Page 99 - White Lives The Interplay of 'Race', Class, and Gender in Everyday Life

92 Seeing, talking, living ‘race’
For Heather also, the most notable difference (or the first that springs to
mind) between whiteness (and Asianness) and blackness was a sexualised
difference, which was also addressed in terms of culture:

Heather: I became more aware of the way different communities work
[. . .] In the way that you will get a group of young black ado-
lescents, the way they will talk to each other. The way they flirt
with each other. When they hang around a bus-stop. That kind
of social interaction can be quite noticeably different from a
group of Asian adolescents or a group of white adolescents.
Their body language is very different, their choice of vocabulary
is often quite different. I think flirting is one of the main things,
the way people are physically with each other. I was aware that
that was very different. I mean most of the black guys I came
across were very touchy-feely.
BB: Towards you?
Heather: Yes, and not in an aggressive way at all. In a friendly way. But a
lot more physically open than a lot of white guys.
(Interview 15)

This dual image – of threat and excitement – fits into a theme that is
dealt with in more detail in the next chapters, which discuss mothers’ desire
to achieve the ‘right’ social and racial ‘mix’ for their children in schooling
and socialising. As the chapter will show, this ‘mix’ requires just enough,
but not too much, of the ‘other’. The discourse of the excitingly different
‘cultural other’ appeared in many interviews. For Barbara, this difference
was presented in terms of an escape from whiteness. She had had children
outside marriage and with an African Caribbean man ‘that was my rebellion’
and explained that this was also in response to her perception of the dullness
of her white family:

Well, because I hated myself, I hated myself, I didn’t like myself. And I
always wanted something romantic. I felt that my lineage was exception-
ally boring. They were these sort of in-bred people [. . .] [laugh]. And
that really even they were quite similar, they had come a little way away
from each other, but in many ways they were sort of very very similar.
Even the towns which they came from were very similar. And I always
hated that feeling of dullness really. So I didn’t like myself, I didn’t like
myself at all. So I always had an inkling.
(Interview 13)
Otherness was exciting and represented by ‘foreignness’ – cultural as well
as racial difference. Barbara went on to describe a carefree and exciting life
free of responsibilities that she had lived with her black partner, until the
relationship broke down: