Discourses of Racism in a Listserv Discussion among Neighbors.

This paper analyzes neighbors' online forum interactions to examine how differing ways of addressing racism result in miscommunication and disagreement among neighbors. Miscommunication among neighbors stems from the use of two differing discourses to discuss racism: folk theory of racism and critical theory of racism (Hill, 2008). Analysis in this paper illustrates that central to the way participants enact each of these discourses are the identities that participants invoke in their interactions. Talk reflecting folk theory, for example, tends to use person referencing practices that address each person as an individual and positions all individuals as equal. Talk reflecting critical theory, on the other hand, tends to reference different groups of people and emphasize inequality among different social groups in the neighborhood. When these discourses come into contact, neighbors who employ folk theory often interpret discussion of inequality among groups (e.g. White people are privileged and minorities are often excluded) as personal insults (e.g. I am White, and I am not privileged). Therefore, despite the well-intentioned efforts of these neighbors to address issues of racism, the discussions seem to exacerbate already existing tensions between White (folk theory) and non-White (critical theory) neighbors and hinder any actions neighbors would want to take to remedy issues of racism in their community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]