A Nation Divided

Interaction Orders of Race and The High Cost of Unconscious Racism in Everyday Life

Dr. Waverly Duck

University of Pittsburgh & CAUSE Postdoctoral Fellow, 2017-18

Dr. Anne Warfield Rawls

Bentley University & University of Siegen, GE

Friday, April 6th, 2018

Steinberg Auditorium, Baker Hall A53 (Basement)
4:30pm, Reception
5:00pm, Lecture and Discussion

About the Lecture

This talk is about Race in the US and how it has become embedded in the taken-for-granted structures of day-to-day interaction, to produce unconscious forms of racism that go on every day – yet remain hidden. Drs. Duck and Rawls will identify a set of interrelated phenomena we call “Interaction Orders of Race,” “Fractured Reflections,” and “Submissive Civility,” that provide novel ways of understanding race in everyday interactions. In this presentation they will present data from interactions between Americans who self-identify as Black and White. They argue that the expectations of everyday life differ for Black Americans, who experience what Du Bois called “Double Consciousness”. Because Black and White Americans inhabit different Interaction Orders, with distinct methods of sense-making, divergent expectations by Race often lead to tacit misunderstandings across racial groups.