Abstract
Drawing from ethnography of communication and language socialization approaches, this paper examines classes on bullying held for Sikh middle school students at a Sikh religious institution in California. Sikh educational programs play an important role in socializing youth into Sikh teachings, practices, and community perspectives. Due to one practice in particular, wearing a dastaar (turban), some Sikh youth have been harassed by their non-Sikh peers. After discussing the significance of the dastaar in Sikh life, this paper analyzes interactions in classes on bullying in which Sikh youth enacted role-plays provided by the teachers. In the discussions that followed the role-plays, teachers and students evaluated the actions of the bullying victim and weighed the consequences of a wide range of interactional moves in reacting to harassment. Participants’ assessments of bullying-response strategies reveal the tensions and challenges that Sikh youth face in managing the process of religious identification in their everyday lives.