Page 41 - White Lives The Interplay of 'Race', Class, and Gender in Everyday Life

34 Talk, tea and tape recorders
of the research exchange that I have expressed an interest in hearing about
the interviewees’ lives’ (Ribbens 1989: 584). In general, the focus was on
letting the interviewee speak, as Madeleine (who was particularly interested
because her work involved doing qualitative interviewing) remarked on:

I find it really fascinating actually, and really interesting. It’s really in-
teresting as well, your kind of style [. . .] Because there are times when
you just don’t say anything and I think, ‘oh well I’ll just carry on with
that, I’ll try and think of something to say about that’ which is brilliant
because I really lead people when I interview them.
(Interview 44)

However, while it would be tempting (and in some cases no doubt ac-
curate) to paint a picture of interviews that were relaxed, enjoyable and
even gave the interviewees space and time from which they might feel they
benefited, this would be to ignore those other potentially less harmonious
aspects or experiences of interviewing.
There has been some consideration by feminist writers of the impact of
class and ‘race’ differences on the interviewing situation (for instance see
Edwards 1990; Cannon et al. 1991; Reay 1996). My own experience in
conducting this research was that differences of class or ‘race’ did have an
impact on the atmosphere and outcome of an interview, but that what the
impact would be was unpredictable. The majority of the interviews were
of course conducted with white women and differences of ‘race’ between
myself and the interviewees were not at issue. However, I did conduct three
interviews with women who would not position themselves as white. Ed-
wards (herself white) writes that, in interviewing black women:

I realised that rapport was easier after I had signalled not a non-
hierarchical, non-exploitative, shared-sex relationship, but rather an
acknowledgement that I was in a different structural position to them
with regard to race and did not hold shared assumptions on that basis.
(Edwards 1990: 486)

Setting up this understanding in the interviews I undertook with women
who were not white was relatively straightforward, given the subject mat-
ter, and I found that this did provide a context for informative and relaxed
interviews. Hope, a black woman, for example, responded to my thanks at
the end of the interview by saying (perhaps surprised herself) ‘That’s all right
Bridget, I enjoyed that actually’. She also told me that she had checked with
the (black) nursery co-ordinator who had given her the sheet requesting in-
terviews whether or not I was white: ‘I asked, I asked [laugh] but I gathered,
if you know what I mean, I thought it must be a white woman who’s doing
it’. Hope also expressed more interest in the end result of the interview than
any other interviewee: ‘Especially as a white woman, do you know what I