Performance of Race, Culture, and Whiteness

The nature of human social engagement could be described as operating along four basic principles: (1) notions of naming and recognizing features of particularity and difference; (2) establishing relational rituals and activities that build organizational systems in and as communities; (3) instantiating hierarchies of power that regulate the vagaries of daily living; and (4) enacting methods of communication that seek to promote ideas and mediate social understanding. Thus, the construction of “performance of race, culture, and whiteness” articulates and integrates these four overlapping notions that animate and map onto aspects of human social engagement that might also be reframed as enquiry, enactment, and enculturation. A range of diverse definitions of each of the terms exists and their features coalesce and co-inform each other. The social actors in the dramas of everyday performances do not always self-select the roles they play. But they can shape the performances they engage in and promote productive culture and relational engagements toward social justice.