Whitehead2009a

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Whitehead2009a
BibType ARTICLE
Key Whitehead2009a
Author(s) Kevin A. Whitehead
Title “Categorizing the categorizer”: The management of racial common sense in interaction
Editor(s)
Tag(s) EMCA, Racial categories, Racism
Publisher
Year 2009
Language English
City
Month
Journal Social Psychology Quarterly
Volume 72
Number 4
Pages 325–342
URL Link
DOI 10.1177/019027250907200406
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

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Abstract

In this paper, I consider one mechanism by which racial categories, racial “common sense,” and thus the social organization of race itself, are reproduced in interaction. I approach these issues by using an ethnomethodological, conversation analytic approach to analyze a range of practices employed by participants of a “race-training” workshop. These practices manage the normative accountability involved in referring to the racial categories of others when describing their actions, and thus in using racial common sense in talk-in-interaction. This accountability arises in part because a speaker's use of a racial category to explain someone else's actions may provide a warranted basis for recipients to treat the speaker's own racial category as relevant for understanding and assessing the speaker's actions. I describe three main ways in which speakers can manage this accountability, namely generalizing race, localizing race, and alluding to race. My analysis shows that, even in attempting to resist racial common sense in accounting for their own actions and those of others, speakers orient to race as a normative framework according to which individuals will produce their own actions and interpret those of others, and thus reproduce it as relevant for understanding social action. This research contributes to advancing knowledge in the fields of ethnomethodology, conversation analysis, racial studies, and categorical inequality.

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