See No Evil, Speak No Evil: White Police Officers' Talk about Race and Affirmative Action

Abstract

This article analyzes three discursive strategies which White police officers use to talk about affirmative action. In different ways, these strategies allow officers to claim to see no racial difference or inequity. In one instance, however, a White officer did remark upon her own Whiteness in terms of cultural difference. I consider the implications of this fact for recent debates in anthropology about the relationship of culture and ideology, as well as for further studies of Whiteness.