Suspect Identity: The Use of Race in Requests for Emergency Services

• In Event: 256 - Section on Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis Paper Session. Current Studies in Conversation Analysis

Abstract

Social scientists have long been interested in social problems like racism. However, these phenomena remain difficult to pin down in empirical research. This project explores 911 calls as one site where racial discrimination can be located and investigated. I use conversation analysis as my method, examining how the call unfolds to understand what actions the participants accomplish through the use of racial categories.
In telephone requests for emergency services (e.g. calling 911) callers and call takers negotiate whether and how an emergency response will be dispatched (J. Whalen, Zimmerman & M. Whalen 1988, Whalen & Zimmerman 1990, Heritage & Clayman 2010). In this project I analyze 911 calls from the United States to show that both callers and call takers orient to race (as well as gender and other identity categories) as relevant to this process. Callers often volunteer racial information in their references to and descriptions of the ‘problem’ people they are reporting. When callers do not volunteer racial information, call takers often ask for it, either explicitly or implicitly. The racial information used by the participants becomes part of the indexical field (Eckert 2008:454) that informs the call taker’s ultimate decision to dispatch services or not.

Author

• Amelia Hill, UCLA