Page 36 - White Lives The Interplay of 'Race', Class, and Gender in Everyday Life

Talk, tea and tape recorders 29
A further set of reasons for choosing mothers revolved around the fact
that children in Britain, and particularly in London – the area of study – are
growing up in a society that is often more racially or ethnically mixed than
that of their parents’ childhoods. So talking to parents who are aware that
their children’s lives are very different from what they themselves expe-
rienced is one route into exploring the racialisation of everyday life and
the imaginary. Children may also play a role in bringing their parents more
directly into contact with people of different races and cultures, as well as
different classes (at least for those attending state nurseries and schools).
Through encounters at playgroups, the school gate and other arenas, parents
may develop social relationships with people from different social groups
from those they usually meet in their working or social life. Finally, being
with and bringing up children brings one into a different relationship with
one’s own sense of self and with memories of childhood and development.
Thus, talking to mothers offered a very specific route into reflections on
their own childhoods and histories.
Having decided to interview mothers, I had to select specific areas in
which to work and locate interviewees. My initial criteria was that I wanted
to interview white women who were living in areas that were not exclusively
or predominantly ‘white’. Yet at the same time, I wanted to interview women
living in areas where ‘race’ was not a highly contentious or politicised local
issue. The next section gives a thumbnail sketch of the areas.

Camberwell and Clapham
The majority of the interviewees lived in Camberwell and Clapham, which
are two discrete areas of London lying approximately three miles from each
other. Camberwell lies less than three miles from the centre of London in
the large inner city borough of Southwark. Rates of unemployment were
relatively high at the time of the study, 18.2 per cent for the borough as a
whole in the 1991 census. The same census recorded that 76 per cent of the
borough were ‘white (UK)’ with the largest other ethnic group being black
Caribbean at 7 per cent. However, this borough covers a wide variation of
different areas, with Dulwich in the south, an extremely prosperous and sub-
urban area. Camberwell itself is an area with relatively higher levels of social
deprivation and a higher percentage of ethnic ‘minorities’, largely African
Caribbean and African. Camberwell does not have a central focus, or a large
shopping centre, although there is a small triangle, Camberwell Green, at a
very busy crossroads, which functions as a central landmark. The housing
in the area is mixed, ranging from high-rise and low-rise council estates and
considerable housing association accommodation to large Georgian town
houses. The area did not have a strong or cohesive public identity. There
was, for instance, no single source of employment that could form the basis
of a sense of community. Some of the interviewees from Camberwell had
been born in the area, their parents having been early occupants of the high-