The Paradoxes of Personhood: Banal Multiculturalism and Racial–Ethnic Identification among Latina and Armenian Girls at a Los Angeles High School

Mary E Thomas
Additional contact information
Mary E Thomas: Departments of Geography and Women's Studies, Ohio State University 1036 Derby Hall, 154 North Oval Mall, Columbus, OH 43210, USA

Environment and Planning A, 2008, vol. 40, issue 12, 2864-2878

Abstract: In the spring of 2005, numerous racially motivated, large-scale fights broke out in Los Angeles, California, high schools, from the San Fernando Valley to south Los Angeles. Most of the fighting occurred between youth who identify as ethnic–racial minorities, like Latinos, African-Americans, and Armenians. Just after one such fight involving several hundred students, which quickly became known as a ‘race riot’ at the school, I conducted a series of interviews with teenage girls asking them what they thought of this outburst of ethnic–racial violence, in their valley school's case between Latinos and Armenians. In the research, girls detailed to me their postracial attitudes (typified by such ideals as ‘race doesn't matter, we are all the same’), but their narratives evidenced extreme racial–ethnic segregation and their own racist sentiments. In this paper, I explore this contradiction and focus on how girls articulate multicultural and humanist ideals to situate themselves as antiracists. However, concurrently, I argue that the girls' racialized resentments of others illustrate their profound and wounded investments in difference. The girls' narratives and identities also indicate why multicultural attempts to foster respect of diversity in this urban high school have failed.

Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/a40141 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envira:v:40:y:2008:i:12:p:2864-2878

DOI: 10.1068/a40141

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Environment and Planning A
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().