Practical Asymmetries of Racial Reference 1 When Are Persons “White”? On Some Practical Asymmetries of Racial Reference in Talk-in-Interaction 1 Kevin A. Whitehead & Gene H. Lerner Department of Sociology University of California Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9430 kwhitehead@umail.ucsb.edu Lerner@soc.ucsb.edu Published in: Discourse & Society, 20(5), 613-641, September 2009. mailto:kwhitehead@umail.ucsb.edu mailto:Lerner@soc.ucsb.edu Practical Asymmetries of Racial Reference 2 When Are Persons “White”? On Some Practical Asymmetries of Racial Reference in Talk-in-Interaction Abstract This report contributes to the study of racial discourse by examining some of the practical asymmetries that obtain between different categories of racial membership as they are actually employed in talk-in-interaction. In particular, we identify three interactional environments in which the ordinarily “invisible” racial category “white” is employed overtly, and we describe the mechanisms through which this can occur. These mechanisms include 1) “white” surfacing “just in time” as an account for action, 2) the occurrence of referential ambiguities with respect to race occasioning repairs that result in overt references to “white,” and 3) the operation of a recipient design consideration that we term “descriptive adequacy.” These findings demonstrate some ways in which the mundane invisibility of whiteness – or indeed, other locally invisible racial categories – can be both exposed and disturbed as a result of ordinary interactional processes, revealing the importance of the generic machinery of talk-in-interaction for understanding both the reproduction of and resistance to the racial dynamics of everyday life. KEY WORDS: race, racial categories, whiteness, membership categorization devices, conversation analysis Practical Asymmetries of Racial Reference 3 Author Biographies KEVIN A. WHITEHEAD is a doctoral candidate in Sociology, and in the Language, Interaction and Social Organization (LISO) Interdisciplinary Emphasis, at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research focuses on the development of an ethnomethodological, conversation analytic approach to studying race, and particularly on the ways in which racial categories are used, resisted, and reproduced in talk-in-interaction. GENE H. LERNER is Professor of Sociology and Linguistics at the University of California Santa Barbara and a member of the Language, Interaction and Social Organization (LISO) research group. His research centers on language use, body behavior and very young children insofar as these (together and separately) exhibit the formal structures and local organization of practical sequential action in interaction. Practical Asymmetries of Racial Reference 4 Introduction Much of the early work on racial discourse took the form of largely quantitative content analytical studies of the portrayals of particular racial or ethnic groups in news media, television shows, and other forms of public discourse. This research demonstrated some of the ways in which people of color tend to be portrayed in negative or stereotypical ways, while white people are generally portrayed more sympathetically (van Dijk et al., 1997). In comparison to these mainly quantitative studies of topic content, as van Dijk, et al. (1997: 166) point out, “discourse analytical studies of more detailed properties of text and talk about ethnic events and ethnic relations were rare until the 1980s.” One noteworthy exception to this trend can be found in the early work of Harvey Sacks (begun in the mid-1960s) on the everyday use of membership categories and membership categorization devices, or MCDs (Sacks, 1972a, 1972b, 1986, 1995), in which the explication of racial membership categories played an important part. More recently, a substantial and growing body of literature has provided detailed qualitative examination of many aspects of racial discourse (see, for example, Bonilla-Silva, 2002; Bucholtz & Trechter, 2001; Buttny, 1997; Condor, 2006; Condor et al., 2006; Stokoe & Edwards, 2007; van den Berg et al., 2004; van Dijk, 1987, 1992, 1993; Verkuyten et al., 1994; Wetherell & Potter, 1992). Much of this work has focused on the ideological character of “race talk,” examining expressions of racial prejudice, and the ways in which such expressions are connected to broader patterns of racism and inequality. While racist discourse is certainly a crucial object of study, such discourse depends upon the availability of the racial categorization of persons as a resource; this is how racism is implemented as a basic form of social organization at the point of its production in talk-in-interaction. Moreover, this organization underpins not just racist discourse, but also any other form of discourse in which race is used, including anti-racist Practical Asymmetries of Racial Reference 5 discourse. It is thus important to examine the mechanisms through which racial structures are reproduced in individual episodes of interaction, regardless of whether or not the discourse being produced therein is judged as “racist.” In light of this, it is significant to note that few studies beyond Sacks’ early work have examined the ways in which racial categories are themselves employed in the course of talk-in-interaction, and hence the ways in which race as a social institution is reproduced in action, (but see West & Fenstermaker, 2002; Whitehead, 2007). Moreover, few studies have examined the organization of racial categories in interactions in which race is invoked seemingly “incidentally” in the course of whatever actions speakers are performing, rather than being elicited for research purposes, as in the case of research interviews or focus groups in which researchers prompt participants to discuss matters of race (cf. Wilkinson & Kitzinger, 2003). 2 In this report, we contribute to the investigation of racial discourse in which racial membership categories are mentioned overtly. We demonstrate some of the ways in which these racial categories are made relevant and employed by speakers in talk-in-interaction, and show how this in situ organization of membership categorization enables and thus reproduces the social organization of race. The overt use of racial categories is one way participants make race manifest in their daily lives and it is the “inference-rich” character of these categories that underwrites how members make racial sense of the social life of their society (Sacks, 1995, vol. I: 40-41). We begin by reviewing and amplifying Sacks’ work on the use of racial categories as accounts for action, before focusing more specifically on how Sacks’ findings can be brought to bear on the investigation of the practical asymmetry between different racial categories in talk- an-interaction, with a taken-for granted category (e.g. “white”) routinely remaining unexpressed (even when relevant), whereas other race categories are overtly mentioned. Practical Asymmetries of Racial Reference 6 Using Race to Account for Action Sacks’ work on membership categorization devices (Sacks, 1972b, 1995), demonstrates the way in which social categories provide a means for storing and organizing common sense cultural knowledge. As a consequence, the sheer mentioning of a category can marshal common sense knowledge about that category, and can thereby stand as an adequate account for social action (Kitzinger, 2005a, 2005b; Sacks, 1972b; Whitehead, 2007). Thus in the following excerpt a request of a (male) stranger needs no overt account. 3 This request occurs on an airplane after the passengers have boarded and taken their seats. Excerpt 1 [GL:FN:UAL 3/27] 1 Passenger A: I wonder if you would mind trading seats with my wife? 2 Passenger B: Sure 3 Passenger A: Thank you. Here the categorical reference to “my wife” supplies a tacit account for the request by Passenger A – thus making the passenger’s reason for producing it a matter of taken-for-granted category- bound cultural knowledge, rather than requiring a local, situation-specific or person-specific account. 4 In a similar way, Sacks’ (1984, 1986) pioneering work on racial membership categories demonstrates how racial person references can be used to make sense of actions. Thus, Sacks shows how simply employing a racial category in referring to a person can serve to tacitly account for how that person could be seen to be (legitimately or illegitimately) performing a particular action. Practical Asymmetries of Racial Reference 7 In addition to its use in person references, this practice can be used in the production of racial place references. In this way, the formulation of a place reference (cf. Schegloff, 1972) as a racialized location can be employed as an tacit account for action, as shown in Excerpt 2. In this case, Ron is talking about a town that his family used to frequent while on vacation. At line 1 he begins to describe their hangout (“a hotel”), but cuts it off to give some background information. Ron then explains that there were two liquor licenses in the town, one in a hotel, and the other “in the black section” (line 2). Excerpt 2 [Bonelli] 1 Ron: So there’s a hotel- there’s two liquor licenses in the town one is 2 at a hotel and one is (down) like in the black section 3 (0.4) 4 Ron: So: 5 (0.4) 6 Ron: they got tuh hang out in the hotel and they got tuh know the 7 owners an:: they know ev’rybody .hhhh ev- they spent a ton a’ 8 money down there. Ron’s repair at lines 1 and 2 adds an element to the telling that is presented as factual background. His characterization of one of the liquor licenses as being “in the black section” serves as an account for why the people in his story spent a lot of time in the hotel (where the other liquor license was located) with the “so” at line 4 serving to make overt that what follows is the consequence of the circumstance he has just described. Note that the racial membership category “black” is employed overtly in the formulation of the “black section,” as a contrast to the non-racial place formulation “hotel.” Although the Practical Asymmetries of Racial Reference 8 hotel is not identified racially, by contrasting it with a race-specific place Ron tacitly establishes race as a relevant defining feature of the hotel, 5 producing it as “not black.” Thus, by formulating one location in an asymmetrical contrastive pair in terms of a racial membership category, Ron tacitly racializes the other location in the pair, and this racial categorization is designed to account (without a second thought) for why his family spent their time and money in one place rather than the other. The racial place reference is sufficient to disqualify that location, thus establishing the hotel as the only reasonable place to patronize, and thereby furnishing a tacit account for why it became their hangout. 6 It was, in effect, the only place in town, but its whiteness remains invisible – for the participants – as a result of being made available only tacitly, rather than being employed overtly (cf. Wilkinson & Kitzinger, 2003). This asymmetry between “white” and other racial categories, such that whiteness is produced as “invisible,” taken-for-granted, or neutral, and forms the normative backdrop against which other racial categories are viewed, is a central phenomenon in the scholarly literature on race, and one that we take up in the remainder of this report. We turn first to a brief review of the literature on this topic. Categorical Asymmetry and the Invisibility of Whiteness The status of whiteness as invisible or taken-for-granted has been recognized by social scientists going at least as far back as W.E.B. Du Bois’ classic writings on the concept of “double consciousness” (Du Bois, 2003 [1903]). Du Bois describes the way in which black people (and, arguably, people of color more generally) living in a white-dominated society such as the United States experience a sense of viewing themselves through the eyes of others; of having “double selves” as a result of having their own sense of self, while also being aware of how they are Practical Asymmetries of Racial Reference 9 viewed by members of the dominant group (Du Bois, 2003 [1903]). A consequence of the double consciousness experienced by people of color, but not by white people, is that white people do not have to recognize the role that their racial category membership, and the privileges associated with it, plays in their lives. In this way, white people can avoid viewing race as a significant aspect of their identity, or as a factor that shapes their everyday experiences, making race, for them, effectively invisible. People of color, on the other hand, are constantly reminded of their “otherness,” and of the subordinate position in which their racial category membership places them, making race a constantly visible feature of their lived experiences (Du Bois, 2003 [1903]). A number of race scholars have more recently elaborated on the consequences of the asymmetries between whiteness and other racial categories first illuminated in Du Bois’ early writings. These scholars have critically investigated the ways in which a “color-blind” ideology, enabled and underpinned by the invisibility of whiteness, serves to support a system of white privilege, and the accompanying disadvantages for people of color. The color-blind ideology described in this literature is characterized by members of the dominant (white) racial group viewing themselves in non-racial terms, as “just people,” rather than identifying as members of a racial category (McKinney, 2003). Consequently, the framework of norms and values associated with the dominant group comes to be unquestioningly, and hence invisibly, treated as equally applicable to members of other groups (McIntosh, 1988). Thus, although discourses of color- blindness may arise from well-intentioned attempts to “move beyond race,” such positions begin from a predominantly white experience of the world, where race is perceived as unimportant, thereby negating the lifeworld of people of color, whose experiences are still very much shaped by race (Simpson, 2008). Practical Asymmetries of Racial Reference 10 The lack of recognition in color-blind ideology of the ways in which race shapes people’s experiences and life chances can result in racial inequalities being blamed on the deficiencies of individuals, while the role played by systems of racial privilege is ignored, and hence is reproduced unchallenged (Frankenburg, 1993; Lipsitz, 1995, 1998). Moreover, such a perspective results in anyone who is not white being defined as “other” against the backdrop of normative whiteness, resulting in people of color being treated as deviant in a range of ways (Collins, 2004; Lipsitz, 1995, 1998; McIntosh, 1988). In this way, “[a]s the unmarked category against which difference is constructed, whiteness never has to speak its name, never has to acknowledge its role as an organizing principle in social and cultural relations” (Lipsitz, 1995: 369; emphasis added). 7 The literature on whiteness and color-blind ideology thus illustrates the importance of the invisibility of whiteness as a factor underpinning systems of racial privilege and disadvantage, and points to the importance of investigating the mechanisms through which invisible whiteness is actually produced and reproduced, as well as ways in which it can be resisted or subverted (cf. Frankenburg, 1993). One way of developing an empirically grounded account of such mechanisms is to examine the practical asymmetries of racial categories at the point of their actual social production in talk-in-interaction. Although no research that we are aware of has employed such an approach to studying whiteness, the work of Kitzinger and her colleagues demonstrates its utility for exploring a different kind of invisibility, namely the production and reproduction of taken-for-granted, invisible heterosexuality (e.g., Kitzinger, 2005a, 2005b; Wilkinson & Kitzinger, 2003), and the ways in which such invisibility can be exposed or subverted (e.g., Land & Kitzinger, 2005; Wilkinson & Kitzinger, 2003), in talk-in-interaction. 8 Practical Asymmetries of Racial Reference 11 Against the backdrop of the ordinary “seen but unnoticed” character of whiteness among “white” participants, it seems worthwhile to investigate those circumstances in which the asymmetrical invisibility of “white” as a membership category is disturbed, and the whiteness of persons surfaces in talk-in-interaction. In what follows we pursue this matter, turning our attention to the question posed in our title (“When are persons ‘white’?”) by considering how and under what circumstances the membership category “white” is employed overtly in talk-in- interaction. As we will show, in some circumstances the taken-for-granted character of whiteness is directly disturbed when it intersects with aspects of the organization of talk-in-interaction. However, we will also show that in other circumstances “white” is not the asymmetrically taken- for-granted racial category. In these cases, the overt use of the category “white” does not disturb the ordinary asymmetry of racial categories, but instead reveals a circumstantial inversion of the asymmetrical alternatives, such that a category other than “white” is treated as asymmetrically taken-for-granted. The data excerpts we examine below were collected from a number of different audio and video taped data corpora recorded over the course of several decades, ranging from the 1960s to the early 2000s. While it will be apparent to readers that some of our data excerpts exemplify features of racial references that are no longer as commonly employed as they once were (e.g., the use of the membership category term “colored”), we focus our analysis on aspects of racial reference that do not appear to hinge on the specific category term employed. Drawing on Sacks’ work on MCDs, and the use of racial categories to account for action (Sacks, 1984, 1986, 1995), we begin by examining some ways in which the category “white” is made explicit “just in time” in order to account for victimization or prejudice by reference to other racial categories. We then examine a particular sequential environment in which “white” Practical Asymmetries of Racial Reference 12 can be made visible, namely when it is used to repair referential ambiguities resulting from race having previously been made relevant. Finally, we suggest another basis for the deployment of racial categories in talk-in-interaction, which we term descriptive adequacy. That is, when formulating descriptions of persons in which observable features of the referent are prominent, speakers employ a racial category in cases where a recipient would otherwise envisage a person of the taken-for-granted racial membership category. The use of a racial category for descriptive adequacy thus constitutes an interactional mechanism through which “white” can be made explicit in circumstances in which a category other than “white” is treated as the invisible category – that is, when the categorical asymmetry is inverted. When “White” Surfaces “Just in Time” to Provide an Account In this section we examine cases in which the overt mentioning of a person as “white” is employed as an adequate account for actions and attitudes associated with that person. As Sacks (1972b) has demonstrated, there is always more than one correct membership category available to a speaker when referring to a person categorically (e.g. sex and stage-of-life MCDs). From this demonstration, Sacks concludes that the use of any particular category can be understood as a selection from among equally correct possibilities, and thus can be inspected for why one was chosen over another, and what the selection of this particular category accomplishes (cf. Schegloff, 1997). In this way, members’ culturally-based categorical knowledge can be marshaled to fit a referred-to person to an action, so as to account for how the referred-to person could be seen to properly and naturally act in a particular way. 9 Here we examine how and when this can operate for the otherwise asymmetrically invisible category “white.” Practical Asymmetries of Racial Reference 13 The first two cases we examine come from a setting – a “race training” workshop – in which race has an occasion-based omni-relevance as a topic. It is a setting in which speakers talk about race, and display knowledge and sensitivity about its importance, and participants seem to be held accountable for doing so (cf. Whitehead, 2007). In these cases, we can observe the intersection of the use of racial categories to serve as accounts for action with the ordinarily taken-for-granted status of whiteness as irrelevant to action. In both cases, the relevance of the membership category “white” is initially left tacit, and “white” is only introduced overtly “just in time” to serve as an explanation. In Excerpt 3, Megan initially refers to her father non-racially, as “my father” (line 2), thereby treating him as invisibly white, and only subsequently does she expand this relationship categorical reference to “my white father” (at lines 9-10). Here, Megan employs “white” overtly in the service of explaining her own racial prejudices, while mitigating her personal responsibility for those prejudices. Excerpt 3 [TDC WG, 22] 1 MEG: I would say that I- I actually had a similar experience 2 in terms of growing up that my- my father had (0.6) 3 a: a difficult situation or experience with (.) in this 4 case particularly an African American person. .hh And I 5 will say that one of the things that- that it impacted 6 me on is that I too I think was raised with sort of 7 this (.) in one breath, (0.3) everyone’s treated equal, 8 .hh yet (.) at the s- by the same token, (0.2) the 9 examples that I was ever given about (0.2) when my white 10 father was impacted by someone it was by a person of Practical Asymmetries of Racial Reference 14 11 color and I think that that very much played .hh for me 12 growing up about what my (.) ideas are a- ideas are and 13 have been about .hh u:m (0.4) people of color: (.) sort 14 of victimizing my family. Megan’s use of a racial category in referring to her father serves to underscore the causal link she is proposing between her family history and the racial prejudice she is now admitting to, and accounting for. By making her father’s racial membership category (“white”) explicit in contrast to the racial membership category (“person of color,” lines 10-11) of those who she describes as having mistreated him, she seems to indicate that as a child she understood that he was victimized as a white person. His race can be seen to explain her perceptions as a child of his treatment at the hands of others – it was not just that people of color “impacted” her father, but that they did so as people of color through their treatment of her father as a white person. In this way, Megan’s overt use of the category “white” aids in explaining the development of her prejudice as a white person. She proposes that it was her recognition (as a child) of the contrast between the racial categories of her father and the people with whom he had “difficulties” that resulted in her developing the racial prejudices that she is now admitting to. In the next case, Sammy tells a story about the experience of a friend to support his claim that being white does not always guarantee “racial privileges.” He alludes to race, but does not overtly mention it either in referring to his friend, the neighborhood in which the events took place, or the residents of the neighborhood, through most of the setup of the story. 10 As he continues the story, he never makes explicit the racial character of the neighborhood, but does overtly identify his friend as “a white guy” just after describing the neighborhood as “tough” (lines 10-11). Practical Asymmetries of Racial Reference 15 Excerpt 4 [TDC WG, 21] 1 SAM: I had a f- a: a f::riend of mine .hh I had moved out 2 here, I’d been out here for about a year, (0.5) u:m 3 (0.3) and a guy I went to high school with came out here 4 from Wisconsin an’ .hh a:n’ u:m (0.4) pt .hh he was a: 5 (.) motorcycle mechanic an’ got a jo:b down in oh jeez 6 where was it? (0.6) U::m way down off of Imperial. 7 TR2: Mm hm. 8 SAM: .hh u:m (.) y- you know where that is [an: an that is a 9 TR2: [Mm hm. 10 SAM: tough neighborhood. .hh u::m, a::nd (.) I mean he was a 11 white guy, (0.3) and was told by: people that he worked 12 with, .hh to not get caught here after dark. 13 ((continues)) By identifying his friend’s race only just before launching into the events of the story, rather than when he first introduced the friend, Sammy underscores the relevance of his friend’s race for understanding the racialized character of the “tough neighborhood” and for explaining the subsequent treatment he received there. By setting up the scene in this way, Sammy is able to show that his friend’s race was consequential for what happened to him in this neighborhood, while never making explicit its racial composition. Thus, we see “white” surface in this case as an explanation (for the attack) while leaving inexplicit the racial membership of the attackers. 11 As in Excerpt 3, the referent’s race (white) is only made explicit at the point at which it is employed contrastively to account for the actions of other (racialized) persons – i.e. to formulate the basis of the victimization as relevantly racial victimization of a white person. Practical Asymmetries of Racial Reference 16 In Excerpt 5, “white” surfaces in a similar way, albeit in this case to explain the mistreatment of black people at the hands of others. However, unlike the two preceding cases, in Excerpt 5 the routine practice of leaving “white” unexpressed – even when the race MCD has been made relevant – becomes a source of trouble that results in repair. In this excerpt, Ken is reporting what he heard someone say about the way black people are mistreated in the South. Here the speaker can be seen to be explicitly oriented to the explanatory power of “white” as an overt form of racial person reference: the original non-racial reference form at line 24 (“these guys”) is replaced by a racial reference form (“white”) at just the point at which the speaker is about to formulate an action as racist. Excerpt 5 [GTS I, 88-89] 1 Ken: In Mammoth I heard a- all these men fr'm 2 the Forest Rangers departmin talkin about, 3 (0.9) 4 ( ): [hhhhhhh 5 Ken: [In uh, certain places in-in the United States in uh, 6 where izzit. Where they pick cotton all the time, uh, 7 (1.0) 8 Louise: South, 9 (0.4) 10 Ken: Yeah. In the- [the 11 ( ): [hhhh 12 Ken: [deep south, 13 Louise: [hehheh! 14 Ken: -where all the colored- 15 ( ): hhh .hh Practical Asymmetries of Racial Reference 17 16 Ken: He said thet- 17 Roger: Wake him up. 18 (1.9) 19 ( ): He’s not asleep. 20 ( ): mhhh 21 Ken: thet all the colored people, 22 (0.7) 23 Ken: uh, walk- walk down the street ‘n they may be all dressed up 24 er sump’n en these guys ‘n white- uh white guys’ll come by 25 with .hh 26 (0.6) 27 Louise: Mud. 28 Ken: Eh-uh mu:d, ink er ennything en throw it at ‘em er throw 29 bricks at ‘em er ennything. This repair reveals Ken’s treatment of the non-racial reference form (“these guys”) as insufficient to serve as an account for the action about to be described. This leads Ken to overtly specify the race of the referents so as to make explicit that the conduct he is about to formulate is not just the action of “these guys” but of “white guys.” 12 Thus, as in Excerpts 3 and 4, this excerpt provides a case in which “white” is made an overt part of a person reference so as to call attention to race “just in time” to provide an account, and further shows that a speaker may disrupt the progressive realization of the story in order to do so. In this section, we have shown that “white” can remain an unexpressed, but relevant, racial membership category in juxtaposition to other racial categories – until it is employed as an account for action. 13 Next we turn to an examination of cases in which the invisibility of Practical Asymmetries of Racial Reference 18 whiteness (as a tacit racial reference) results in referential ambiguity that is then repaired by employing a racial category overtly. Taken-for-Granted Racial Categories as a Source of Referential Ambiguity In this section we show how the invisibility of whiteness, when juxtaposed to other overtly mentioned racial categories, can itself be a source of referential ambiguity that requires repair – a repair whose production results in racial categories (including “white”) being overtly mentioned. Once racial membership has become relevant through a locally initial overt racial reference, locally subsequent non-racial references can be treated as vulnerable to race-based sources of trouble that engender repair. 14 We begin by describing a case, shown in Excerpt 6, in which a locally subsequent non- racial reference – produced after the race MCD has been made relevant, and possibly hearable as a tacit reference to white people – is replaced with an overt (racist) reference to black people. Here Jim is bragging about what an acquaintance did during a high school track meet. In doing so, he refers racially to the students from one of the visiting schools (line 5) and describes his acquaintance’s conduct in racial terms (line 8), thereby making race relevant. Excerpt 6 [GTS IV, 23-24 (simplified)] 01 Jim: Like yesterday there was a track meet at Pallisades. 02 Rees was there. Isn’t that a reform school? Rees? 03 Roger: Yeah 04 Ken: [Yeah 05 Jim: [Buncha niggers an’ everythin’ 06 Ken: Yeah. 07 Jim: He went right down on that field an' he was Practical Asymmetries of Racial Reference 19 08 just sittin there talking like a nigger, 09 n' all the guys, an' y'know all these niggers 10 are all up [there an'- 11 [You mean Negro, doncha. As a non-racial reference form employed after race has been made locally relevant, “all the guys” (line 9) is potentially ambiguous: it could be understood either as a tacit reference to a previously unmentioned group of (invisibly) white people, or as another reference to the previously referred-to black people. Jim then treats it as ambiguous by disambiguating the race of the referents, repairing to reformulate them explicitly as “all these niggers” (line 9). It is thus the asymmetrical structure of racial reference – with “white” ordinarily left tacit – that appears to be the source of the ambiguity here, resulting in another racial category being overtly formulated. We now turn to two cases in which this asymmetry results in repairs through which “white” itself surfaces as an overt form of person reference (and, unlike in the previous section, these repairs occur in environments in which “white” does not appear to serve as an account for action). In Excerpt 7, drawn from the “white group” component of the race training workshop, a trainer is responding to a discussion about racially motivated violence against both people of color and white people, making the “who”s in her reflection on the “confusion about who’s hurting who” (line 3) hearable as tacitly referring to “white people” and “people of color.” She goes on to make three references to collectivities (“any of us in this room,” line 8; “we,” lines 9 and 10) that, in this sequential context, and given the designed racial composition of the group, are hearable as tacitly referring to group members as “white people.” She then produces a somewhat complex list of items that formulate anti-racist actions participants in the “white” group can take. In offering one item (“talk with people of color,” line 11) she overtly refers to Practical Asymmetries of Racial Reference 20 “people of color” as a collectivity. After offering the next item (“talk with each other,” line 12) which tacitly refers to “each other” as white people exclusively, she begins another item of the list (“to sart- s-” which is apparently headed towards “start support groups”). 15 However, before completing the item, she cuts it off and inserts “white” (at line 12), yielding “white support groups.” She thereby repairs a formulation-in-progress that could be heard as a non-race-specific reference (and therefore a suggestion about forming a multiracial support group) into an explicitly “white” racial reference. Excerpt 7 [TDC WG, 26] 1 ( ): Mm hm[: 2 TR1: [w- one of the costs you’re talking about is that 3 there’s this big confusion about (.) who’s hurting who, [hh 4 ( ): [Mm 5 TR1: how did it start [how does it e:nd. 6 ( ): [(Mm hm.) 7 SAM: Mm hm. 8 TR1: Um, and so long as any of us in this room see a cost in 9 >terms of racism< .hh we have a reason to fight racism. Daily. 10 We have a reason to get uncomfortable to go to workshops like 11 th(h)is. tuh .hh talk with people of color, to talk 12 with each other. to sart- s- white support groups that- 13 antiracist groups, .hh to keep working on this because there is 14 a cost, whether or not we can (.) pinpoint the start, beginning, 15 end, middle, there’s a- there’s a reason. Practical Asymmetries of Racial Reference 21 By converting what could be heard as a non-racial formulation-in-progress (“support groups”) to a racial formulation (“white support groups”), the trainer treats the non-racial version as possibly ambiguous and in need of further specification. In this case, then, as in Excerpt 6, the inclusion of the category “white” appears to be a result of the ambiguity produced by the composition of the speaker’s turn-so-far, rather than being warranted by the use of “white” as an account. The ambiguity in this case thus appears to have been produced by the speaker making the race MCD locally relevant through her overt reference to “people of color” at line 11 and then, more proximately, through the just preceding suggestion that drew together white people and people of color (at lines 11 to 12). While the self-initiated repairs in the above excerpts demonstrate speakers’ orientation to the potential ambiguity of their own non-racial references after the race MCD has been made relevant, Excerpt 8 shows that recipients can also be oriented to such referential ambiguity. In this case, taken from a “group therapy session” for teenagers, Roger formulates a group of students using a racial category (“colored guys,” line 1) and then connects them explicitly to “fighting” (“So there was many fights needless to say,” line 8). Subsequently, Roger connects himself to “fighting” (“Most of the time I was kicked out for fighting,” line 15), without specifying who he fought with – but perhaps, given the sequential position of his assertion, intimating that the fights may have been with black students. The therapist (Dan) then pursues an explicit formulation (at line 22) of whom Roger had fought with. Excerpt 8 [GTS II, 36-37] 1 Roger: So these colored guys, 2 Ken: hhh heh 3 Roger: They thought they were bad shit. Practical Asymmetries of Racial Reference 22 4 Ken: hh 5 (0.8) 6 Roger: Probally were. (Matter of fact.) 7 Al: hh heh aie 8 Roger: So there was many fights needless to say. 9 (1.2) 10 Roger: And I wasn’t what [you’d call an easy kid to get along with. 11 ( ): [Whhhhh 12 (1.2) 13 Al: Aw, 14 (2.5) 15 Roger: Mosta the time I was kicked out fer fightin. 16 (2.5) 17 Ken: Yer going, 18 (1.2) 19 Roger: I’m gone. 20 Al: Hah 21 (1.8) 22 Dan: Fighting with whom? 23 Roger: White kids. 24 (0.5) 25 Roger: I only once hadda fight with a colored guy. Here Dan is not simply targeting the fact that who Roger fought with was left unsaid, but rather “Fighting with whom?” can be understood as being asked as a consequence of the local relevance of race for categorizing students. Dan thus orients to the ambiguity over whether Roger’s non-specification of the race of the student(s) he fought with could be taken to mean that Practical Asymmetries of Racial Reference 23 either they were of the same racial category as the last explicitly referred-to category (i.e., “colored”), or members of the invisible or taken-for-granted category for this speaker and these recipients (i.e., “white”) which would not ordinarily require overt formulation. Roger then supplies the clarification sought by Dan, identifying the previously unspecified racial category as being the taken-for-granted category (at line 23), and thus treating Dan’s question as having been a request for the racial category of the people involved. In this way, as in earlier excerpts in this section, a locally initial racial reference is followed by a subsequent non-racial reference being treated as ambiguous and in need of clarification, although this time by a recipient rather than the original speaker. These cases expose one sequential environment (i.e., after the race MCD has been made relevant by the production of a locally initial racial reference) in which the race of ordinarily invisibly white persons may surface overtly. It is in environments such as this – where race is topicalized or overt racial references are employed – that the ordinary asymmetry of racial categories can be countervailed, and (following the consistency rule) the taken-for-granted category associated with non-racial references can no longer be unambiguously assumed to apply. An orientation to this can be seen when a formulation is repaired by a speaker, or when repair is initiated by a recipient, resulting in the overt formulation of the otherwise taken-for- granted category (in these cases, “white”), thus disturbing its ordinary invisibility. By contrast, in the next section we examine the surfacing of racial formulations in environments in which racial membership categories do not seem to be relevant at all. We offer one possible systematic basis for otherwise seemingly gratuitous uses of a racial membership category by speakers. First, we present two cases in which a racial formulation is supplied where not doing so is treated as giving the impression – for this formulation, this recipient, this speaker Practical Asymmetries of Racial Reference 24 and this sequential environment – that the person so-formulated will be understood to be (invisibly) white. Next, we show that this practice is also employed on occasions where the local taken-for-granted racial category is something other than “white.” We then conclude the section by describing one (apparently unintended) consequence of this practice. Descriptive Adequacy: A Systematic Basis for Racial Categorization While we have shown that speakers employ racial formulations that operate to provide adequate accounts for actions, not all racial formulations are employed in this fashion. Some appear to be used gratuitously, insofar as the referred-to person’s race is not topically relevant, and the category-bound inferences and actions that can accrue to the category do not seem to be relevant (cf. Kitzinger, 2007). In this section we show that some seemingly gratuitous instances of racial categories in fact appear to have a systematic basis in the organization of talk-in-interaction. When describing a person in terms of their visible physical features, speakers can employ a racial category in cases where a recipient may well otherwise envisage a person of another membership category. This exposes the categorical asymmetry between racial categories: the use of one racial category for descriptive adequacy constitutes an interactional mechanism through which a second racial category is revealed as the locally taken-for-granted racial category. In demonstrating this phenomenon, we begin with cases in which a person is overtly identified as black, thereby revealing “white” as the locally taken-for-granted category. We then show that, in some circumstances, “white” can be employed for descriptive adequacy, revealing another membership category as taken-for-granted – and thereby establishing another environment where persons can be overtly formulated as “white.” This surfacing of “white” thus rests on the ordinary operation of the categorical asymmetry of race. Practical Asymmetries of Racial Reference 25 At the beginning of Excerpt 9, Louise is telling a story about how surprisingly tall some 12-year olds are. In receipt of this story, Ken tells a second story (Sacks, 1995, vol. I: 764) that supports her observation. He tells about how tall some (formerly) short students at the military school he once attended had become. In the course of referring to one of the students as an example, Ken elaborates the reference with a seemingly gratuitous racial identification at lines 18-19 (“Fred Thomas who’s a colored guy, at school?”). Excerpt 9 [GTS I, 104-105] 1 Louise: Y’know some of ‘em are damn tall and good looking they could 2 pass for (t)-nineteen. [A twelve year old guy comes over 3 Roger: [But they don’t- 4 Louise: I say who’s y- older brother is he? He’s not he’s in the A7. 5 Roger: But they don’t have a brain to go with it hehhh 6 Louise: These kids I don’t believe it they’re six foot, 7 Ken: Yeh 8 Louise: They’re five eight y’know, you’re looking up, he’s twelve and a 9 half! 10 Ken: There’s a- 11 Roger: ( ) 12 Louise: They are. 13 Ken: There’s a lotta people- lotta kids now who seem to be getting a 14 lot taller. Cause I useta- I useta have a complex I really did 15 for being so dog-g-doggone tall. In military school? 16 Everybody’d go “There’s Storky” They called me Storky for 17 years! And now I-I have to look up to some of these guys you 18 know, it’s amazing! There- there’s Fred Thomas who’s a colored 19 guy, at school? He’s- he’s two and a half inches taller than I Practical Asymmetries of Racial Reference 26 20 am. 21 (Ther:) Ohh 22 Louise: And he used to look up to you. Although height, rather than race, is the physical feature of relevance to the second story that “Fred Thomas” is used to exemplify, Ken includes a racial identification as part of a parenthetical expansion of the reference. The main work of the parenthetical expansion is to connect the referent to the military school and thus to the place Ken himself had been singled out as especially tall (and therefore given the nickname “Storky”). The racial identification does not appear to be doing any additional referential or explanatory work here, since Ken goes on to state that the referent is now “two and a half inches taller than I am” (lines 19-20), thus continuing to treat height as the primary feature of relevance. Furthermore, Ken has worked to produce the racial identification in a way that minimizes its interference with his point about height, placing it in a subsidiary or secondary position in the reference (cf. Kitzinger, 2000: 181-188), between the referent’s name and how the speaker knows him (i.e., as a classmate). In addition, the racial identification does not seem to be produced as derogatory in any way and thus appears to be completely gratuitous. In light of this we might ask why Ken adds a racial formulation at just this point in the telling, if that formulation is not doing any relevant referential or explanatory work. It seems to us that the solution to this puzzle can be found in the operation of “recipient design” in talk-in-interaction (Sacks & Schegloff, 1979; Sacks et al., 1974). Recipient design concerns the myriad ways that speakers adjust what they are saying and the way they say it to accommodate the particular recipients they are now addressing. This may include an orientation to a need to overtly specify a racial category when introducing a character in a story who is not a member of the category recipients would otherwise take for granted. Ken thus adds a racial Practical Asymmetries of Racial Reference 27 identification in the service of a physical description where a failure to do so would likely result in his recipients presuming that the referent was a member of the taken-for-granted category; that is, they would presume, unless otherwise informed, that he was racially “just like us” (i.e., “white”). In a way, this parallels Land and Kitzinger’s (2005) analysis of telephone calls involving lesbian speakers. They demonstrate that not identifying a referent’s membership in a non-normative sexual orientation category at the first available opportunity may result in trouble later in the interaction, as a result of recipients incorrectly assuming that the referent is heterosexual. In the case of lesbian partners, there is a systematic possibility that the sex category of the speaker’s partner will surface incidentally in subsequent talk, given the gender-identifying feature of (singular) pronouns “he” and “she” used for locally subsequent person reference in English. This same systematic possibility does not accrue to membership in a racial category, but there is always the possibility that racial identity can nonetheless surface in subsequent talk. It could thus be the case that some seemingly gratuitous racial references serve as a method for pre- empting the kind of social-interactional difficulties that may arise if speakers do not identify a referent’s not-taken-for-granted racial category membership at the first opportunity, even when race is not topically relevant and does not seem to be specifically relevant for understanding the referent’s conduct. 16 Ken’s introduction of the referent to exemplify a visible feature (his height) may prove to reveal a more systematic recipient design basis for seemingly gratuitous racial identification. There is evidence that speakers can be oriented to what their descriptions may educe recipients to envisage, and therefore they may subsequently add an increment to their turn so as to modify the image they are portraying. 17 It is thus worth entertaining the possibility that here Ken is oriented Practical Asymmetries of Racial Reference 28 to the likelihood that his formulation of the referent’s height will lead his recipients to envisage the referent’s appearance, such that neglecting to identify his racial category – when he is a member of a racial category that cannot be taken-for-granted – may result in recipients mistakenly envisaging an individual of the taken-for-granted category. This recipient design consideration, occasioned by the relevance of a description of other observable features of a referent, reveals the importance of the taken-for-granted (e.g., whiteness) in its absence. Here we can see one way that a taken-for-granted racial category can be consequential for action in talk- in-interaction, even as it remains a tacit ingredient of the action. A strikingly similar case of the apparent operation of this mechanism can be found in Excerpt 10, in which the participants of a dinner conversation are discussing the topic of age. In this case, a speaker inserts a racial identification into her description of a news story she has recently read about “very old people,” and about one such person in particular. Here age, especially old age, is explicitly treated as a visible feature at line 1 (“That's really frightening when your daughter looks as old as you do”). Subsequently, in telling about the “oldest American,” Beth identifies him as black (at line 9). Excerpt 10 [Chinese Dinner, 24-25] 1 DON: =That's really frightening when your daughter looks ez old 2 ez you do or something. 3 BET: Y'know I've been reading about very old people lately, 4 (0.4) 5 ANN: Yea[:h? 6 BET: [Like th'had en article in the Roll[ing Stone with this guy= 7 JOH: [( ). 8 BET: =who's suppose t'be= Practical Asymmetries of Racial Reference 29 9 BET: =a hundred'n[thirdy. The oldest] Ameri[can. He's] a [black guy=] 10 JOH: [Wuh-what is thi:s.] [ ] [ 11 DON: [That is-] [ 12 DON: [ Beef, ] 13 BET: =who [lives in] Florida 'n th[ey- 14 DON: [Peking. ] [ 15 JOH: [Wo:[:w. 16 BET: [innerviewed im. While surprising tallness was the newsworthy visible feature in Excerpt 9, surprising longevity is of topical concern in Excerpt 10. Despite this, after initially referring to the referent simply as “this guy” (at line 6), and then going on to specify his age and nationality (which are both topically relevant), Beth identifies him with a racial category (“black”), before going on to specify the state in which he lives (“Florida,” line 13). 18 Again, as in Excerpt 9, the racial identification is placed in a subsidiary or secondary position in the reference, between the identification of the referent’s age and his location. Furthermore (and again as in Excerpt 9), this racial identification was not required for the purposes of the point the speaker was making about the age of the referent or as an explanation of it, and the racial category does not seem to have been produced as derogatory, or pursued by the speaker after its production. Moreover, John’s uptake in line 15 (“Wo::w”) displays his orientation to the story as being primarily concerned with the remarkable age of the referent, rather than being about his racial category. However, as in Excerpt 9, this referent was connected to a noteworthy observable feature, such that not supplying a not-taken-for-granted racial category could result in recipients incorrectly envisaging a member of the taken-for-granted racial category. This may be particularly relevant here in light of Beth’s identification of the referent as “American.” That is, her subsequent racial Practical Asymmetries of Racial Reference 30 identification of the referent may be evidence of an orientation on her part to a presumption that, unless otherwise specified, “American” will be taken-for-granted by her recipients to mean “white.” Thus, in both Excerpts 9 and 10, a recipient design consideration, bound up with the description of a visible feature of a person, seems to provide a basis for the use of a racial reference. 19 Having described the operation of descriptive adequacy in the organization of recipient design, we now turn to a case in which the operation of descriptive adequacy yields another way in which persons can be “white.” Descriptive adequacy when the taken-for-granted category is not “white” In Excerpts 9 and 10 the presumptive taken-for-granted category oriented to by the speaker is “white.” However, “white” is not always the taken-for-granted racial category. Racial categories that are not ordinarily taken-for-granted in conversation can serve as the presumptive taken-for- granted category in some circumstances, such as in interactional contexts in which the ratified participants are all of the same other-than-white racial membership category (see, for example, Bucholtz, 2001; Cutler, 2007; Hartigan, 1999), and the otherwise taken-for-granted category “white” can then be employed overtly to achieve descriptive adequacy. In such cases, the same type of asymmetry obtains, and the same practice is involved, but the positions of the particular categories are different. In this way, taken-for-granted categories can be understood as taken-for- granted for this speaker when mentioning this category of referent among these co-participants in this sequential environment. 20 In Excerpt 11, “Hispanic” is revealed as a taken-for-granted category when “white” is employed to achieve descriptive adequacy. In this excerpt, the participants in a barbershop conversation have been discussing the nephew of one of the participants and his prospects as a Practical Asymmetries of Racial Reference 31 football player. Excerpt 11 [Barbershop, 2-3] 1 Antonio: Just in case any($)body car[es($)<. 10 Bob: [Ok[ay. 11 Cathy: [ugh huh huh hn 12 Ann: an’ my dad ended up having to=ah 13 (0.5) Practical Asymmetries of Racial Reference 46 14 Cathy: bre(h)ak the lo(h)ck¿ Note that this story is designed as a second story (Sacks, 1995, vol. I: 764) whose primary recipient (Cathy) told the previous story, but the speaker turns to address Bob at “I was done with the shower” and “in case anybody cares.” These gaze shifts occasion Bob’s “Okay.” Here is one place where perhaps a “culture in action” can be found in an orientation to the point of view of one’s recipients and perhaps where a membership category of a recipient (as male) may surface as relevant to action. Note that the storyteller had just complained about her brother barging in on her while she was in the shower as the reason she regularly locked the door. (See Lerner (2004: 155-156) for another instance of what might be termed “incremental modesty.”) 18 Of course, for the speaker to report that the referent was black suggests that this was included in the news story she is recounting. However, the fact that the news story very likely identified him as black does not require her to mention it. Moreover, that it was probably a part of the story might be further evidence for the claim we are making here. 19 We are not suggesting that the operation of descriptive adequacy of asymmetrically available racial categories is limited to environments where visible features of the referent are prominent. However, it was striking in our data that such otherwise seemingly unmotivated use of racial identification occurred in the environment of physical description. 20 This reveals the importance of “categorizing the categorizer” (see Sacks, 1995, vol. 1: 45) and other participants for understanding the operation of racial asymmetry (cf. Whitehead, 2007). 21 Giving his nephew’s height as an approximation (bolstered by the visual metaphor “growing like a weed”) suggests that he is basing his claims on visual inspection, and not on a report of a measurement. Practical Asymmetries of Racial Reference 47 22 The category used here may be part of both the “ethnicity” and “race” collections, but Antonio’s emphasis on how he “looks” makes relevant the phenotypic characteristics associated with race, rather than the cultural features associated with ethnicity. It may be the case, however, that the MCD they are employing here is a “blended collection” of race and ethnicity categories reflecting a blurring, in practice, of the distinction between race and ethnicity. 23 This case also demonstrates the conjoined use and intersecting import of race and sex categories to provide accounts for action, as well as the surfacing of a speaker’s orientation to the invisible masculinity found in the inference-rich sex categories. Even though Louise did not specify the gender of the child who was shot, Roger displays his assumption that the child was a male, and uses this category (along with the racial category Louise did supply) in his account for the authorities’ lack of action following this incident. Clearly such an account would not have been possible if Louise had identified the child as a female, or if Roger had assumed that the child was female rather than male, since “big colored women” would not carry the threatening connotation (particularly during that historical period) that “big colored men” does. 24 The production of overlapping talk that is built into the routine operation of turn taking practices for conversation comes to mind as another case of “unavoidable” systemic interactional trouble (Sacks et al., 1974: 706-8). 25 This is an interactional tactic that is reminiscent of the early English Quakers’ refusal to use, for example, deferential titles and honorific pronouns. These speaking practices “challenged … the very fabric of social relations and social interaction” (Bauman, 1983: 43). Practical Asymmetries of Racial Reference 48 References Bauman, R. (1983). Let Your Words Be Few: Symbolism of Speaking and Silence among Seventeenth-Century Quakers. 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