TY - JOUR
T1 - Doing race and ethnicity – exploring the lived experience of whiteness at a Danish Public School
AU - Tørslev, Mette Kirstine
AU - Nørredam, Marie Louise
AU - Vitus, Kathrine
PY - 2017
Y1 - 2017
N2 - This article addresses race and ethnicity as social practices among young students at a Danish public sports school and explores how these practices engage with emotional well-being in the institutional context. The study is based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in two school classes in 2012–2013 using multiple qualitative methods. Taking a phenomenological practice approach, the article addresses how racial (and ethnic) practices affect everyday school life. The analysis shows how a common-sense, habitual background of whiteness positions non-white bodies as different and ‘non-belonging’, thus shaping experiences of being ‘out of place’. These experiences are stressful to students in the study and foster a selfawareness that restrains the body from engaging habitually in the world and that obstructs emotional well-being. The article argues that a reluctance to acknowledge social practices as racial enables everyday racism while blocking the positions available to speak out against ethnic and racial discriminatory experiences.
AB - This article addresses race and ethnicity as social practices among young students at a Danish public sports school and explores how these practices engage with emotional well-being in the institutional context. The study is based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in two school classes in 2012–2013 using multiple qualitative methods. Taking a phenomenological practice approach, the article addresses how racial (and ethnic) practices affect everyday school life. The analysis shows how a common-sense, habitual background of whiteness positions non-white bodies as different and ‘non-belonging’, thus shaping experiences of being ‘out of place’. These experiences are stressful to students in the study and foster a selfawareness that restrains the body from engaging habitually in the world and that obstructs emotional well-being. The article argues that a reluctance to acknowledge social practices as racial enables everyday racism while blocking the positions available to speak out against ethnic and racial discriminatory experiences.
U2 - 10.1080/23793406.2016.1260045
DO - 10.1080/23793406.2016.1260045
M3 - Journal article
VL - 1
SP - 137
EP - 149
JO - Whiteness & Education
JF - Whiteness & Education
IS - 2
ER -