| Abstract: | This study explores how preadolescents engaged in different interactional approaches to whiteness in racially distinct summer camps. Kids in the predominantly white and predominantly black contexts created peer cultures that differed in the following ways: (1) how they marked and defined whiteness, (2) how they made subject positions toward whiteness problematic, and (3) how they maintained different racial hegemonies. Mere numerical majority/minority relations, as well as differences in racial hegemony, caused kids to vary the meanings of whiteness, especially as the value of maintaining color-blind and color-aware orientations fluctuated. The findings suggest that the racial composition of a context may be key to encouraging recognition that white racial subjectivities are as subject to multiple interpretations, expressions, and embodiment as are racial subjectivities of color. |
