Page 92 - White Lives The Interplay of 'Race', Class, and Gender in Everyday Life

Seeing, talking, living ‘race’ 85
those things. So she’s kind of aware now of not pointing out that people
are different. And I don’t know, I think it’s difficult. I don’t necessarily
know whether that’s the best way to go about it. Because I mean when
I grew up it was very much about . . . you know you pretend that noth-
ing’s different and just accept people for what they are, whereas now
children grow up and it’s much more about celebrating the differences.
So I think I’m probably quite out of touch in that way [laugh].
(Interview 9)

Madeleine was caught between ‘pretending’ to see nothing, to ‘not see
that’, in order not to be rude or racist and celebrating difference, which leads
to an overstatement of difference: her daughter has grown up with people of
‘all different colours’. She suggested that this is a generational shift, but was
also suggesting that she feels she lacks the discursive resources to respond to
this shift. Is racial difference like an impairment that should be overlooked,
or how might all differences be celebrated? Madeleine was aware that the
idea of celebration of differences is complex and that there appears to be no
innocent rendering of the term ‘black’. She also recognises that her mother’s
approach may be hypocritical, that she wants to be ‘nice’ to others while
remaining distanced. But, lacking alternative discourses and perceptual prac-
tices, she was unable to move away from a particular moment of subjection
– she retains some ‘hang-ups’ on the issue. This extract is also interesting be-
cause Madeleine was explicitly talking about inculcating perceptual regimes:
‘you have to educate yourself not to see those things’. It also perhaps reflects
an awareness that she and her daughter do not share exactly the same racial
positioning. Not only is there a generational difference, but her daughter is
also ‘mixed race’. This depth of reflection was rare, and there was in general
little consideration of racism in the interviews. Those who did talk about
racism directly put it down to ignorance and often placed it in the past and
in the minds of others, discussing the racism of their parents or grandparents
and explaining how these were people ‘of their time’.
By focusing on what the mothers said about their children, I have tried
to demonstrate the sensitivity of the subject of ‘race’ for white people. This
material shows how even seeing is a politicised and sensitive act, and parents
are in the process of negotiating these difficulties when they talk to me. It
also raises methodological problems as to what to make of the material. I
am not here raising the question of what the children actually thought – that
would be the subject of an entirely different research project – but how to
interpret what people say is equally difficult when it is governed by a fear not
to appear racist. The attempt not to see ‘race’ has implications for the way
whiteness was being imagined – or not. It was taken as given, as the norm,
the state of not being ‘different’. But, at the same time, whiteness was not
brought into focus or considered directly. While ‘race’ was avoided at vari-
ous points in the interviews, whiteness as a concept was rarely mentioned.
Indeed, I rarely brought it up myself and could therefore be argued to be