Breaking whitebread: the construction of racial and sex differences through everyday conversations in a modern workplace

Abstract

Research on race and gender in the workplace tends to be bi-polar in its analysis. That is, race and gender, for the most part occur either as overt or covert forms of discrimination in American society. This study differs from other research in that I focus on how conversations between workers reproduce and reinforce racism and sexism in the workplace through race- and gender-talk. By looking at micro-level interactions in the workplace, I suggest that we can determine and even predict the salience of race- and gender-talk depending on the context of that situation. For example, I posit that race-talk mostly occurs in conversations that are all white male. In comparison, gender- talk will dominate in racially mixed settings. Although my focus is on race- and gender-talk, I suggest that class-talk is also predictable, albeit on a more complex scale that needs to be further examined in the future.