Seeking Difference: African Americans in Interpersonal Communication Research, 1975 - 2000

Abstract

Drawing on the contemporary metaphor of research as narrative, I argue that a quest for racial / ethnic ''difference'' was the dominant story in research on the interpersonal communication of African Americans from 1975 to 2000. Rather than exploring interactions among African American friends, families, and lovers, communication researchers tended to position African Americans in relation to White Americans, either by comparing Black and White communicative perceptions and practices or by examining interracial encounters. By overrepresenting the quest for difference, communication scholars inadvertently centered Whiteness in African American interpersonal scholarship. This article offers four touchstones for constructing alternative research narratives that interpret African American interpersonal communication from African American cultural standpoints: (1) practical and relational focus; (2) community cognizance; (3) holism and intersectionality; and (4) positionality and provisionalism.

Keywords:

• African American
• Interpersonal Communication
• Communication
• Gender And Communication
• Interracial Communication