Communicating to Develop White Racial Identity in an Interracial Communication Class

Abstract

The study examines the dilemmas communicated by White students as they addressed issues of whiteness raised in an undergraduate interracial communication course. Data included semester-long in-class observation, three focus groups of White students from the class, and student documents. Communication patterns associated with dealing with White privilege, defining an antiracist lifestyle, and becoming comfortable with communicating about race were identified. Reasons for and response to white student silence in diversity-related courses are discussed.

Keywords:

• Whiteness
• White Racial Identity
• Instructional Communication
• Interracial Communication
• Multicultural Education

Notes

1. Students who identified themselves as Jewish, by their own description, had a foot in both the dominant and the oppressed perspectives. Therefore, in citing their comments from class discussion, they are identified as “White female/male” when they seem to take the White perspective and “Jewish female/male” when they speak from their Jewish identity. This decision was made in part because in the first few weeks of the semester before they emerged as a separate group, the researcher taking field notes was not even aware of their Jewish identity. As they chose to constitute a separate Jewish-identified focus group, comments lifted from those data are naturally labeled as being from the Jewish perspective.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ann Neville Miller

Ann Neville Miller (MA, Wheaton College Graduate School, 1992) is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Speech Communication at the University of Georgia and a faculty member at Daystar University in Nairobi, Kenya

Tina M. Harris

Tina M. Harris (PhD, University of Kentucky, 1995) is associate professor of Speech Communication at the University of Georgia