Talking Race in Young Adulthood

Bethan Harries is a Research Fellow in the Department of Sociology at the University of Manchester, UK.

In this lively study of young adults, race and everyday multiculture Bethan Harries explores how new generations learn to live with difference. What is produced is a vibrant, engaging and ultimately hopeful study of modern day multicultural living. Stitching together rich narrative accounts from young adults, the author highlights how new generations talk about race and, in many cases, might work towards a post-racial future in which race is no longer a primary marker of difference. Critical of governmental approaches to integration and cohesion, Talking Race offers a far more compelling and enriching account of generational change, difference and urban conviviality.Anoop Nayak, Professor of Social & Cultural Geography, Newcastle Unviersity, UKBritain’s cities are more racially, ethnically, religiously and socially diverse than ever before and are the locus of both entrenched forms of inequality and hostility and post-racial conviviality. Talking Race provides an important intervention into theories of postrace, urban space and micro-encounters as they are lived and contested at the level of the everyday. It explores the complex terrain of negotiating race through the discourses of young adults, treading an empirically rich and theoretically nuanced path through the ambivalences, tensions and possibilities of contemporary urban multiculture. Claire Alexander, Professor of Sociology, University of Manchester, UK

• Chapter one – IntroductionThe researchThe bookChapter two – The Conflicted CityIntroductionThe multi-layered cityThe cityThe ‘Other’ side of the cityGorton, Longsight and Moss SideBeyond the cityConclusionChapter three - The imaginings of a ‘post-racial’ generationIntroductionA ‘post-racial’ generation?The myth of sameness and the fantasy of non-racismOther times and ‘Othered’ placesMixing ≠ multicultureConclusion Chapter four – Anticipating race: Race and the recognition of difference in encounters with diversityIntroductionExpectations of differenceNo difference hereContrasted spaces: encountering the white working classComfortable conceptions of difference Proximities to difference Learned encounters: the "unspoken code"ConclusionChapter five – Going against the grain: resistance to identifications and the claim for multiple subjectivitiesIntroductionStarting from the point of misrecognitionWhite working-class identitiesBeing ‘different’ and undermining identities of differenceDe-categorising identitiesReworking the label: claiming a multi-faceted identity"I am not who I am supposed to be"ConclusionChapter six – When is racism?IntroductionThe problem of racismTalking racismRacism and the weight of categorisationSocial mixing: an inadequate counter to racismNaming racism, naming racistsConclusionChapter seven – Conclusion DedicationAcknowledgements