Page 107 - White Lives The Interplay of 'Race', Class, and Gender in Everyday Life

100 Seeing, talking, living ‘race’
Heather had experienced the discomfort of being categorised by others.
She had found this a deep affront to her sense of self, and used extremely
strong language to counter it. She spoke of ‘despising’ and having ‘utter con-
tempt’ for those who labelled her. This section stands out in her interview,
which otherwise did not contain such strong emotions or language, and it
is possible that she was referring to a particular disturbing event. Other in-
terviewees also identified college as being a time when their identity was
brought into question in a way that was new to them. Melanie (Interview
39), for instance, described feeling ‘like a bumpkin up from the country’
who was not ‘streetwise’ and became aware of her own ‘naiveté’. Emma
also described feeling naive, but also having to reposition herself in terms of
accepted assumptions.

When I first went to college, I found it very hard because I was naive
in, I don’t know, I think people didn’t want to accept me because of the
way I spoke. I had a hard time with that, I wasn’t very streetwise. I came
out with some great clichés all the time. You know, my heart was in the
right place, I’d say some of the most crass comments. And I’d talk about
politics only from what my father and mother said. I’d just state their
views.
(Interview 16)

Emma said that one of the main reasons she wanted her daughters to go
to state schools was that they might avoid being so naive. This would also
be helped by the fact that they would not grow up in the countryside. This
sense of living in London as producing different subjectivities or identity was
felt by other interviewees, including those who had grown up in London.
Deborah felt that growing up in London had given her a particular perspec-
tive on cultural difference:

I think I take for granted living with a lot of people who don’t come
from, say, London because I’ve always lived in London, apart from when
I was abroad, and I got very ...I mean, I just take for granted that this
is a very, very sort of cosmopolitan kind of area.
(Interview 17)

Beverly, in the following extract, was describing the difference she had
noticed in her step-children who had moved from London to the country-
side:

They talk different, they are different, you know, everything, their
mannerisms. They’re not so aggressive as they used to be in London.
Although it did them good because it taught them, you know, to be
streetwise and everything else.
(Interview 42)