Page 35 - White Lives The Interplay of 'Race', Class, and Gender in Everyday Life

3 Talk, tea and tape recorders

White people generally do not spend much time thinking about whiteness
or how their experience and identities are racialised. When I designed this
project, I assumed that an interview that consisted entirely of questions
around ‘race’ and whiteness would not yield much ‘material’ beyond the
interesting question of silences and erasures. Instead, I opted to take a more
indirect approach, which also had the advantage of opening up interview
conversations to questions of the social imaginary and narrative. This chap-
ter will give an overview of the approach taken to the fieldwork part of the
research. It will: explain why a particular group of women – mothers – was
chosen for the interviews; give a sense of the areas (Camberwell and Clap-
ham) where they lived; explain how I made contact with the interviewees;
convey a sense of the interview process and the subsequent analysis of the
interviews.
There were a number of interconnected reasons for choosing to talk to
1
mothers of preschool and primary school-aged children. Mothers have a
particular relationship to processes of identification, having experienced a
fundamental identity change of becoming mothers, which is both personally
and socially very significant. Yet they are also conscious that this is just one
identity among others that are important to them. Thus, motherhood offers
an avenue into discussions of the ambivalent processes of identity construc-
tion and performativity. In addition, mothers are continually involved in
identity work with their children. They are crucial in providing the material
circumstances and introducing the discourses and practices that shape the
identities of their children. In a child’s progression through mother-and-tod-
dler groups, playgroups, nursery, childcare and, most significantly, primary
school, many choices are made, involving important decisions about child
development: who you want your child to socialise with; what social and
practical skills you want them to obtain; what experiences you want them
to have; and how they should be educated. Mothers are well aware of the
role that they play as well as the other forces that act upon their children
(education, media, other people, etc.). As mothers, they both have a particu-
lar relationship to the domestic and are involved in negotiating with public
institutions, particularly the education system.