Page 181 - White Lives The Interplay of 'Race', Class, and Gender in Everyday Life

174 Conclusion
was gendered. However, when it came to questions of ‘race’ and class, the
women were far more equivocal about their input. They generally denied or
downgraded their mothering in terms of ‘race’ and class – asserting that, in
contrast to gender, this was something that they did not often discuss with
their children (or perhaps even think about it). Nonetheless, through the
interview material on the mother’s own social lives, as well as their chil-
dren’s, the subtle and not so subtle processes of inclusion and exclusion that
are part of everyday life became clear. This was both at the level of mothers
meeting other mothers, where distinctions were made between others who
were ‘like-minded’ and those who were not, but also, more significantly,
around the question of children’s schooling. A key concern for the women
was to find a school for their children that had the ‘right’ social and racial
‘mix’ of students. It emerged that practices around choice of schooling were
highly racialised, as well as classed. A school that was seen as being ‘too
black’ or ‘too working class’ was also viewed as potentially disruptive to
their children’s education. This disruption concerned not merely questions
of qualifications and gaining the right racialised and classed social capital,
but also, I suggest, the desire for their children to become raced and classed
subjects. While the women might at times engage in a discourse of celebra-
tory multiculturalism, or what Gilroy terms the ‘commodified exotica’ of
‘racialised glamour’ (Gilroy 2000: 21), their practices as mothers were far
from ‘post-racial’.
Thus, through analysis of the interview accounts in this book, I have ar-
gued that we still need to understand how the everyday lives of white people
are shaped by the reiteration of discourses and practices of ‘race’, despite
the risks involved in dealing with racialised discourses. Importantly, we also
need to be attentive to how this intersects with other social processes, as
Vron Ware and Les Back argue:

A new social movement that seeks to expose and dismantle the machina-
tions of White Power requires more than emotional energy, and open
mind, and a commitment to direct action; it also needs a constant flow
of analysis and theoretical debate in order to comprehend the ways in
which racism is intrinsically interconnected with other forms of social
division.
(Ware and Back 2002: 13)

But where does this leave the study of whiteness? What is the nature, and
objective, of work on whiteness? Perhaps it would help to restate what it is
not. I would not want this work on exploring whiteness to contribute to any
attempt to recuperate the ‘feel good’ factor for the white subject. This is not
a quest to find good things to say about whiteness (in the way that some are
arguing for a positive British nationalism). I do not believe that the emotional
fragility (if it exists) of the white subject should be given this kind of support.
However, it is also important that critical attention to whiteness does not
become a form of class struggle with sole attention focused on working-class