The social drama of a ‘rice burner’: A (re)constitution of whiteness

Abstract

Through critical performance ethnography, I explore the performative constitution of whiteness in an introductory communication classroom. The focus of this essay lies in one particular moment from a larger study in order to locate and specify the mechanisms of racial production in social interaction. Through a close consideration of this social drama, I argue that race in general, and whiteness in particular, is a social communicative accomplishment—a performative constitution of identity instituted and maintained by repetitions of meaningful acts. This emergent view of race allows for a different way of seeing racial (re)production.