Carnegie Mellon University

"A Nation Divided: Interaction Orders of Race and The High Cost of Unconscious Racism in Everyday Life"

Friday, April 6th, 2018
4:30pm, Reception
5:00pm, Lecture and Discussion
Steinberg Auditorium, Baker Hall A53

Dr. Waverly Duck
Department of Sociology, University of Pittsburgh
CAUSE Postdoctoral Fellow, 2017-18
Dr. Anne Warfield Rawls
Bentley University
University of Siegen, GE

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.