Reporting Racism

Description

Abstract

Background: The ambiguity of racism is repeatedly acknowledged (Durrheim, 2014; Stokoe, 2015), but yet to be addressed amongst social psychologists. Most conversation-analytic and discursive approaches to racism focus on how members of the majority deny, discuss or (re)produce racism (van Dijk, 1992; Wetherell & Potter, 1992; Augoustinos & Every, 2007). Little attention is paid to how members of the minority talk about their racist encounters, and what there is tends to be based on researcher-led interviews (Kirkwood, McKinlay & McVittie, 2013; Parker, 2018). This project thus sets out to examine how people report racist encounters in naturalistic settings.

Methods: Seven broadcast interviews with people affected by racist encounters were sourced directly from YouTube. Key words such as ‘racism’ and ‘racist’ were used to search for these interviews. Interviews were transcribed using Jeffersonian notation (Jefferson, 1985). Guided by discursive psychology (Edwards & Potter, 1992; Wiggins, 2017) and conversation analysis (Sacks, 1992; Heritage & Clayman, 2010), the analysis focused on the descriptions of the racist encounters, the ways in which these descriptions were designed, and how the programhosts and interviewees sequentially and consequentially oriented to each other’s accounts.

Findings: Over the course of reporting racism, three interwoven phases were found. First of which is pre-reporting, where people being targeted and/or witnesses construct the context of which the focal encounters take place as ordinary and mundane. It is after this pre-reporting, the interviewees then describe the reportable, which covers the focal encounter. The reportable is reproduced systematically through reported speech (Wooffitt, 1992), when the focal encounter involves verbal abuse. The description of the reportable is also minimum in detail, which routinely ends with either a generaliser (Stokoe & Edwards, 2007) or silence. Third, people being targeted and/or witnesses recurrently portray their initial reactions toward the focal encounter as non-problematic and as any ordinary person would have reacted. Given that these are broadcast interviews, the programme presenters are found to play a crucial role in co-producing these accounts of racism. Their collaborative input warrants the reporting of racism legitimacy and credibility.

Discussion: The moment-by-moment examination of the interactions shows that reporting racial encounters is a delicate and difficult task for people of the minority. The pervasive discursive patterns demonstrate that people, like researchers, treat the notion of racism as ambivalent and open for debate; there are normative constraints against making accusation of racism, and people orient to these constraints by presenting their encounters as matter-of-facts; and that reporting racism is not a soliloquy – it needs to be received and oriented to as a legitimate activity.

Period	29 Jun 2020 → 2 Jul 2020
Event title	European Conference on Conversation Analysis
Event type	Conference
Location	Nijmegen, NetherlandsShow on map