An Ethnographic Study of Three Young Children's Construction of Race in Home and Community Settings

• In Event: 26.080 - Roundtable Session 8
  In Roundtable Session: 26.080-10 - Pivotal Uncertainties: Taking Stock and Taking Action in Critical Early Childhood Ethnographic Research

Abstract

Objective/Purpose: The objective of this presentation is to share findings from a study using critical ethnography which explored how racism exists in nuanced ways in early childhood. This session aims to offer a perspective on the larger conversation on whiteness and to invite critique.

Theoretical Framework: At the center of the theoretical framework for this study is the conviction that whiteness is socially and historically constructed (Ausdale & Feagin, 2001). I draw insights from discursive theories of whiteness that maintain that discourse is a tool for illuminating the construction of whiteness. Other theories that guided this work are critical race theory (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001), socio-cultural theory (Dorsey-Gaines & Taylor, 1998; Edwards, 2004), and critical discourse analysis (Wodak & Meyer, 2009).

Methods/Research Question/Data Sources: I asked: What can I learn about the dominant discourses that shape my three young white children’s construction of race, particularly what it means to be white? I collected data in the home and community contexts of my children for a nine month period of time through participant observation, informal interviews, and audio and video taped interactions. Using a constant comparison approach (Grbich, 2007), I read and reread the data and wrote notes and reflections about what I believed to be initial categories (patterns and anomalies to those patterns). I used NVivo 10 to analyze data by running word frequency queries, tree diagrams, and colored coded node strips. As new relationships were formed in the data, categories were collapsed or expanded until I felt I had exhausted the data and sufficiently organized my findings.

Findings: Analysis of data led to findings about how my children learned to be white that were framed within dualities of consciousness (i.e., what it means to be and what it means not to be white). Hardly a simplistic dualism, I also learned that these constructions were situated within simultaneous other constructions of identity mediated by class, faith, nationalism, patriotism, etc. These identity messages were not tidy – at times they were completely contradictory and often competed with each other for dominance. Yet somehow, within the imbricated nature of multiple identity narratives, my children seemed to both reify and reject whiteness.

Implications: Implications are provided to support adults in challenging and overturning practices in homes, places of worship, universities, and schools as we begin to address the complex and deep seated overhaul necessary to forefront anti-racist agendas.

Significance: By recognizing the existence of and highlighting the racial undertones in accepted day-to-day discourse within and beyond one particular family, one can begin to imagine why the work of anti-racists becomes so frustrating when dealing with white families, teachers, and students who often must literally unlearn one consciousness in order to relearn another. In this presentation, I share some of the ways easily indistinguishable messages worked in the life of my family.

Author

• Erin Till Miller, University of North Carolina - Charlotte