “I can’t say
that it wasn’t race, but you can’t say that race was the factor for it.” Phrases, even demands or
commands, of this kind reinforce a position and perspective of superiority. Tom’s language
dictated to Nic that he “can’t” state his own experience. Later in the exchanges, Tom utilized
other invalidating vocabulary in his suggestions that Nic was “over-analyzing things” and had
“gotten maybe kind of paranoid” about what happened to him. These microaggressions focused
attacks on Nic’s mindset, psychological condition, and mental ability.
Dominant Denials
The second strategy that Tom utilized was a dominant denial of racism. That is, Tom
manifested his dominant position in a racist society while denying the reality of racism. His
dominant denial included offering hypothetical stories, justifying behavior as normal, suggesting
doubt, and denying privilege. These mechanisms work in combination to produce a domineering
strategy of denial. After his initial question, Tom presented a hypothetical situation designed to
neutralize the stinging assertion that Nic experienced racism. Tom’s hypothetical involves
himself and other young people, even “teenagers,” in a car late at night. Tom did not name race,
while he called our attention to age and time of day/night. When Nic requested Tom’s ideas
about what was involved, Tom relied on hypothetical guesses again: “Maybe in Pennsylvania…
Or 2:00 in the morning…Maybe it’s just the way the cop does things…” These were attempts to
excuse racist behavior as normal and routine procedures and treatment of any (raced) citizen by
the police. This strategy was also used in an effort to silence Nic and to reassert the idea of
colorblind norms in societal practices. Tom seemed willing to entertain many other reasons for
the negative interactions that Nic had with law enforcement except racism.
The resounding “No, no” of the other focus group members (2 Latinos and 1 Asian
American student) helped Tom to verbally consider the possibility of racism in the stories that
Nic shared. The response may have been different if Nic was the only student of color in the
group, possibly having to defend the authority of his experience completely alone. “Was the cop
White,” Tom asked. Receiving an affirmative response from Nic, Tom continues to press his
point that Nic does not know “for sure.” Tom attempted to disrupt any certainty that Nic had
about his own experience, continuing to deny Nic’s charge of racism. Throughout the exchange,
Tom asserted that he was well-positioned to judge Nic and his experiences. Nic challenged this.
In Nic’s final challenge for Tom to explain why he thinks their experiences have been
significantly different, Tom realized that he needed to confront this fundamental question.
However, his response was powerfully reflective of his social location as white middle class
male and the consequences of his privilege. When he was challenged, Tom struggled to find his
words. His response was disjointed, disrupted, and disordered. The fundamental question was
about acknowledging the difference between Tom and Nic, the racial difference. However, Tom
was unable to say “race” or “skin color.” He attempted to keep race hidden in his talk.
Retreating Mechanisms
Tom retreated to an erasure of difference by invoking “certain core values that are all the
same.” Tom used two particular mechanisms to help him retreat to colorblind notions of
experience-- “distancing strategy” and minimization of racial/ethnic offenses—to suggest that he
is once again taking a “neutral” position. Case and Hemmings (2005) refer to distancing
strategies as avoidances of being implicated as racist or complicit in racism. Tom tried to
reposition himself as being able to speak to Nic’s experience with as much authority as Nic had;
as well as to evaluate that experience for meaning and worth. He continued his denial of racism
and exhibited his ignorance of white privilege when he stated: “But a lotta’ people just have
respect [for others]. You know, I just grew up respecting other people.” Respect is a privilege
that Whites receive without having to prove they have earned it. In fact, white skin is proof of
this earning. For people of color in a racist society, their skin is seen as proof that either they
cannot earn respect or that they deserve disrespect. Tom did not demonstrate an awareness of
this reality, another privilege that he has.
Tom utilized a strategy that is designed to minimize the observations that Nic made; and
to maintain his privilege. Tom translated racism into personal paranoia. He did this in two steps.
First, Tom excused his own experience of discrimination, noting that he has experienced hearing
anti-Semitic remarks directed at him. However, Tom reduced this attack to humor (“joking”)
based on his assessment of the perpetrator’s intention. Further, Tom takes away Nic’s power to
name his own experience and positions himself as the only one capable of defining an experience
with racism. His statement: “But you can tell like when someone genuinely means something,”
evidenced Tom’s intention-denial (van Dijk, 1992). For him, racist or discriminatory remarks are
acceptable if he deems those remarks are not intended to harm. His willingness to dismiss
discriminatory remarks delivered a message to other members of the focus group (subtly) that
Tom was not overly “sensitive”– another common discourse about subjugated people’s responses
to racism. He went on to say “I never thought that someone was ever really out to get me.” His
statement suggested that the listeners’ own perception of the dialogue is central to the discussion.
Further, that such perception of someone being “out to get me” is paranoia on the
part of the listener. Again, all others present in the focus group were people of color. The
discourse of people of color being paranoid about racism was a dominant theme that Tom
revisited in his talk. Tom’s use of this discourse was an indirect response to Nic’s question. His
retort signified that the fundamental difference between them was his clarity in perception and
Nic’s paranoia. However, Tom exhibited his privileged position as a visibly White male and
elucidated the perpetration of circumvention that White people often use against people of color
in conversations about racism.
Finally, when Nic asked Tom to explain why he has not experienced what Nic has, Tom is
directed by the inquiry to confront his positionality. The difference in experience and identity is
placed squarely in front of him to name and admit. Nic removes the insulation, and colors
around the edges of Tom’s white talk, rendering it visible. Cornered by his own argument of
logic and insistent white reasoning, Tom must now present his own common sense answer to
Nic’s critical question. Exhausted by his own denial at work, Tom gives up. “Maybe, I
dunno…” he says. Tom did not give in, instead he suspended the conversation by expressing the
possibility (“maybe”) that he does not know.
Talk of Knowing and Doubting
And it’s like you know when you’re being targeted. Like it’s something that you learn, something from
experience. Like you know. And then you also know when people are being genuine. But it’s a feeling, you
can’t describe it. It’s an instinct. It’s almost human nature for us to know like alright we’re being targeted.
- Nic
Nic, a subjugated person in U.S. American society, confidently recounted his experiences with
racism. He said that he would “always analyze a situation… for everything that it is.” He was
clear that his understanding of the situations he presented was accurate. He was cognizant of his
own positionality and the keen awareness he has about the probity and prejudice of people. His
“knowing” has authority, epistemic authority. Note the shift he makes in the above statement as
he discussed the knowledge of experience he later calls “instinct.” He says “it’s almost human
nature for us to know, like alright, we’re being targeted” (Author’s emphasis). Nic explains the
awareness people of color learn to exercise from the varied experiences they have with racism in
his response to Tom’s doubting. Nic calls on the “authority of his experience” (Collins, 2000) to
validate his recounting to the group. Yet Tom, who spoke from his own positionality, would not
validate Nic’s experience. Nic’s epistemic privilege meant nothing to Tom. Tom assumed a
position of superiority based on his unearned and unnamed privilege in society to deny the
authority of Nic’s own experience. In the conversation, Tom attempted to have Nic doubt his
interpretations and suggested not only that Nic did not “know for sure” but that he may even be
“paranoid” in his thinking about the situations he outlined to the focus group. Although Tom had
“never been in that position” of interfacing with law enforcement in the ways that Nic described,
and therefore had no cultural or structural knowledge of racism, he insisted that race was a not a
factor. Tom was committed to his “inverted epistemology” (Mills, 2007) of Nic’s own reality.
However, Nic would not concede. Finally, Nic asked Tom the critical question that propelled
him to make several reflective and disjunctive responses.
White race talk occurred in the second focus group (FG2) as well, where the diversity of
the group included a White female student. Jessica, a White young woman, was a member of a
focus group with one Asian American female, one African American female, and two African
American males including this researcher. During the conversation, Jessica exhibited
microaggressive behavior and white denial in her talk. Sue et al. (2007) describe microinsults as
“communications that convey rudeness and insensitivity and demean a person’s racial heritage or
identity” (p. 274). Often, the perpetrator of these slights is not aware. However, the message to
or about people of color is clearly conveyed. The following response from Jessica shows her
microinsult about employment opportunities, policies, and “minorities”- people of color.
Um, I consider myself, I don’t care, white, Caucasian, what ever you want to call me.
(laughs) I don’t care, um, but with the check boxing, I usually opt not to even check one
like what’s it matter, who cares. But, I don’t care what I am so why should you but with
the, um, with the employment sometimes because I’m. I have an internship but while I
was looking I’m like, can I please just be a minority. (laughs) Then they’ll hire me please,
um, so. I’m white, Caucasian whatever, um. but, um,
First, we hear Jessica’s ambivalence about acknowledging her whiteness in different contexts.
She considers herself White or Caucasian but she is not always willing to “check the box” and
identify herself as such on official documents. Jessica used a double strategy of “positive
selfpresentation” and “negative other-presentation” (van Dijk, 1992, p. 89). In her positive
selfpresentation, Jessica claimed her White identity and suggested she’s not stuck on race (“I
don’t care”). At the same time, she used a negative “other-presentation” that is subtle enough to
almost miss. She goes on to convey messages about people of color with her comment about
searching for employment—“While I was looking, I’m like, can I please just be a minority.
(Laughs) Then they’ll hire me…” This comment conveys a message that minorities are
automatically hired (a false notion of affirmative action policies); and that qualifications of skill,
experience and education are secondary to minorities’ racial identities. She also dismisses the
reality of discrimination in employment that minorities face. Bonilla-Silva (2006) refers to these
views of this type as story lines of color blindness designed to help keep people of color “in their
place.” Jessica’s make-me-a-minority fantasy, even if suggested in humor, reflects a notion that
people of color are in a position of advantage and hides the truth about racist, white supremacist
hiring practices that constrain their lives. Jessica’s fantasy about minorities in her race talk is
also a denial of white privilege which offers her systemic benefits every day.
Hip Hop Race Talk Generation
Students theorize about race. In everyday race talk, students interpret their observations of
race around them. They especially consider popular culture icons and other mediated figures to
decipher new articulations of race and/or racism and convene informal summits to discuss their
postulations. These conversations reflect the process of race formations (Omi & Winant, 1994)
that students are engaged in; and the influence of social location in their various articulations of
race ideology. Students do not adhere to “old” and fixed ideas about race, but reinterpret race
identity and meaning from macro-level behaviors as well as political projects of older people and
industries.
Hip Hop culture has become increasingly important as a medium and catalyst for race
meaning making among students. In the following quote, Terrence discussed how race is
explored in the weight room with his football mates and others in the athletic complex. He
reported this talk as a witness and participant while responding to the discourse of his peers in
the present conversation. This reported talk in Focus Group 3 (FG3) provided insight about
racial identity in the twenty-first century and the impact that Hip Hop has had on racial identity
and meaning.
T: A lot of us (athletes), we talk about race because of like, what we do in the weight room
like hip hop and oh, “why it’s always that all the black kids want to listen to hip hop all
the time” but it don’t be that way ‘cause some white people want to listen to hip hop, you
know, ‘cause they part of the hip hop culture or, um, like the Obama thing and how he’s
relating to the Hip Hop culture and how he was on BET. We had a big discussion like, it
was like 30 of us in our, our lounge area at [the athletic complex] about how he was on
BET, on 106 and Park or something like that and how a couple of days later they had
Snoop Dog on, you know one of the BET shows talking about it and how hip hop is
becoming, you know, Obama’s focus point and how like a lot of my white friends are
saying because he wants to get those black voters that don’t usually vote to vote, like, it’ll
start like that and those sort of things. Or, like hip hop and the whole Eight Mile movie
came out, I remember like a lot of my friends are like “Eminem, he’s black,” but, you
know, he’s really white. And like how, a lot of people would make jokes like oh, I know
everybody pretty much heard it, like black people and white people traded. They got
Michael Jackson and we got Bill Clinton, like a lot of those stereotypes, like I’ve heard
that like tons of times. (they laugh)
Terrence reflected on an exercise that his coach began in the weight room, where each
athlete was allowed to choose the station or music that would be played during training sessions.
At each session, teammates had to decide whose music would be played. This important exercise
of choice and decision making yielded an unintended byproduct- race talk and becomes related
to authority and power; therefore race relations. In his talk, Terrence noted the role that Hip Hop
plays in evoking talk about race in the weight room. This talk was so important that it moved
from the weight room to the main lounge in the athletic complex where about 30 students
continued the discussion. It was the presence of Hip Hop that facilitated these conversations
about race. Although there is a racist perception that “All the Black kids want to listen to Hip
Hop all the time,” Terrence points out that many people who identify differently (racially) share
in Hip Hop culture, which has disturbed racialized music listening with its broad appeal.
Terrence talks back to the notion of a race-specific Hip Hop appeal and the root idea of race
essentialism and music by invoking Obama.
Terrence brought up Obama to emphasize his point about the importance of Hip Hop as a
genre of music and culture that must be taken seriously. Obama, then a presidential candidate,
was not only “relating” to Hip Hop but recognized the power and influence of the culture.
Hence, Obama moved into Hip Hop space, as represented by Black Entertainment Television
(BET) and one of its prime Hip Hop video shows “106 and Park.” Hip Hop artists like Snoop
Dog discussed this visit, reinforcing Obama’s presence in Hip Hop spaces. Terrence spoke about
the strategic cultural sharing capital that Obama, now president of the United States, recognized.
“Hip Hop is becoming, you know, Obama’s focus point.” It wasn’t just about getting “those
black voters” as some White people were saying; it is about recognizing the significant art and
cultural form of Hip Hop, a genre created by Black people and embraced by the world. Terrence
continued to resist ideas that marginalized or diminished this significance, and he did so by
juxtaposing what “white people” or “white friends” say and do with real life examples that
demonstrate otherwise. This is important for Terrence because although Hip Hop is for
everybody, it is deeply connected with Black people and he identifies as one.
Race performance has changed. It is no longer the Black young person from the inner
city who raps and creates Hip Hop music, but it is also the White guy from Warren, Michigan of
Scottish and Russian ethnic heritage. Born Marshall Bruce Mathers III in St. Joseph, Missouri,
Eminem won a Grammy Award for his first cd “The Slim Shady,” released in 1999. His second
project, “The Marshall Mathers” lp became the fastest selling Hip Hop album in history. The “8
Mile” is a Hip Hop dramatic film about a young White rapper’s struggle for respect among his
Black peers, starring Eminem. This film also received major recognition when Eminem won an
Academy Award for Best Original Song- entitled “Lose Yourself.” This was Eminem’s first song
to hit the #1 position on charts in the United States (maintaining the position for 12 weeks).
Hence, Terrence’s reflection on Eminem and the impact of Hip Hop on racial identity formation
and race talk is particularly significant to the overall discussion of meaning making about race.
“I remember like a lot of my friends are like ‘Eminem, he’s black,’ but you know he’s really
white.” Terrence was asking what does it mean to be Black? What do skin color and
performance say about race?
Terrence and his friends used popular culture figures to talk about racism as an enclosure, a
category with imprisoned ideas of how one should be or must be as a racialized being. President
Obama, Eminem, Michael Jackson, and former president Clinton represent this struggle for
Terrence. He views this as a struggle for all raced people. Through serious discussion or humor,
these figures mirror to Terrence the bearing and befuddlement of race.
Barack Obama’s participation on Black Entertainment Television (BET) and his outreach to the
“Hip Hop generation” as a presidential candidate makes an incredible statement about the power
of this music and culture. Mr. Obama himself has been a catalyst for robust discussion on race
and politics in the news media. Further, he has challenged perceptions of the U.S. presidency
and the roles that African Americans can play in politics. Like Barack Obama, Michael Jackson
and Bill Clinton represent people who have transcended particular perceived race roles, while not
transcending race itself. Unlike Mr. Obama, Jackson and Clinton are often used in “race trading”
comedy routines: Michael has endured lighter phenotypical changes and Bill has been
considered a “cool” saxophone playing politician and smooth talker, attributed to Black cool.
It is this kind of reflective humorous talk that allows students to discuss sensitive topics
like tokenism. Note the following exchange between Brian, Terrence, Jossette, Mei and me, as
Brian discussed race talk while working at the health center on campus.
B: The reason we do talk about race often is because I’m pretty much the only African--
black person there, um, and just recently they started to hire, ah, more black people and
people of color to actually be part of the ambulance service. Um, about a semester ago I
was pretty much the only one there. Every one used to make jokes about it, like oh, you
know, “Where are the rest of the black people” and stuff like that because
T: Token black guy
(Terrence comments with dry humor using a different voice and Mei chuckles in the
background)
B: Yeah, I was pretty much like, yeah, I was pretty much the token black guy of the
ambulance. So, it became an issue to the point where I tried to get other people involved.
But, um, I remember the, the interview process. One of the students from University
Ambulance actually does the interview process. And, um, last semester, with the
interview process a lot of white individuals got in but, none of the black individuals got
in and that surprised me. So, I didn’t know if it was something dealing with the people
who did the interviews or if it’s just that, you know, these people of color just didn’t want
to be part of the organization. Y’know, but, now I see that maybe that interview process
might have changed or something, or maybe more people actually want to be part of it,
but they are starting to bring a little bit more color there and, I mean. I guess it’s not
being that big of an issue now because there’s more color being brought to University
Ambulance. But, I’m just happy that there is more color and I’m not the only, colored
individual there. It wasn’t really a big issue. You know but, it’s actually good to see that
there’s more than just Caucasians there.
P: Why did you? (laughs) Jossisa, what did you look at Mei and say, ah, I think I heard you
kind of mimic “more color”?
J: Ah, no, I said I like his haircut. (laugh) Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no ‘cause he said more
color. Like Oh yeah, color it in. (They laugh). That’s funny. Hmm…Like
…coloring book…Like color it in.
There are three significant points of analysis that I want to make about this exchange.
First, Brian described a fairly serious issue at his job where he had been the only Black person
there for some time and where he endured marginalizing humor from his White co-workers.
There was race talk at Brian’s job precisely because of the scant racial diversity among
employees. Brian’s presence was the catalyst for race talk. This talk that Brian described was in
the form of humor. Yet Brian was making serious connections between race and employment
practices and conditions. He talked about trying to “get other people involved” (recruitment) and
observing that “a lot of white individuals got in but none of the black individuals got in” (hiring
practice) to his surprise.
Second, Terrence introduced humor within the focus group even as he drew an important
conclusion from what Brian shared: that he was the “token black guy” at his job. Terrence could
have presented his thought in a serious tone, but he didn’t. He chose to accent his observation
with slight humor by changing the tone of his voice, which might have allowed him to escape
contention if it was received negatively. Being called “token” is generally insulting to people of
color. However, Terrence’s comment allowed Brian to expound further, interpreting and sharing
more about his experience.
Third, Brian’s talk of “more color” and use of “colored,” a misnomer I heard many
students exploit when attempting to talk about students of color as a collective group, was gently
corrected with humor by Jossette. The focus group membership provides the context for this
humor. In this particular focus group, all the members were people of color, including this
researcher, who was also affected by the humor. As we talked race, we raced our talk. We talked
as a group of Black, Latino, and Asian individuals who understood each other’s experience and
gave each other license to critique the racial situations that were described.
Listening
Students of color take note of how race talk begins as they make acquaintances with White
peers. With their “ethnographic gaze” (hooks, 1995), Black, Latino, and Asian American
students in my study, who reside in both the center and margins of the campus, were able to
delineate the talk strategy used by their White peers. Students of color describe both the
ignorance and the communicative method used by Whites to defend that ignorance and avoid
responsibility for it. In the following excerpt, we see how Amy, an Asian American female, has
learned to listen to white race talk.
I have learned to listen to other people before I say something because sometimes the
first thing that they say and they might be ignorant, they might not know about the
history of so and so which in most cases they don’t because we do not offer Asian
American or African, or some people don’t take African-American or Latino studies
before they act or speak, they don’t. They just don’t know the background content. Um,
so, I’ve learned to let people speak and listen to them, um. And then engage them. I
actually ask them, where did you learn that from? Makes them think about what they
learned, um, sort of in a calm way so it’s not the [curse] that comes out and you’re like,
what the la, la, la, like, you know, me lashing back out and then all of a sudden a
conversation disappears.
Amy discussed how she has learned to tolerate ignorant race talk, specifically white race
talk that is not based on sound information, as she listens. As a person of color, Amy has
learned that she is compelled to give air time to white noise, “ignorant” white talk, in
order to develop and maintain a conversation with her White peers. Hence, students of
color who wish to engage their White counterparts develop a strategy for talking that
involves listening. First, they listen. Second, they must “calmly” engage White speakers
with questions, suppressing their rage (“lashing back”) at the white noise they would
have heard, in order to allow their White counterparts to reflect on what they have just
said. For fear of losing the conversation, people of color are almost taken hostage by the
scheme of white ignorance and then forced into a labor of silence and emotion
suppression. If people of color were to lash out at the ignorance that incited their rage,
the opportunity for learning- the conversation- “disappears.” Even though her White
peers have refused other opportunities to learn by taking courses in various Ethnic
Studies, not all of which are available at the university, Amy hoped that she could
enlighten them when interpersonal opportunities for learning were manifested.
Amy reflected on her own growth in the ability to engage in dialogue with people who
expressed ideas based on ignorance.
It has changed, um, back then it was immediate response. Now it’s just like, “Huh, really?
Where did you learn that? Um, I would like to know where you learned that? Um, did
you know this?” Um, so it’s been…. It’s been drastically different. I’ve approached it in
different ways since my freshman year all the, you know, people saying something that I
thought--even if it wasn’t targeted at me, to someone else either AfricanAmerican, Latino
or even Native American-- I’d be like “You don’t know enough to say that,” like right off
the bat and then they would be defensive, then they would try to, you know, recover
themselves, um, going [out] the back way...
Questioning ideas, rather than immediately stating a response to the content, seemed to be a more
productive effort for Amy in confronting her peers. Additionally, Amy called out her White
counterparts’ defensiveness when confronted by people of color and how they attempt to recover
from revealing their ignorance. Amy’s awareness of the “semantic move,” (BonillaSilva, 2002)
of “going out the back way,” that White students make to avoid confronting their ignorance and
racism highlights her ethnographic gaze as a person of color. It is the epistemic knowledge of
White behavior that people of color see in everyday life that has assisted and compelled them to
develop strategies of talk for race dialogue to occur.
Similarly, Clayton, an African American male informant, reported race talk shared with
his White roommate and discussed the dilemma of white race talk that offends yet is honest. A
member of the second focus group with Amy, Clayton also discussed that he refrained from
lashing out at his roommate so that he could hear what his roommate believes.
Diversity, he says, he knows [about it from] living in an urban area. I said “How do you
know, how do you know about this?” He said “I played baseball in an urban area” and
(laughs) I said to him, “So you know diversity, you know this and you’re telling me about
Latinos and you’re telling me about minorities that they should get back to where they
came from, do the process right and all of these things.” And I’m saying “You have no
experience. Your father makes, your father pays for you to come here, signs a check and
pays for you to come here. You have no idea.” But, I was a little upset but I didn’t lash
out on him because I understand and I’ve come to realize that he’s, he’s telling me what
he believes. Whereas a lot of people believe but they never say it and I respect that he has
the courage to say it and I think he’s working towards a better goal because picking me as
a roommate is kind of, you know, obviously I’m not an easy person to live with. And he’s
uh, but picking me as a roommate I think signifies a change in him trying to understand
others and understand people who are of minority descent. But that was one of those
ignorant comments. So, that’s how we started talking about diversity.
Clayton highlighted the differences in experiences with diversity that he and his White roommate
shared. Clayton has lived in an urban environment with some resource challenges, while his
roommate has been accustomed to financial privilege and lived in a suburban environment for
most of his life. Clayton underscored these differences to the focus group in his reported talk
between him and his roommate. The roommate felt that his limited interactions with Others in
an urban environment, specifically through sport, provided him with knowledge of diversity.
However, after laughing in response to his roommate’s naivite, Clayton argued that his
roommate’s claim of understanding or “knowing” diversity was incongruent with other
statements he had made about Latinos and other minorities. Clayton reported how he responded
to his roommate: “So you know diversity, you know this and you’re telling me about
Latinos…about other minorities that they should get back to where they came from…” These
comments were in the exchanges he shared with his roommate.
Then Clayton continued by talking back to his roommate indirectly while in the focus
group. He reflected on his roommate’s talk and responded in the present. Clayton called out his
roommate’s lack of experience and class privilege. “You have no idea,” Clayton said, refuting
the notion that his roommate really understood diversity. Clayton’s retort was at once about his
roommate’s lack of diversity awareness in general and specifically his ignorance of the person he
was living with—Clayton. Then Clayton shared interesting commentary on the reported talk
with the rest of the focus group about constraining his rage and not lashing out on his roommate
because “he’s telling me what he believes.” Clayton’s comments had poignancy in that he
acknowledged the role of openness in his roommate’s talk, which Clayton sees as an attempt to
work on understanding. Apparently, his roommate chose him to reside together for this
particular reason. The advantage to this openness is that Clayton knows what his roommate
thinks. Clayton acknowledged that there are others who would think as his roommate does and
would never say what they think. Such unspoken ignorance is not respectable to Clayton. He
appreciated knowing where his peers stand on issues of diversity.
Race Talk Chalk: We don’t do what they do
Another theme in the race talk of students of color was “boundary maintenance” (Myers &
Williamson, 2001). Boundary maintenance is a legacy of segregation and race separation that
have encouraged subjugated people to protect their enclaves as places of refuge from Whites.
Maintaining the boundary in race talk can sometimes be expressed with the us/them binary. Talk
of what “they” do in contrast to what “we” do can help sustain enclaves that have been
threatened. Natasha reports talk of this nature.
The differences that I’ve seen, of course, you know, certain things that I see maybe
Caucasians do I know most people in African-American community or minority
community wouldn’t do. Like, you know, they talk, some people brought up about, you
know, when winter comes, you know, a lot of Caucasian people like to still wear shorts so
they wear flip flops in the rain or they wear, you know, they just do stuff that you know
other people are not used to. They like, you know, “only white people” type, they’ll make
a comment like that. So, it’s like there is a difference between them, and then also
being roommates with, people of Caucasian, race, you know, you see different things that
they’ll do. Like certain things don’t bother them like especially like the tidiness of the
rooms and stuff like that and it’s not to, you know, you can’t put that on everybody on
one race….
Natasha reports and makes her own race talk that maintains borders between Whites and people
of color. She reports that people (of color) have talked about Caucasian’s attire in the colder
seasons and different ways of maintaining a college room. The “only white people” talk of
certain behaviors maintains a border of what can or should be authentically Asian American,
Black, or Latino. However, Natasha interrogates this us/them race talk and resists absolute
vocabulary such as “all,” “only,” and “everybody.” She warns that it would not be wise to
generalize any one race for certain behaviors as though all people who are identified in that race
category behave that way. Natasha later called this behavior “reverse racism” and “indirect
prejudice.” These worrisome terms suggest that Natasha has adopted some of the language of
this color-blind era. She continued on to share her view of racial vocabulary that is very
controversial race talk among this generation of young people and others.
I try not to engage in that type of stuff. Especially by, you know, what using certain
words like, you know, like people like to use the word niggah and like, you know, call all
the races certain things like I don’t like and I don’t allow anybody else to say it around
me. ‘Cause we will have a problem and with certain people, you know, they like to argue
back to me and that’s fine, you know, ‘cause certain people feel like why can’t I say that,
you know? Some people have certain words like the word bitch for girls, you know, they
like to use that with each other, you know, they look at these things as words of
endearment now like no. (laughs and snickers) I’m not going with that so, and no one, to
me, has really given me a reason why, you know, they want you to use that as a word of
endearment now. But, I mean that’s their personal choice but just don’t do it around me
so, you know, you get a lot of that being on your own. Being able to be out with people,
um, on college campuses, different types of people and stuff like that, you start to notice
like, you know, like we have to, there are some changes we need to make within
ourselves also so that we can, you know, help in this fight to try stop a lot of these things
that we’re all complaining about from all aspects, you know, whether you’re White, His,
you know, Hispanic, African-America and stuff like that, so. That’s some of the
differences that I have recognized being here at Findings.
Natasha’s critique of negative racial epithets that are sometimes used in an inverted way as
“terms of endearment” is relevant to any discussion of race talk and the Hip Hop generation. It is
this generation that is largely connected to a music and African American subculture that has
expanded to mainstream global phenomenon who are committed to the “oneness” and
transcendence of Hip Hop. Terrence’s comments earlier in this chapter demonstrate this idea
shared by many people in his college student generation that Hip Hop is a universal art form that
is valued for its material manifestations and its facilitation of political power. However, this
generation has been criticized for not interrogating Hip Hop’s connection to Blackness more
meaningfully to understand its inherent politics as a Black cultural artifact (Morgan, 2005).
Cobbs and Grier (1968) describe the process of inversion used by the enslaved Africans in
the United States as a method for them to turn the language used by their “owners” into a tool for
their own purposes that would counter their oppressors. Hence the use of term “niggah” as
endearment remains controversial as it is not clear how its use counters or resists an historical
oppression that this generation of young Black people seems to be disconnected from. Natasha
also criticizes the use of the term “bitch” for women, which has been used gratuitously in the Hip
Hop industry largely dominated by male artists. Similarly, “niggah” has been commodified by
the Hip Hop industry, with gatekeepers and beneficiaries (record executives and others) who are
predominantly White males. While this dissertation is not primarily concerned with the debate
of words, this issue is relevant to the analyses of race talk because it illuminates the
interpretations students make of words and race discourses within the context of a racialized,
racist, and color-blind dominated society.
Natasha snickers at the argument of inversion or the term of endearment reason to
excuse the use of heavily racialized and gendered words that have been historically used to
oppress people. However, Natasha does not make strong connections to institutional oppression
in this talk; she focuses on the personal level of interaction. She suggested that her friends had
the right to make their choice whether or not to use these terms, but she also had the right not to
have to hear it. Natasha thought about this issue more politically and asserted that there should
be a difference in talk when considering the larger context of the struggle to end injustice. Not
only was it important for interactions with a racially diverse and multi-gendered campus, but for
the greater cause of ending oppression. She said “There are some changes we need to make
within ourselves also so that we can, you know, help in this fight to try stop a lot of these things
that we’re all complaining about from all aspects…”
The next comment that was made in the focus group was from Jessica, who picked
up on the boundary maintenance talk that Natasha described as “reverse discrimination.” Jessica
advances this storyline of white victimization and a “cycle” of racism that she has experienced.
Um, I experienced a lot of, um racism towards me, in my freshman year because of my
friends were such diverse people and came from diverse backgrounds that whether they
were joking about it or like seriously like, I’ve heard that a lot from all of ‘em. Why do
you all wear flip flops? It’s snowing and I’m like, I have boots on. Not all (laughing) of
us are. (they laugh) Um, so I had to defend my race a lot even though some sorority girls
are like “whatever.” (They laugh.) Um, so, I I completely agree with you and that it’s a
cycle that continuously goes around like the kick the cat example where you have a bad
day and you slap your wife, she hit the kid and they kick the cat. Um, and I think, whose
gonna, you know, it needs to be stopped but what are you going to do and who’s gonna do
it or the group’s gonna do it? Um, so, that’s my experience and, (sighs) it wasn’t, wasn’t,
it wasn’t pleasant (laughs) so I understand where minorities come from. Um, and I forgot
the question but I wanted to comment about that.
Jessica utilized a “Me too” strategy in her talk that repositioned her as victim. In her race talk,
Jessica noted that she had experienced racism during her freshman year “because” of diversity.
She conveyed that it was because of the diversity of her friendships that she experienced racism
through the race talk of “what they do.” Jessica talks about defending her race from these
unpleasant experiences—experiences that have helped her to understand what minorities go
through. She wants it to stop. While this talk reflects an equalizing process of language and
vocabulary made by the students, it does not call out the power differentials of race hierarchy in
U.S. social relations. This is another suggestion and reflection of color-blind talk that avoids a
more critical view of power and privilege.
Talk about the race walk/ Walk the race talk
This section explores talk from two students about the ways race is performed, as well as
performance of race talk. By performance of race talk I mean the performance of speech that is
understood by some hearers as racialized or representing a particular vernacular. Sometimes
such speech is assimilated and other times it is performed with intention, as code switching.
While Jossette’s talk occurs within a focus group like all of the informants in this chapter so far, I
have included Geoff’s talk from his individual interview because his talk is significant to my
argument about the performance of race talk. In the following quotation, Jossette described how
race performance in social settings is talked about among her peers.
The whole, acting black or hip hop, all the stereotypes, um, I see that in a lot of cultures
too ‘cause I know, um, for example, when my roommate and my friend who was Puerto
Rican and my roommate who’s Dominican, um, they pledged for white sororities and I
still have friends that are Latina pledging for sororities that I, oh, she’s a sell out. Or,
because of the way that she dresses “she’s dressing white, she’s a sell out.” Um, if she
speaks a certain way, um, “she’s a sell out.” “You sound white” and stuff like that. Uhm,
and I know back where we’re from in the city, the more educated you sound, the whiter
you’re getting….Like, I know, I came to Findings, I was here for a year, I went back
obviously the way that I spoke changed because I was no longer speaking like I was in
high school and I was learning, um how to use appropriate words I guess? And like my
best friends and even my sister who now goes here, they’re like, “Oh my God, you sound
so white…”
There were others in the group who agreed with Jossette’s description of race
performance and the challenges some students of color faced as a result. Jossette outlined some
of the factors that would place the authenticity of someone’s racial identity in jeopardy,
including: 1. social fraternity/sorority affiliation; 2. representation of fashion or clothing; and 3.
pattern or sound of speech (talk). These factors were deemed important characterizations of
racial identity to potentially label someone a “sell-out.” The association of educated speech with
whiteness from some of Jossette’s younger friends (of color) in her home city is a problematic
phenomenon that has been critiqued by many scholars. This social reality for young people of
color is a condition they must negotiate as they pursue higher education. Not only could a
student’s pattern of speech or accent be considered a sign of selling out, but certain actions could
be considered a statement of preferring whiteness. These concerns reflect some concern within
the communities of color on campus for the maintenance of authentic identity and fear of losing
culture.
While some students’ speech demonstrated educational attainment or assimilated speech,
other’s speech was used as social capital among their peers. Yet, for both groups of students,
speech was a signifier of identity and something to negotiate. Geoff, a White male, discussed
how he used different talk with different groups of people as a way of “handling himself” in
different situations. This negotiation of talk allowed him to expand his network and cross
boundaries.
G: Because I don’t see race as an issue those around me will bring it up. Like will see
me talking to some people and they’ll say, “Hey Geoff, you’re white.” It’s like, is
that really necessary? If I, if I want to talk to him I’m gonna talk one way if I talk
to this person I’m going to talk another way. But, what I’m talking about is all the
same. If, if I’m gonna do this it’s gonna be the same.
Geoff’s ability to negotiate his talk- his speech patterns and words- sometimes provoked his
peers to remind him that he is White. However, Geoff did not see himself as someone bound by
identity. Hence, he code switched easily and purposefully often to negotiate his way through
multiple associations. Geoff arrived to the Pre-First program with this ability, having exercised it
since he was seven years old.
I will, will talk differently to my white friends but at the same time I told them I
find it harder to talk to them than I do to talk to Tawanda, Chermaina, Nubia, Nia,
all these people, all these Black people. I just find it harder sometimes when I
talk, why I don’t get along with my roommate but like when I talk to him I’m just
very. I just speak as properly and eloquently as possible as I can just so that I
don’t have to talk to him but the whole point is that he’s white. Almost all the
people on my floor are white... I just speak to them the way I basically speak at
home to my father.
In the above quotation, Geoff suggested that he not only uses speech to build coalition and
friendships across cultural borders, but he uses talk to maintain boundaries as well. His dislike
for his roommate prompted him to speak to him and others with “eloquent” and isolating speech.
This is the talk he used at home with his father, which maintained social distance. Geoff used
what he called slang as friendly talk, even when it placed him outside of the White performance
that many were used to. The benefit of this choice is to affiliate with Blackness, specifically
Black cool. Geoff makes the decision not to connect with most of the students who
are White on his floor of the residence hall. Instead, he shuts them out with his race talk
performance. In both Geoff’s and Jossette’s race talk, they indicated that race talk in style and
delivery can be political as a way to claim identity or disaffiliate someone from an identity.
CONCLUSION
In this chapter, I have explored the dynamics of Race Talk as expressed by nine key
informants: Nic, Tom, Jessica, Terrence, Brian, Jossettte, Amy, Clayton, and Geoff. Through
their exchanges with one another and their choice of language and sequential strategy, I have
described students’ interpretations of race and shown how these interpretations are expressed.
Students are anxious to talk about race and relish opportunities that are “safe” and seem not to be
singly focused on the topic, at least initially. For example, Terrence, his teammates, and other
athletes were able to talk about race while working out initially then continuing the discussion in
a relaxed setting of their own choosing (the Athletic Complex Lounge). Popular culture icons
played a significant role in this talk, providing sources to be interpreted and examples of the
students’ interpretations. Humor helped students to talk about sensitive themes in their race talk
and provided entrance and escape routes for correction.
There were moments of intense exchanges when discussing the experiences with racism
between people who represented different positionalities. When a Person of Color shared his
experiences with racism, he attempted to share facts that offered the same theme in different
settings. The White witness to this talk utilized a different set of strategies in an effort to
maintain colorblind ideology. These overlapping strategies included: 1. microaggressions; 2.
dominant denials; and 3. retreating mechanisms. For example, Tom asserted his ideas as
standard or normal logic, positioning his views as truth and characterizing Nic as paranoid and
illogical. Tom attempted to create doubt in his dominant denials of racism by questioning the
interpretation and authority of Nic’s experience (microinvalidations) and asserting the possibility
of another meaning through hypothetical suggestions. Additionally, Tom denied difference,
denied racism, and denied his own experience to reinforce truth as a matter of interpretation and
retreated to common ideas (“core values”) and finally suspended the conversation to avoid
acknowledging Nic’s experience. Denials of power and privilege prevented him from
understanding the message in Nic’s sharing of experience.
Students of color shared the importance of listening as an important strategy for engaging
and sustaining potential teachable moments or learning opportunities through race talk. This
strategy involves constraining their rage, holding back desire to lash out, to understand white
ignorant talk in the learning process. Another student of color reported race talk designed to
maintain borders around racial identity enclaves and the troublesome talk of inverted historically
oppressive language.
Although students held ideas of colorblind individualism, they struggled with varying
expressions of a racialized self in others. They did not want to be judged racially, but seemed to
be engaged to whatever degree in the collective exercise of evaluating each other’s race
authenticity. This was a part of their talk about how other people performed race; and how they
themselves negotiated performances in different spaces and situations.
Race talk is about the mechanics, content, and style of talk that utters race into the
soliloquies and dialogues of my informants. Race talk is part of a political matrix of meaning
making. Throughout this chapter, we see that students engaged race talk to maintain their
position in social relations, identify themselves and others, and theorize about race in a new way.
It is important to recognize Hip Hop as a major cultural frame that has helped to shape the race
theory that emerged from these informants. It calls for race interpretation at the level of
individual experience that generally sees everyone as equal participants in the matrix of
domination, which remains unnamed by the informants.
CHAPTER 6 [DATA CHAPTER]
RACE: SHIFTS, STAYS, AND DRIFTS
This chapter, like Chapter 5, also examines much of the data from the focus groups in the
second phase of my research. In these sessions, I sought to understand how the informants’
views about race may have shifted over time. What would the students express to each other
about their experiences with and their understanding of race? How would they talk with each
other and make meaning of their shared and varying perspectives? What kinds of interactions
did they have on the campus of Findings University since their summer together in the Pre-First
program? How did their experiences shape the discourses they would reflect in the focus groups,
and vice versa?
This chapter further explores my informants’ conceptions of race, deconstructions of racial
identities, and lived realities on campus since their initial summer in the Pre-First program. My
examination of these broad themes highlights the engagement of students in meaning making
about race and the social consequences to this process. I will show how little their views about
race changed even though they speak about it in more nuanced and complex ways. I will also
show that while White American students continued to minimize race and racism and delved
deeper into denial (demonstrated in Chapter 5), the students of color in this study became more
race conscious in college. Hence, these students’ language about racism shifted, while they
maintained similar notions of race over the years. Campus social realities challenged colorblind
discourses and post-racial desires. Yet, students from various race/ethnic backgrounds negotiated
these differently. From classrooms to campus programs and socialization between students,
these informants experienced the impact of race in their college generation.
Most of my informants expressed similar ideas about what Race is, three years after their
initial interviews. In some ways, I was surprised by this. I had anticipated more significant
changes in their interpretations of race as a result of their academic training and experiences at
the university. For example, informants still seemed unable to explicitly discuss the significant
role of power in the formation and everyday operation of race in U.S. society- a stayed
conception. However, focus group conversations demonstrated that many of the informants
developed more sophisticated ways of expressing their ideas about the complexity of race while
maintaining the core beliefs and concerns they held in the Pre-First Program three years earlier.
That is, race is a social construction used to categorize people. Additionally, there were shifts in
expressions of race as a significant factor in their social lives on and off campus. Fewer students
of color used minimizing language about race and racism. This seemed to be a result of their
experiences with race/racism during their college years. However, the White students in my
focus groups remained committed to diminishing race and racism and drifted toward the use of
microaggressions or white denial (see Chapter 5). These divergent views within the focus group
sessions I facilitated reinforced the common theme of some student confusion and frustration
with the discourses they inherited and perpetuated while desiring to be post-racial. This
negotiation of desire (to be post-racial) and reflection (of past and present realities) resulted in
cynicism for some, and excitement at the possibility of cross-racial exploration for others.
I. Conceptions of Race
A. Race is normal, systemic
Students discussed race as a social identifier to categorize human bodies. However, they
also complicated this further by exploring the significance of race as a critical factor in the
development of histories and cultures for different groups of people in various ways. They
considered the fact that historical figures and events have emerged as a result of beliefs and
discourses about race. Further, essentialist discourses about race were problematized by current
events, contemporary figures, and the students’ own experiences.
In the comment below, the normalized function of race is discussed as an identifier that
structures our society as much as numbers and the alphabet do. Society relies on race.
I do believe that race was, is used to identify people because whether we like it or not we
always categorize things. Sort of in the extremes, love, hate, um, African American,
Caucasian, white, Latino, um, what not, it’s an identifier sort of like numbers identify a
concept. Um, and, um Reagan undoubtedly did it apparently, (laughs) um, but I still think
it’s a concept that people are using as an identifier as a way of pin-pointing a group.
‘Cause, even without race in general we talk about sub-cultures, we talk about, you know,
the skateboarders, the rockers, the, you know, we just identify people and with that comes
the concept of, um, history, culture, what not. So African-American, Malcolm X, Martin
Luther King, um, you know. I still take it on as a concept that we “make up” just to, I
guess the idea out there of who we’re talking or what we’re talking about. Whether it’s
good or not I don’t know, we just use it sort of like, why do we have numbers, why do we
have the alphabet. (laughs) I, I can’t explain that to you, um, but I still think of that way
because we are still made of the same material in terms of our body chemistry. Um, we
are not that different from animals and matter of fact we are animals. But, um, I take it
that way, so.
- Amy, Asian American female
[Race] has become very, very complicated to the point where you’re actually trying to
figure out people, um, and who they are. Um, I just wanted to add that it’s just not a label
anymore. We use it as a label still but it’s inherently so tied to everything we do and how
we think of other people, um, through sub cultures, categories, ethnicities, um, places,
histories…
- Natasha, African American female
In the comments above, race is inextricably linked with culture, history, and everyday
interpretations. As several informants discussed in their initial interviews, Amy said that race is
one of the concepts we use to identify or classify human beings, grouping them by some shared
biological composition. During the process of grouping, people develop cultures and histories.
Although race is a social construction, Amy argued that it is used to make sense of our world in
some way, much like numbers and the alphabet is used. These are all normalized systems that
society takes for granted—numbers, alphabet, races.
Rather than arguing against the foolishness of race and racism as they did in Phase I,
students of color in the focus groups emphasized the fact that race has been woven into the fabric
of our society and how we experience life. They found race to be complex and difficult to
define. However, several ideas were shared to bring about some notion of race as a
“complicated” collection of concepts, including science, culture, identity, social structure,
categorization of people, binaries, geography, history, and politics. Natasha talked about the
significance of race beyond a simple “label” or identifier. It was tied to everything people do and
think.
B. Race is political
At the time of my third focus group (Fall 2008), the presidential campaign was in full
swing, which served as a catalyst for some discussions that troubled race essentialism and
highlighted the politics of race. For example, Clayton, an African American student, explored
how scientific racism and the development of a superiority/inferiority complex based on race
made him uneasy. Then he deliberated on the role that race played in the presidential campaign
and how Mr. Barack Obama negotiated or represented his (bi-) racial identity throughout the
campaign in the media.
Okay, race is our need to be able to put a person or an individual in a box or, to categorize
them or to mark them in society in our desire to attach a certain stigma to a certain, uh
things to that, to that marker, their genetic marker based on the genetic phenotypes or the
facial features or whatever the case may be and with that, um, came, came racism and
how to discriminate and how to say you’re lesser than. I’m more than you are. It’s based
on the idea that I need to be able to be better than you. How do I be better than you? [You
say] “I’m better” [because of] your race or by the way you look and, you know, that’s
evident throughout our history, historical times and, you know, I’ve been reading several
books about that. But, what is interesting the, the key issue of race and this presidential
election, how do we classify Barack Obama? Is he white or is he black and if he’s black,
he’s not black enough or, you know, how is he able to come across and transcend racial
division, racial lines, um, growing up with a white mother in
Kansas and a black, African father and yet he’s able to identify himself with the
AfricanAmerican community but yet not be labeled with Jessie Jackson or Al Sharpton,
how is that possible?
Students grappled with the political nature of race. Clayton proposed that race is a response to
people’s need to “categorize” or “mark” various differences among people based on phenotypical
features to which we attach stigma in order to create hierarchy. Racism and discrimination result
from stigma associated with phenotype categorizations and hierarchy. Then he mentioned the
presidential campaign as an example of U.S. American racial politics within the election process.
President Obama as a bi-racial figure destabilizes essentialist notions of race and their “pure”
categorical attributes. Simultaneously, the president as a racialized figure demonstrates the
persistence of the “one drop rule” in U.S. American society. This principle of hypodescent
maintains that one drop of “Black” blood in the genetic pool makes a person “Black.” Further,
Clayton observed that Obama disturbed the sociopolitical dynamics of racial identity, which
operate in similar essentialist ways as scientific racism. Obama’s biracial genetic composition
connected him with a White American mother, rather than with descendants of enslaved African
American ancestors, yet he identified with the African American community. Additionally,
Obama did not develop strong entanglements with the “old guard” Civil Rights leaders such as
Jackson and Sharpton, thereby redefining Black politics. Clayton’s observations of these racial
politics reflected powerful essentialist discourses of race that pervade society, as well as his own
strivings with race matters. Clayton later gave an example of a situation he encountered that
expressed his “need” to identify people in certain categories. This need extended beyond racial
categories to gender as well. Clayton shared an experience he had meeting one of his peers
whose race and gender he could not easily identify.
I do look at the race. I do see your color. Though I try not to let it bother how I associate
myself with you, I do see it. And if I can’t recognize it, it bothers me because that
experience bothered me and I even called the person a male. Now, ‘cause the name was
Billy, but she was female and she was Native-American and I said, okay, you’re on the
wrong floor because that day we must have messed up something. I said you’re on the
wrong floor, you’re Indian and your name is Billy so you shouldn’t be on the female
floor and she said No I’m a female and I’m Native-American, I’m Indigenous and so I
felt real, real bad. But, this is our need to identify that person and that’s just, and have
that person put in a box or a category and being I couldn’t do that. I mean, it’s an uneasy
feeling for me if I can’t identify who you are, your race, ethnicity, your gender. It’s my
need to be able to identify, put some kind of label to you.
Clayton confidently expressed that he does see race, in a sense rejecting colorblindness.
However, he desired not to allow his acknowledgement of race to determine how he would
interact or associate with others. For him, it was the inability to categorize people that led him to
distance himself from them, to “other” them socially and politically. His perspectives
demonstrate the intersectional politics of race, gender, and sexuality. As a college senior, he had
various experiences that disrupted fixed notions of what it might mean to represent Blackness or
Native-ness, or femaleness. Clayton examined these ideas in the focus group to display his
personal work around these issues.
C. Race frustrates individuality
In another focus group (FG III), informants explored the complexities of race from varying
perspectives, demonstrating in many ways their thoughtfulness about the subject. Students are
often frustrated by the varied and conflicting discourses of race. As they explored various
elements that complicate their understanding of race, these informants evoked individualism as
the winning ideology. The following is an excerpt of the conversation between Tom (White
male), Richard (Latino male), Nic (Black Latino male), Mei (Asian American female), Julia
(Latina), and this researcher (Black male).
Paul: Some of you have said in your interviews that race is a human invention or simply
differences in skin color or geographic background. What is race to you?
Nic: I guess basically it is that, but at the same time, in this society it’s more than that.
Like as far as, when it comes to school, going to school and getting a job. Like
that’s a factor and it shouldn’t be. Like I guess, and then, but most people would
say that’s all race is. But it does play a role in like what you do, how you do
interact
Rich: I think race simply represents culture. Uhm, I think um everybody’s culture is very
unique and represents compared to how they were raised and what nationality
they are. Um, I think that although like Latino is a race, when you break it down
to Dominican, Cuban, Puerto Rican, their cultures are very different. Uhh, I think
that’s something we have to be aware of, just like you said about Asians. They are
very different cultures. I mean that’s something that we have to be aware of, and
respect, um, amongst everyone.
Julia: Um, I agree with you, but then, I mean, I was just thinking we were talking, like at
first I was like yeah race would be like your culture and the kind of music you
listen to and all that stuff. But then there’s people who um who are of a certain
race and totally do not fit the cultural norms of um you know what people. So I I
don’t know, I think it would just like where geographically and the things that you
said, because um you know there are people who are, who are Black and live in
London and their culture is totally different than Black people who live in
America. And not every Black person who lives in America has the same type of
culture. So, I think, I mean at first when you said that I was like yeah it’s
definitely your culture but now that I think about it you would have to break it
down a little more.
Mei: I agree. Uhm, especially when you have lived in different country, you
experience different culture, yeah, you just, it’s different. Four years ago when I
was in China I was still very different, (chuckles) although I listened to American
song at that time. But it’s different. Like, uhh I experienced the culture in America
and I like it and I adopt some of it... So I think it’s about uhh people will be
changed by the environment. Uh, what is it, the biological, DNA, your personality
is not really based on DNA. Partially, but your personality will be changed by the
things that you have gone through and your environment and everything. So we
cannot just judge a person based on their race or based on the place that they
come from.
In the exchanges shown above, we see that Nic promptly responded that race was not only a part
of the structure of U.S. American society- education and employment- but it also plays an
important role in one’s social expressions and interactions. Richard and Julia tried to sort out the
overlap of race and culture. While Richard thought race was used in place of culture, Julia
proposed that there was more complexity to explore given that people who shared the same
“race” could express themselves differently in terms of culture. Notably, Black people in the
diaspora could be very different culturally. Blackness is not monolithic. Racial identity is not
monolithic. Hence, it is important not to essentialize or stereotype because racial identity
expression is complicated by nationality, geography, and other cultural and ideological contexts.
Race and place interface to construct different meanings. Julia emphasized the impact of
environment on people’s expression of themselves. Mei suggested that race and place should not
be used to judge people. “So then, what is race?” I probed.
I dunno. I don’t live here by the way. (chuckles) I mean like, you are you and I
am me. I don’t really care like where you’re from. As long as we have common
ground, like let’s go. (chuckles) Honestly, race, like I do. I talked about it in the
beginning when I first got to America because I feel that I was discriminated or
something. But now as I’m more adapted to the culture, I don’t think it’s that big
of issue.
Mei expressed some frustration with the discussion at this point in the conversation, as a result of
race confounding her. She did not know what to say race was. Hence, she returned to a
discourse of individualism. (“You are you and I am me.”) Finding “common ground” should be
the focus, she contended. Although she experienced racial discrimination when she first arrived
to the United States, she explained that she is less concerned with racial discrimination now that
she is more integrated in U.S. culture. She was now desirous of a post-racial experience and
interpretation. Again, she demonstrated that individualism trumps socially constructed racialism
for many students today.
Tom’s response supported this idea, suggesting that perhaps no one knows what race is
because everyone can determine what it is for himself or herself.
I think race and identity kinda go like, if they’re not synonymous then they
definitely go like hand in hand. Uhm, I mean it’s just really like, what you
identify with. Uhh, not necessarily how you’re perceived by others, it’s just how
like you perceive yourself, what race you think you are. Like you said, like, Paul
when you said to me like “Is that what you think?” Like “Jewish,” when I said
arguing about like I’m a white Jew. You were like “Is that what you think?”
Yeah I guess that’s what I think. Like other people might perceive it differently.
When Tom added his comments, he reinforced the suspension of judgment by recalling that race
is connected to identity; hence, race is determined by each individual. Race is determined by
each person, according to Tom. This notion, shared by the rest of the focus group, reflects the
individualistic nature of the informants and their desire to escape the judgment and ideas of
others. However, for Tom, this comment was also about his right to determine his own (White)
identity or to deny it. On the other hand, students of color continued to comment about the
potential for race and racism to hurt them —emotionally, educationally, socially, or
professionally. They acknowledged a racialized self and recognized that race could potentially
deny them opportunities and a certain quality of life.
Three years after the initial interviews, informants expressed more complex conceptions of
race. These conceptions engaged current events, personal experiences, and the sentiments of
their peers. They discussed the normalization of race in society and how it is relied on for
categorizing people, the stigmas attached to race and values of superiority and inferiority, that
race is political and used in politics. They also observed that periodically there are anomalies in
society’s system of racial understanding that confuse common (non)sense about racial identity;
and that no race group has just one culture. These students were also concerned with being able
to determine their own identities and their individuality not being limited by race. Students of
color (Nic in particular) acknowledged that, even though it shouldn’t be, race is sometimes a
factor in education and employment. This meant that race could deny them significant
opportunities to advance their quality of life. Yet both White students in the focus groups still
denied this important point—that racism was still pervasive in society.
II. Complexity and Fluidity of Identity: Deconstructing Race Identity
During the focus groups, I asked informants how they identified themselves by race so
that I could determine whether or not there were any shifts in responses as they talked about
identity in the presence of their peers. The resulting data was much richer and more complex
than I anticipated. I found that students in my study were wrestling with racial identity labels at
a political level, not in terms of embracing race consciousness only but in a process of
understanding and identifying with the most “accurate” term that described their experiences as
individuals and connected them to a collective identity. For example, students wanted to
understand what the category “African American” meant and how it framed group membership
ideologically and socially. This required an examination of terms, history, and social experience.
Further, some informants wrestled with and negotiated an understanding of race and ethnicity in
their discussion. In this section, I examine these observations through the comments of three
informants: Natasha (Black), Amy (Asian-American), and Jossette (Latina). Then I briefly
discuss the lack of data on this issue for the White students in my study. We will see how these
students negotiate identity in the politics of race.
A. “Black” Identities Under Construction
The term “Black” encapsulates multiple identities and meanings. Students became more
aware of this in a diverse university setting where diverse Black people represented, celebrated
and explored what it meant for them to identity as Black. Disjointed at first, Natasha expressed
four key points about the African or Black American experience and identity. First, she
expressed that it is a racial category with multiple ethnicities that embrace and/or resist the
“American” or the “African” identity.
… I’m trying to figure out exactly how to say it but for me personally, it’s like I don’t
mind being called African-American and then somebody brought up, you know, in class
they brought up something about, you know, why would we be African-American
because, you know, they feel like somebody being Asian-American they probably was
from Asia or they, you know, people come from other countries and you say
XYZAmerican so why am I African-American when I was actually born and raised here
and, you know, I mean, I guess black people should be considered one of the main races I
guess here…
I guess, ‘cause the situation with other Americans like Jamaican-Americans and other
Africans, like actually people from Africa who come to America. You know they have
this argument that don’t associate themselves with the actual Black-Americans who
actually live and are raised here in America. You know, they, they, they feel like there’s a
difference…
While the term “African American” has been used as a catch all for racial identity, some have
questioned the appropriateness of the term for those Black Americans who were not born on (or
may have never been to) the African continent. Such discourse also reflects the de-
Americanization of Asian Americans. However, the distinctions promoted here are between
Black Americans and other Black people who are immigrant members of the African diaspora in
the United States as well as some multi-racial people. For example, Terrence prefers to call
himself “Black” as a Black Latino because he identifies with more than just African American
culture. Another informant, Brian, identifies as Black but not African American because of his
Caribbean heritage. Some Black immigrants attempt to distinguish themselves from U.S.
American born Blacks, which energized the discussion on racial identity for Black/African
Americans nationally. (For example, see Louis Chude-Sokei’s article in the LA Times, February
18, 2007; or the June, 24, 2004 NY Times article by Rimer and Arenson.) These articles discuss the
cultural distinctiveness of Black immigrants and the fact that they are often forced to pass for “African
American,” a term used interchangeably with Black. The experiences and cultures of both African
Americans and that of Black immigrants from a variety of nations are lost in this “category crisis,” as
Chude-Sokei calls it.
Second, ethnicity has little significance to other races or within the hierarchy of race
reality in the United States when one’s skin is brown/black (the persistence of phenotypical
perceptions).
When you try to look at the opinions of people who actually come from Africa or from
Jamaica, Virgin Islands and stuff like that they, they see the difference and it’s like I mean
who am I to argue with them if they want [to be] different. I mean, you know, pretty
much we all know in America if your skin is brown or dark brown, you’re looked at as
black period. You know, to somebody who’s not from a black community, especially
when it comes to employment and stuff like that, then it’s like so far that has not changed
and it probably won’t change for a very long time and it’s like, you know, as much as
they try to argue with people who look like them, try to argue their point like “I’m not
black, I’m Jamaican.” Still we’re in America; you’re black either which way you want to
put it ‘cause, you know, when you check that box, you’re not going to check Caucasian
or Hispanic, whatever the application might say, nine times out of ten you’re going to
check black or slash African-American or which ever way you go so it’s like or
sometimes I guess they check other but some people, you know, some of them still
struggle with that…
Natasha exposed one of the ways that race functions in the United States. Ethnicity is trumped
by race, especially in its phenotypical manifestations. Skin tone will determine many people’s
experiences. Further, Natasha noted that the structure of racial categories proposed on legal
documents force the hands of those Blacks in this country who may identify with other ethnic or
national heritages.
Third, Natasha suggested that the history and contributions of African descendants in
America or of Black Americans is an important consideration in choosing the most appropriate
race label.
Especially since we helped build this country, I guess, some people would argue, you
know, um but. I, I mean I look at myself as Black-American, you know, as just a black
woman.
African American contributions to the United States provided legitimate claim to an “American”
identity specifically. Hence, it was important to attach “American” to either “African” or
“Black” prefixes. Natasha asserts her blackness and her American-ness because her race and
nationality are intertwined in the recognition of who she is.
Natasha concluded that she was comfortable with either “African-American” or “Black
American” label because she viewed the heritage as the same, though she acknowledged that
some immigrants or children of immigrants within that racial group viewed their identities as
distinctly different from the U.S. American born Black American or African American. Overall,
Natasha demonstrated that she understands the nuances of Black/African American identity to
include immigration or nativity and the politics of race in the United States that does not always
acknowledge these nuances. She did not minimize race as she did in her individual interview,
but raised the complexities of a racial identity. She drew on her academic and social experiences
with diverse people in the African or Black diaspora to present multiple perspectives of a Black
identity. Yet her core ideas about her racial identity did not change. Looking back on her
individual interview, she expressed similar ideas about her racial identity and the importance of
nativity.
I identify myself as…I would call myself a Black American only because…the African
American, I see it as just like anybody would call themselves Chinese American, they
were born in China, but came to America so that makes them a Chinese American. And
as me being born in American I would just see myself as Black American cause Africa
American would probably be someone who comes from Africa and becomes African
American. But I respect the title that was given to us as an African American. So if I was
titled as an African American I accept it. I don’t take it any other way.
– Natasha (Pre-First summer interview)
Three years later, Natasha expressed her views in more sophisticated language with more depth
of thought. However, the same concerns for Black racial identity are priorities for her.
B. Asian Identities of Relation
Using what she learned about Asian American history, Amy discussed the politics of race
in the U.S. She was aware that the census positions people from China and Japan in the same
racial group, in spite of their history. Amy spoke confidently about the complicated nature of
race and ethnicity; and she made a distinction between them. Three years before, Amy conflated
