ABSTRACT
Th e quote above comes from a paper written for a course in qualitative research where for two semesters we conducted interviews about race and racism in the United States with people working in education and human services (see L.A. Bell, 2003a). As we analyzed the transcripts of these interviews, I noticed how often people draw on stories to explicate their views about race, and the persistent ways that certain stories repeat, uttered as individual but patterned across multiple interviews. I also noticed that students who were more knowledgeable and conscious about racism (more often, though not exclusively, students of color), were able to comment on the racial assumptions embedded in stories in ways that enabled less aware classmates to discern racism through the vehicle of the words spread before them. When white students recognized themselves in these stories, for example, they were more open to refl ecting on their own racial socialization in critical ways. It also seemed that students of color could point out the racist content of interviews without feeling they had to temper their insights to avoid defensiveness from white classmates. In one such discussion, a young white man commented in fascinated, dawning awareness, “I’ve said that before!” as he began to recognize and consider racial assumptions pointed out in the transcript he and an African American classmate were analyzing.
Th e focus on the words and stories of others prompted some of the least defensive, most honest and genuine conversations about racism I have witnessed in my teaching life.
