"Race" As An Interaction Order Phenomenon: W.E.B. Du Bois's "Double Consciousness" Thesis Revisited

“Race” as an Interaction Order Phenomenon:
W.E.B. Du Bois’s “Double Consciousness” Thesis Revisited*

Anne Warfield Rawls
Wayne State University
This article reports on a study of interaction between Americans who self-identify as

Black and White that reveals underlying expectations with regard to conversation that
differ between the two groups. These differences seem not to have much to do with class
or gender, but rather vary largely according to self-identification by “race.” The argu-
ment of this paper will be that the social phenomena of “race” are constructed at the
level of interaction whenever Americans self-identified as Black and White speak to one
another. This is because the Interaction Order expectations with regard to both self and
community vary between the two groups. Because the “language games” and conver-
sational “preferences” practiced by the two groups are responsive to different Inter-
action Orders, the “working consensus” is substantially different, and as a consequence,
conversational “moves” are not recognizably the same. It will be argued that a great
deal of institutional discrimination against African Americans can be traced to this
source.
Data representing ten years of research on conversations between Americans who self-
identify as White and Americans who self-identify as Black reveal problems of mutual
understanding that appear to result from differences in communicative expectations between
the two groups. In other words, Americans who self-identify as White appear to have a set
of expectations with regard to the details of communicative exchange that are significantly
different from the expectations of Americans who self-identify as Black. Data 1 with regard
to these differences will be presented in some detail.
As a result of these differences in interactional expectations, persons are not able to
recognize one another’s conversational moves: One side might as well be playing chess
while the other plays checkers, and serious misunderstandings result. Because persons
from both groups are generally not aware that they are having a misunderstanding, usually
expressing the belief that the other person is violating conversational norms on purpose,
the misunderstandings tend to recreate negative beliefs and stereotypes held by each group
about the other. As a result, beliefs and stereotypes generally accompany interactional
troubles and appear to be the cause of the problem. The Interaction Order differences
corresponding to racial identification that actually produce these misunderstandings have
remained largely invisible ~Goffman 1983; Rawls 1987!.
A theoretical explanation needs to be offered for why and how two groups of people,
both speaking the same language and apparently occupying the same geographical space,
* Many people have contributed over the years to the ideas presented in this article. I owe a great debt to Harold
Garfinkel without whose pioneering work I could never have begun. William J. Wilson contributed more than he
can possibly know toward convincing me that the project was possible. Without the encouragement of Charles
Lemert and Craig Calhoun the paper would probably never have been published. I also need to thank Peter
Manning, who read many drafts, Doug Maynard, who not only encouraged me, but was also generous in sharing
his own work, Albert Meehan, Cathy Pettinari, Edward Mays, Lynetta Mosby, and Gary David who worked many
years with me as I developed the research. I would also like to thank the graduate students who participated in a
series of graduate-level seminars on interracial interaction. I have learned an enormous amount from them.
1
The data consist of video and audio tape of two sorts of interactions. First are those interactions in which
persons engage in talk with one another and the structure of that talk is analyzed. Second are focus group
discussions, workshops, and lectures in which participants discuss their experiences with interracial interaction.
Sociological Theory 18:2 July 2000

© American Sociological Association. 1307 New York Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20005-4701
242 SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY
could come to differ so significantly in their communicative expectations that they are not
able to achieve mutual understanding. In offering this explanation, I am, by necessity,
offering a theoretical consideration of the phenomenon of “racial” solidarity and “race”
consciousness, issues about which there has been extensive debate. I will be arguing that
while “race” is a socially constructed phenomenon, it is very real in its consequences, and
that important phenomena of inequality result from the Interaction Order effects of “race”
as a social construction.
In approaching the issue theoretically, however, my main concern has been to craft a
theory that will explain the interactional detail exhibited by the data. Differences in inter-
action between different groups have been described before, but a theoretical explanation
that focuses on their interactional significance has not been offered. Inequalities that go by
the name of “race,” 2 like those associated with gender and ethnicity, have traditionally
been approached in social structural, cultural, or attitudinal terms. These approaches tend
to assume either that the differences are part of a cultural aesthetic, with little social
function, or that they are a reaction to structural factors. They do not explain why the sorts
of conversational differences that are being reported in this article would develop, nor
what their underlying social function ~i.e., Interaction Order function! might be.
While approaches such as Thomas Kochman’s ~1981! explication of Black and White
cultural styles and the studies of African American language practices by William Labov
~1972! and Ulf Hannerz ~1969! took an important, even pathbreaking, step toward expli-
cating the conversational differences between the two groups, the underlying connection
among social forms, the presentation of self, and conversational styles—that is, the inter-
actional significance of these differences—remains obscure.
It might be said that the current interest in race as a problem of social construction
through linguistic and symbolic representation is a turn toward such interactional issues
because it focuses on the constitution of race at the conceptual, narrative, and stereotypical
level ~Myrsiades and Myrsiades 1998; Lott 1992!. While it is certainly true that beliefs and
values about skin color, and negative meanings for color words, “race” persons who encoun-
ter them as effectively as formal law and political structures ~Myrsiades and Myrsiades
1998!, the current emphasis on culture and language as institutionalized vehicles for rac-
ism ~Gandy 1998! still overlooks the interactional dimension of race.
Institutionalized dimensions of culture and language are not interaction. Spoken lan-
guage presents very different theoretical and practical dilemmas that are also relevant to
the social construction of race. Treating language as an artifact of institutionalized rela-
tionships of inequality neglects possible ways in which the failure to achieve mutual under-
standing in actual conversations between persons who have identified with different races
is itself constitutive of racial divisions.
In spite of the emphasis on language, the focus is usually on how language constrains
interaction, not on the Interaction Order as an essential constraint on language. Yet, “lan-
guage games,” as Wittgenstein ~1945! argued, are shared practices of speech that give
meaning to words in a language. The meanings constituted through language games are
independent, to a significant degree, of “institutionalized” aspects of linguistic word mean-
ing. Therefore, language games, and the sequential aspects of language games that com-
pose the recognizable aspects of talk ~Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson 1974!, constitute a
necessary and extremely important dimension of communication.
Furthermore, the failure to share Interaction Order practices, such as language games,
may itself indicate important differences between cultures that appear otherwise to be in
2
The idea of “race” itself is obviously a social construction since biological distinctions between “races”
cannot be specified except in social terms. The important question is not whether “race” is a social construction,
but rather at what level of social order the phenomenon of “race” is constituted.
“RACE” AS AN INTERACTION ORDER PHENOMENON 243
many respects the same. Small differences in the way in which the recognizability of a
social practice, such as a greeting, is achieved, for instance, may result from essential
contradictions between the underlying forms of association, the types of social self con-
stitutive of a particular form of association, and the resulting moral values that are con-
sidered normal for each group.
This article proposes that “race” has an interactional dimension at the level of Inter-
action Order that explains much about the intractability of the phenomenon. While I accept
without question the argument that many differences between African American and White
American speech preferences have an origin in traditional African culture, and acknowl-
edge clear differences between what Jason Dillard ~1972! called “Black English” and
standard English ~also Turner 1940!, there are important differences between traditional
African cultures and African American culture that cannot be explained on the basis of
either cultural origins or linguistic differences.
Much of what is distinctive about African American expectations at the level of Inter-
action Order seems to have arisen in this country—not as a mere reaction to caste and op-
pression, but rather, a result of what W. E. B. Du Bois ~1903:125,11! referred to as using “race”
as an “emblem” to create what he called a “nation.” Certainly, African Americans would take
with them into this “nation” those traditional African beliefs and customs that they held. But,
as Du Bois argued ~1903:125!, what African Americans created, after Reconstruction, was
something different from what had existed before. In fact, he argued ~1903:11! that African
Americans had developed a worldview that was unique on the planet, and which, because of
its race-transcending character, had the potential to liberate all persons.
DU BOIS AND DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS

While W. E. B. Du Bois is not generally thought of as an interactionist, his work provides
an important starting point for the analysis of those conversational differences which offer
a glimpse of the African American worldview. The idea of double consciousness, immor-
talized by Du Bois, when interpreted in traditional structural or cultural terms, involves the
internalization of structural constraints and negative attitudes and values about the “raced”
self present in the general culture. On this view, “double consciousness” involves two
cultural identities, each corresponding to a different social role, one Black and one White,
at war with one another within each individual African American because of the differing
significance of those identities within American society.3 This interpretation regards the
issue of identity, or consciousness, as if every social role, or cultural perspective, would
produce another competing identity and a different corresponding consciousness. Feminist
writers, for instance, have suggested that “female” is another competing identity, and there-
fore that the Black female consciousness is triple, the Black female Hispanic conscious-
ness quadruple, and so on ~Collins 1990; hooks 1981; Hine 1993!. This view treats the
community as one whole, held together by a single form of social order, and all identities
as competing for value within that single whole.
While Du Bois can be interpreted in this way, there are three important aspects of his
argument that suggest a different interpretation. Du Bois argues: first, that African Amer-
ican self-consciousness is incomplete because of its “doubleness”; second, that there are
two distinct communities with different values and goals, on either side of what he refers
to as the “veil”; and third, that selves on the Black side of the veil owe a duty to their
3
I follow the example of Leon Higgenbotham, Jr. in using several different terminologies to refer to the social
phenomenon of race. As Higgenbotham notes ~1996:ix–x!, these terms have changed in the past and will change
again. There is no way of knowing what in ten years will be considered the correct terminology. I have chosen to
capitalize all race terms as they refer to social constructions of major importance for American society.
community that White selves do not. The distinctiveness of the two communities in terms
of both the relationship between the individual self and the group, and the expectations
with regard to interactional practice that result from the differences in this relationship,
suggest that double consciousness has to do with differences in the experience of being an
individual in the two communities, and not with marginalized social roles within a single
community.
Du Bois’s idea that persons of color have been forced to live behind a veil is the oper-
ative idea with regard to the incompleteness of self. The development of self-consciousness
takes a different form behind the veil. In making this point Du Bois takes a position on self
similar to that of G. H. Mead, arguing that the African American self is constructed both
from taking the role of others in the community toward the self, and from taking the role
of those on the other side of the veil toward the self.4 According to Du Bois:
The Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in
this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but
only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar
sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self
through the eyes of others, or measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks
on it in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a
Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in
one dark body whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. ~1903:5!
The difference between Mead’s “taking the role of the other” and what Du Bois describes
as “looking at one’s self through the eyes of others,” is that the White American takes the
role of the White other toward the self without any fundamental contradiction and thus
essentially without being aware of doing so. White Americans do not take the role of Black
Americans toward themselves. African Americans, on the other hand, because of the essen-
tial inequality and incompatibility between the two communities, are forced to take the
role of White others toward themselves and are as a consequence uncomfortably aware of
looking at themselves through the veil. The African American self is, according to Du Bois,
because of this twoness, incomplete. He argues that the paradox of having a self reflected
back through the veil of color, the conflict between the two views of self and the different
moral and cultural commitments that they reflect, account for this incompleteness.
The African American, according to Du Bois ~1903:6!, is always torn in two directions,
held accountable to two communities, two sets of values. He describes this as a fundamen-
tal conflict between the two social forms and the resulting conflict between the values of
the two communities, not as a conflict between the values accorded to social roles within
a single community.
It is the contradiction of double aims. The double-aimed struggle of the black

artisan—on the one hand to escape white contempt for a nation of mere hewers of
wood and drawers of water, and on the other hand to plough and nail and dig for a
poverty-stricken horde—could only result in making him a poor craftsman, for he
had but half a heart in either case. ~1903:6!
4
It is not surprising that Du Bois’s theory of self should look something like that of G. H. Mead. He had two
things in common with Mead. He studied with William James at Harvard, both as an undergraduate and as a
graduate student. Mead, James, and Dewey were all associated with American pragmatism. Mead and Du Bois
also both studied in Germany during the early 1890s. For Mead the influence of Wundt was critical in this regard.
Du Bois was also heavily influenced by German thinkers, although in his case Weber and Schmoller seem to have
been the main influences. It is unlikely that any American thinker spent time in Germany without being influ-
enced by the important criticisms of traditional rationalist, individualist, and positivist assumptions that were
being articulated there at the time.
African Americans have one aim and one set of needs, while White society has another set
of values with which to evaluate the ultimate worth of human action. White aims and goals
will value negatively those actions that are truly useful to African Americans, according to
Du Bois, and positively value actions that are not useful. The reverse, he says, is also the
case.
However, while White selves are accountable to only one community and one set of
values, there are two separate peoples to whom the African American self is accountable.
If actions fulfill the ideals of the one group, without fulfilling the ideals of the other at the
same time, this is a problem that “belongs” to the African American self, but not to the
White self. There is an obvious “catch 22” here that explains the essential problem of
double consciousness: Completeness is impossible because a complete self, composed of
both sides, would contradict itself. Because the social form, values, and goals of the two
groups clash and cannot be reconciled, there is much waste of African American talent,
according to Du Bois, as neither side can ever be fully satisfied with any African American
presentation of self.
The idea is not merely that the social roles of Black, or female, are negatively valued by
the majority. Du Bois portrays the two sides of the veil in terms of separate societies
clashing, not just over cultural differences, but over large-scale aims and values: capital-
ism vs. community; gemeinschaft vs. gesellschaft. The two societies are essentially differ-
ent in their social, moral, and economic relations. One is capitalist and individualist, the
other anticapitalist and community-oriented.
Du Bois proposes a duty to the racial group for Black Americans to counteract this
conflict. Double consciousness can be interpreted in terms of this duty, wherein the strength
of the racial group—or “nation,” to use Du Bois’s term—counteracts the effects of the
negative self reflected through the veil. It is in order to permit the full development of
self-consciousness within the veil, a self-consciousness that transcends the conflict between
the two sides, that Du Bois advocates the formation of, and commitment to, a Black
community, or nation in its own right. This Black nation is not formed to create separation
between races, but rather, in order to enable the Black self to transcend an already existing
separation. Within this Black nation the Black consciousness can aspire to full develop-
ment. In a passage that appears to be autobiographical, Du Bois writes that the “child”
realized that “to attain his place in the world he must be himself and no other” ~1903:9!.
Complete self-consciousness, for Du Bois, requires the social solidarity of the Black
group and a commitment to their own values over those of the White majority. In order to
transcend racial oppression and stop taking the role of those on the other side of the veil
toward themselves, African Americans must use race as an emblem for achieving group
solidarity, according to Du Bois ~1903:11!. Only as a result of achieving solidarity can the
“race” boundaries that made solidarity possible in the first place be transcended. In this
paradoxical vision of race leading to the transcending of race, Du Bois offers a blueprint
for world equality and world peace led by the African American example.
There is an interesting parallel between Du Bois and Karl Marx on this point. The
proposal that race as an emblem could serve to unify the group is similar to Marx’s argu-
ment that working-class status could be used to unify workers around the world. In both
cases the unifying emblem is the very thing created by others to exploit the group in the
first place. Both emblems also have the advantage of originating with capitalism and
developing out of an opposition within it. Therefore, they both transcend traditional cul-
tural beliefs and values. This transcendence of tradition is one critical distinction between
the African American community and traditional African culture. Thus, in both cases,
using the emblem to create solidarity in opposition to the dominant group allows for a
transcendence, not only of the false consciousness formerly associated with the emblem,
but also of traditional beliefs, values, and inequalities.
DU BOIS ON INTERACTION AND CONVERSATION

The question is how large-scale clashes in the economic and social relations between the
two societies translate themselves first into differences in moral orientation and the pre-
sentation of self, and then ultimately into differences in communicative practice. Cer-
tainly, profound differences in moral orientation must find a mode of expression in the
presentation of self in order for those with whom we interact to be able to assess our
commitment to shared goals and values. Similarly, differences in the presentation of self
will require a new shape to moral commitments, as different sorts of selves depend on the
display of different sorts of interactional commitments.
While Du Bois does not address the issue of interactional differences in any detail, he
did include communicative issues in his consideration of double consciousness as a level
of “race contact.” Du Bois argues ~1903:134! that there are four levels of “race contact,”
all of which contribute to double consciousness. According to Du Bois, the first level is
physical proximity, the second concerns economic relations, and the third, political rela-
tions. The fourth level of race contact, which he calls “less tangible,” involves interaction
and conversation. According to Du Bois, this interactional level of race contact consists of:
the interchange of ideas through conversation and conference, through periodicals

and libraries, and, above all, the gradual formation for each community of that curi-
ous tertium quid which we call public opinion. Closely allied with this come the
various forms of social contact in everyday life. ~1903:135!
Du Bois’s treatment of interaction as an essential form of race contact suggests an aware-

ness on his part of the role that daily interaction and what I refer to as Interaction Order
practices, play in the formation of individual self-consciousness, the achievement of mutual
intelligibility, the creation of narratives, rumors, and stereotypes, and finally, in creating
those institutional structures that both result from and place constraints on these differ-
ences in communicative practices. According to Du Bois:
It is, in fine, the atmosphere of the land, the thought and feeling, the thousand and
one little actions which go to make up life. In any community or nation it is these
little things which are most elusive to the grasp and yet most essential to any clear
conception of the group life taken as a whole. ~1903:147; emphasis mine!
While interaction is essential, its workings are also curiously invisible. This, according
to Du Bois “is peculiarly true of the South.” Much of what has gone on in the South has
occurred in the interactional realm between the cracks of institutional structures, as in
Goffman’s Asylums. In the South, Du Bois says:
Outside of written history and outside of printed law, there has been going on for a
generation as deep a storm and stress of human souls, as intense a ferment of feeling,
as intricate a writhing of spirit, as ever a people experienced.5 ~1903:147!
The forces at work are so subtle, according to Du Bois ~1903:148!, that “the casual
observer visiting the South sees at first little of this.” But soon the problems of race
manifest themselves: Persons are seen to be conscious of moving between social situations
in which both intelligibility and self are constituted on the basis of contradictory sorts of
5
In his reference to storm and stress here, Du Bois uses the words for the German Sturm und Drang. As he
studied in Berlin we can assume that he means to refer not only to what he calls a “certain anguish of souls” but
also to the interpretive or hermeneutic crisis that characterized the German Sturm und Drang.
Interaction Order practices. Persons are quite literally living in different socially con-
structed worlds. According to Du Bois, the visitor:
realizes at last that silently, resistlessly, the world about flows by him in two great
streams; they ripple on in the same sunshine, they approach and mingle their waters
in seeming carelessness,—then they divide and flow wide apart. ~1903:148!
Between these two worlds, he says, there are almost no points of intimate or intellectual
contact:
Now if one notices carefully one will see that between these two worlds, despite
much physical contact and daily intermingling, there is almost no community of
intellectual life or point of transference where the thoughts and feelings of one race
can come into direct contact and sympathy with thoughts and feelings of the other.
~1903:149!
This, according to Du Bois, is very different from the close daily contact that occurred
between Black and White in the South before the Civil War, and he dates the separation to
the Reconstruction period.
The problem, as Du Bois eloquently develops it, comes to include the idea that not
being able to achieve mutual reciprocity and equality with a group of “others,” particularly
through close daily contact, is damaging to the development of the self.
In a world where it means so much to take a man by the hand and sit beside him, to
look frankly into his eyes and feel his heart beating with red blood; in a world where
a social cigar or a cup of tea together means more than legislative halls and magazine
articles and speeches,—one can imagine the consequences of the almost utter absence
of such social amenities between estranged races, whose separation extends even to
parks and street-cars. ~1903:150!
While Black and White appear to occupy the same world geographically, they rarely
occupy the same interactional space. Furthermore, even today when they do more often
jointly occupy interactional space, because their communities have developed in separa-
tion and their Interaction Order practices conflict, the display of moral behavior by mem-
bers of one group may well look like deviant behavior to members of the other.
Interaction Orders have a moral dimension because the Interaction Order is necessary
for the social production of both self and intelligibility, both of which are essential human
goods ~Goffman 1959, 1961, 1963; Rawls 1987, 1989!. Because the moral demands on
participants in the two Interaction Orders are not the same, Whites and African Americans
often violate one another’s moral sense. The African American experiences an additional
problem: as an individual self who is forced to present in two conflicting Interaction
Orders, who is held to two different and often conflicting sets of moral demands. In order
to recognizably construct practices in one Interaction Order domain, the individual often
must violate moral prescriptions required by the other. This double set of conflicting moral
requirements confronts the African American self in American society. This involves a
degree of moral tension much greater than the stigma of having one’s role identity differ-
entially shaped and valued from group to group.
Approaching the issue interactionally in this way alters the interpretation of double
consciousness dramatically. Double consciousness changes from an issue of multiple iden-
tities within a single social framework, to a problem of conflicting social constructions of
self within contradictory social frameworks or Interaction Orders. The problem is no lon-
ger that of a single self faced with competing social identities, but rather of two contra-
dictory selves within a single being, two conflicting selves who are required to enact
Interaction Order practices that make conflicting moral demands.
While not denying that persons may have multiple consciousnesses within a single
culture, as feminists have suggested, I will argue that there is a distinct phenomenon of
double, not triple or quadruple, consciousness, experienced by African Americans and
others forced to live in conflicting Interaction Order domains, and that this phenomenon
consists of something much more profound than the idea that two different identities are
housed within one human being. I believe that the “double consciousness” experienced by
African Americans has its source in the clash between two forms of Interaction Order, one
of which is oriented toward promoting solidarity in the face of external oppression and
displaying the loyalty of the self to the group, and the other of which is oriented toward the
display of western division of labor individualism. This results in two distinct forms of
self-presentation—the categorial 6 self and the teamwork self—and in two different types
of community—the community of competitive individuals and the solidarity community. These
two forms of self and community not only create conflicting boundaries between public and
private, but ideas like honor, that are essential to one, are not important for the other.
Interaction between these two social forms, when members of the subordinate group are
held simultaneously to both sets of conflicting Interaction Order practices, while members
of the superordinate group are held only to one, will produce the experience of double
consciousnesses that Du Bois wrote about for members of the subordinate group. The two
conflicting forms of association do not recognize the same boundary between public and
private domains, nor do they place the same demands on the loyalty of participants. Con-
sequently, they place different constitutive demands on the Interaction Order and demand
the production of different forms of social self. Achieving intelligibility in the two social
forms requires attention to quite different moral prerequisites for action.
BLACK AND WHITE GREETINGS AND INTRODUCTORY TALK:

WHEN CONVERSATIONAL PREFERENCES CONFLICT
CONVERSATIONAL MOVES ARE UNRECOGNIZABLE
In studying conversational interaction between Americans self-identified as Black and
White, I have found that there are significant differences in the expectations with regard to
talk and interaction that render mutual understanding between the two groups not only
problematic, but impossible in many cases. I refer to these Interaction Order expectations
as “constitutive” because the meaning of the interaction is constituted, or constructed,
“using” these expectations. I also refer to these expectations as preferred. The idea that
there is an order of preference involved in making sense of interaction, first introduced by
Harold Garfinkel ~1967! and Harvey Sacks ~@1974#1992!, speaks to the strong notion of
social order involved in the idea that these orders of preference are used in both construct-
ing and in making sense of interaction.
Therefore, if interaction is not produced with an orientation toward shared preferences,
that is, if it doesn’t exhibit this orientation as a recognizable orderliness of practice, then it
cannot be understood.7 This is the strong sense of local social order involved in the notion
of Interaction Order: A practice is only intelligible insofar as it can be recognized, and
6
I have coined the term “categorial” to refer to this self that is composed of the performance of various
categories as there was no existing word that conveyed this meaning.
7
It is essential to differentiate between shared beliefs and perceptibly recognizable practices. Shared beliefs as
the basis of order pose various problems. How do people know that they share the same beliefs, and how is
diversity possible ~Hannerz 1992!? Arguing that intelligibility rests on the recognizability of practice solves
these problems. It is no longer necessary to know what other people believe, only to be able to recognize what
they do. Diversity is possible to the degree that it does not negate the recognizability of practice.
recognition requires that a practice perceptibly exhibit a preferred order ~Rawls 1987,
1989; Garfinkel forthcoming!. The weak sense of social order says merely that social
occurrences are typical, valued, or representative, and therefore can be predicted to occur
with some frequency, but not that they are necessary for understanding ~Rawls 2000;
Garfinkel 1988!.8
The constitutive expectations regarding greetings and introductory talk between Afri-
can Americans and White Americans are a case of contradictory Interaction Order expec-
tations. African Americans prefer introductory talk to respect a firm boundary between
public and private and that it not be of a character to establish hierarchical relations between
speakers. These expectations render introductory talk between Black and White Ameri-
cans problematic because White Americans not only orient toward a different set of pref-
erences, but White speakers place a premium on sharing information about social categories
at the very beginning of a conversation or relationship, even between strangers. As Koch-
man ~1981:97–101! noted, White speakers seek information. Black speakers, on the other
hand, place a premium on personhood and egalitarianism.
This seeking after information on the part of Whites is not random, but rather takes the
form of seeking information with regard to certain fairly standard social categories: resi-
dence, occupation, and education being prime among them. Because African American
speakers prefer to avoid categorizations, and White Americans prefer to build their con-
versations only after the production of categories, the way White Americans go about
formulating their greeting and introductory sequences constitutes a direct violation of
African American conversational expectations and vice versa.
WHITE GREETING AND INTRODUCTORY SEQUENCES

The following is an example of a typical White greeting sequence of the “preferred” type.
As soon as the researcher leaves the room ~line 7!, the two White female participants begin
to establish categories: Where do you live around here? ~line 9!; What are you majoring
in? ~line 21!; What year is this for you? ~line 25!; What are you doing for a job? ~line 30!;
So what do you major in? ~line 38!. It is important to note that the information exchange
proceeds via the asking of category questions, not the offering of information. In line 19,
Sue does expand on her answer regarding where she lives, but only after two assessments
and a pause by Mia. This unasked-for expansion occurs in the vicinity of a sensitive topic:
The location indicates a low place in the status hierarchy. White speakers do not generally
offer information. They prefer to ask and be asked. African American speakers prefer to
offer.
~6/16/98 #3!
Two White Women ~S is the researcher!
1 S: Okay, so why don’t you grab a seat here and just-um-take a few minutes to get
2 t’know each
3 other and I gotta check on the other-um-students and I’ll be back.
4 Sue: Okay
5 Mia: Okay
8
In a short article on Parsons, Harold Garfinkel ~1988! explained this difference. Parsons assumes that social
order consists of individuals orienting more or less toward shared goals and values. This approach focuses on
individual behavior as constrained by social norms and values. It is not expected that any individual case of
behavior could reveal the norms, however, because individuals can be expected to deviate regularly from the
norms. Garfinkel, on the other hand, assumes that intelligibility requires individuals to produce perceptibly
recognizable practice at each next moment. Deviation is only possible to the extent that practices remain recog-
nizable. Therefore, any individual case of action can be expected to display the general structure of actions
recognizable as actions of a sort.
6 Sue: Allrye
7 Mia: Hh hh hh: ~~sound of door closing!!
8 ~2.0!
9 Sue: So um:: ~.! do you live around here?
10 ~1.0!
11 Mia: Ah: ~.! yeah ~.! no
12 Sue: no
13 Mia: No, I have t’ drive but I don’t, like, live here—I live in Canton. Where do you
14 live?
15 Sue: Um, Dearborn.
16 Mia: Oh really?
17 ~1.0!
18 Mia: Hmm . . .
19 Sue: On da west side origh:@t hh hhh#
20 Mia: @hh hh hh#
21 Mia: Yeah what you’re majoring in?
22 Sue: Um, I’m not really sure, probably social work
23 Mia: Oh reall@y#
24 Sue: @yeah#
25 Mia: What year is this for you?
26 Sue: Well I have a BFA in, umm, natural Fine Arts in literature ~and theater! and
27 I’m just, um, pre-
28 ~ ! so I’m ~planning! t’ hh back to schoo::l I think social work but- um- my job
29 doesn’t allow me to really go full time right now.
30 Mia: What’re you doing for a job?
31 Sue: Um, I work at Second City.
32 ~0.5!
33 Mia: Oh do you?
34 Sue: Yeah so I’m tired. It’s just demanding of time and @energy#5
35 Mia: @Right#
36 Sue: 5and so is the social work department so I can’t do both s@o#
37 Mia: @hh heh heh heh-
hh#
38 Sue: So what do you major in?
39 Mia: Dietetics.
40 ~2.0!
41 Sue: Cool.
42 Mia: Yeah.
43 Sue: Like, for the nutritio@n#
44 Mia: @y#eah.
45 Sue: Cool.
46 ~1.0!
47 Mia: Yea@h#
48 Sue: @a#nd ah how far are you in it?
49 Mia: Ah, this is my- um- I started in the fall. @hh heh heh#
It is interesting to note that the two women take turns asking a series of questions of one
another. After Sue asks where she lives, Mia asks a series of questions. Then Sue takes
over again at line 38 and asks basically the same series of questions ~these questions
continue after the end of transcription!. Neither self-discloses without being asked, even
though Sue asks no questions between line 9 and line 38.
Whereas the African American preference is for avoiding information that would locate
persons in a social hierarchy, White greeting sequences focus on what might be called
categorial information: that is, information that aids in placing persons into appropriate
role categories. Maynard and Zimmerman ~1984:309!, in a study that focused exclusively
on White college students, suggested that “categorization sequences are required conver-
sational and cultural forms for generating ‘personal’ or autobiographical talk among
unacquainted parties in such settings.” In the absence of shared biographical information,
categories, they argue, provide a necessary shared context. They noted ~1984:309–11! that
when such information was either not forthcoming or not asked for, there were noticeable
troubles during the greeting sequence. There were long silences, topics changed frequently
without going anywhere, and the expected “sensitivity to co-participants” was not displayed.
The typical character of what I am calling a White greeting sequence consists, first, of
the preference for exchanging questions that request information from one another rele-
vant to their respective social categories or roles and doing so soon after beginning to
speak and as a means of achieving conversational intimacy or rapport. These questions
usually seek information about residence, education, occupation, place of work, and so on;
and, second, of a preference for establishing a category in “common” after which the
conversation often becomes quite animated and intimate, pursuing the particular category
that is shared.
This White greeting and introductory sequence, pursuing categorial identification through
questioning and establishing a common category, is not only “typical” in the sense that
routinely this is the sort of introductory sequence that Whites engage in, and that if it is
described to them, they recognize it as typical. The sequence is also preferred in the sense
that when the “typical” sequence does not occur, Whites have trouble making sense of the
interaction. They experience the sorts of conversational difficulties that Maynard and Zim-
merman document. The form of the greeting is constitutive of the sense of the talk. When
the form is unrecognizable, mutual intelligibility cannot be achieved. As a consequence,
they will feel that the other interactant has violated their moral commitment to the inter-
action and that they must have some motivation for doing so ~Goffman 1963, Rawls 1987!.
AFRICAN AMERICAN GREETING AND INTRODUCTORY SEQUENCES

African Americans do not focus on the exchange of categories the way White speakers do.
Moreover, when categories are exchanged, they tend to be offered, rather than asked for.
The African American greeting and introductory sequence seems to proceed on the basis of
talk about public and immediately available matters, rather than categorial identifiers.
Whereas, according to Maynard and Zimmerman ~1984:304–5!,9 talk that focused on the
immediate setting seemed to function as a technique for avoiding intimacy and maintain-
ing anonymity in the conversations they observed between White college students, African
Americans report that talk that focuses on the immediate surroundings is respectful of
them as persons, and therefore preferred, while the quest for categorial identifiers devalues
their personhood. The African American preference in this regard is completely the reverse
of the White preference.
The following is an illustration of a preferred Black greeting sequence. In this sequence,
after exchanging names ~lines 6–7! the two Black female participants focus their conver-
sation on the interview setting ~lines 9–21!. At line 22, T asks a question that has the
potential to reveal category information, “You in the class?” but which is also immediately
relevant to the setting, as only students in the class were asked to participate. At line 25, R
volunteers that this is her first year at school. This elicits an assessment from T ~line 26!,
9
Sacks ~1970! and Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson ~1974! have also noted that talk related to the immediate
surroundings can be seen as something of a “false” topic.
clearly expressing disbelief. This is followed by the query ~line 28!: “You just graduated
high school?” The assessment implicates a category, age, that T had not already estab-
lished. Kochman ~1981:99–100! refers to the process of hinting that information is de-
sired as signifying. This process enables Black speakers to get information when needed
without having to ask a direct question about it. In this case, the question directly asked
is not about the unknown category, age, but rather about an already established cat-
egory, graduating from high school. R responds ~line 29!, “No please, girl, I’m 29.”
T says ~line 33!, “I blew that one,” followed by nervous laughter ~line 33!. Line 35
~“What, you was goin’ somewhere else?”! continues to seek an explanation for the age as
a freshman. But it is a fairly open-ended question. It does not directly ask for a category
and does not get one. The answer, “No, I just started back to school,” does not address
the age factor.
6/16/98 #7
Two Black Women ~S is the researcher!
1 S: Sit right here. We’ll be back in a few minutes, but sit across from her. You guys
2 get to know each other and I’ll be back.
3 R: OK
4 T: ok ~~softly!!
5 R: Hello.
6 T: Hi. I’m Tiffany.
7 R: I’m Regina. How you doing?
8 T: Fine. How are you?
9 R: A’right ~.! I’m curious as to what this, um, what this questions that we’re
10 doing . . .
11 T: What’s this interview about?
12 R: I don’t know.
13 T: Oh.
14 R: I don’t know either. ~~laughter!!
15 T: What’d they got the tape on? ~~whisper!!
16 R: Um, we’re being filmed in audio and video.
17 T: Uh oh. We on TV? He he he he
18 ~1.0!
19 T: How they s’posed to stop us if they not in here?
20 R: The lady came in and just started it so I’d assume that’s how she wants it to be.
21 ~1.0!
22 T: You in the class?
23 R: Mm.
24 T: Oh, ok.
25 R: Well, this is my first year at schoo-, at school.
26 T: Really?
27 R: Mm.
28 T: You just graduated high school?
29 R: No please, girl, I’m 29. @I’m almost 29#
30 T: @Oh I was about to say#
31 R: I’ll be 29 in two days.
32 T: Oh, ok.
33 T: I blew that one. hugh ~~nervous laughter!!
34 R: Mm.
35 T: What, you was goin’ somewhere else?
36 R: No, I just started back to school. This is my freshman year.
Even though the lack of categorial information might be said to have caused a problem of
the sort that Maynard and Zimmerman predict ~lines 28–33!, the speakers continued speak-
ing without asking for categories. Unlike Whites, who tend to turn to categorization to
solve such problems, African Americans resort to signifying and other subtle ways of
letting the other know that missing information is confusing to them ~Kochman 1981:99–
100!. They do not solve the problem by directly asking for categories. Some categories are
offered ~not asked for!: college student, freshman, age. But even those were all available in
the immediate setting. Age was made relevant by the discussion, but even then it was
visible to the participants and was not directly asked for.
Whereas the White preferred sequence has several clearly identifiable elements that
usually come up, although the order may vary, there are no such identifiable elements of a
preferred Black greeting. What can be said is that the interactants, avoiding the use of
institutional and bureaucratic categories, focus on things in the immediate environment
which offer themselves as possible topics of conversation, such as: “You in the class?,” “I
like your hair,” “I like your dress,” or just “Great party, great music.” One African Amer-
ican woman said in commenting on a White introductory sequence: “If that White person
hadda talked about how they had been brought together @at the party#, it might get a better
reception because we are dealing in the here and now from there” ~CR-200.95!. While
Maynard and Zimmerman ~1984:304–5! found that, between White college students, a
focus on the local setting was treated as a way of avoiding intimacy, the “here and now” of
the local setting is a preferred topic for African Americans.
This focus on the setting became very apparent when African American participants in
my research were asked to role-play a typical Black greeting sequence. The invariable
response was that they needed to know where they were before they could formulate a
greeting sequence. White participants would produce the standard greeting sequence with-
out asking for information about the setting. But if I told African American participants
they were in a line to buy pizza at Little Caesar’s, a campus setting in which Whites often
engage in long and personal introductory sequences, they responded that they could not do
a greeting sequence in that place. They would then suggest places where they felt they
might engage in a greeting sequence. The setting must be rich in potential conversational
topics, because the conversation must be drawn from what is available in the surrounding
environment. The topic must be “public” and focus only on what is present “here and
now.” One pair of African American participants chose a line for registration for courses
on campus. They were then able to talk about the university and their respective courses
because the purpose of the line itself made such questions relevant.
The importance of a focus on the “here and now” was often mentioned by participants
as an essential element in an African American introductory greeting sequence. One Black
woman explained that when White people approach her with a typical White greeting,
involving what she referred to as “a string of questions,” she employs strategies for bring-
ing the conversation back to the “here and now” and onto more “familiar” ground.
But I have found in my experience, and I will say, ‘Let us talk right now,’ or I’ll come
up with a comment: ‘What brought you to the conference?’ I had to find a way round
it because it was very intimidating. Um, whatever reason I am here, or if I have been
selected to be here, or whatever reason they brought me here, the fact is that I am
here. So, accept me as this. There’s never the acceptance is not there. ~CR-200.95!
This woman refers to a focus on categorization as “very intimidating.” Questions about

why she is at a conference, or about her job, are interpreted as not accepting her as a
person. Her emphasis is on what is happening “right now.” I imagine the White response to
“Let us talk right now” might be a bewildered “We are talking right now?” But from the
African American perspective, “right now” means sticking to topics drawn from the imme-
diate environment, without reference to categories or roles. For this African American
woman, category questions are intrusive and intimidating. It is important to her to bring
the talk around to the “here and now” in which participants exist as human beings at this
moment. That is what constitutes acceptance and “genuine” conversation for her.
For African Americans, questions about residence, education, and work show a lack of
acceptance. They involve prying into “my past” or “private” life. African Americans do
exchange information about jobs and residence, but they do so on a voluntary basis. If the
information is not offered, it is often never exchanged. Category questions are referred to
as questions about the “past” or about one’s private or social life as opposed to what is
happening “right here right now” in public.
This preference for avoiding categories and questions is not only typical, but preferred
and constitutive. When questions are asked that violate the preference, African Americans
do not recognize them as casual introductory talk. Because the casual and ordinary char-
acter of White introductory talk is not recognizable, African Americans, when speaking
with Whites who ask category questions, must fall back on interpretations regarding the
motives of White speakers in order to make sense of the interaction.
African American participants invariably report trying to figure out why those White
people can’t accept me the way I am, or trying to figure out why they want to know so
much about me. One Black male participant arrived at the conclusion that a group retreat
attended by employees of his company was arranged for the sole purpose of pumping him
for information because as soon as “they got me in the van,” to travel to the retreat, they
began to “interrogate me.” From a Black perspective, category questions require a motive.
NARRATIVE AND STEREOTYPE AS A CONSEQUENCE

OF MISCOMMUNICATION
When Interaction Order preferences are not met, ordinary conversational “moves” cannot
be recognized. Not producing a recognizable version of what is expected prevents the
achievement of mutual understanding and calls into question the commitment of both
interactants to the interaction itself. White participants question the commitment of Black
participants and vice versa. When the achievement of intelligibility fails in this way, inter-
pretation occurs. Interpretation, in turn, proceeds by way of narratives which will not be
shared unless Interaction Order preferences are shared. Therefore, whenever the Inter-
action Order is violated by persons whose Interaction Order preferences are different,
conflicting narratives will be invoked. In the case of conflicting Black and White Inter-
action Order preferences, stereotypical racial narratives result.
In trying to make sense of the White greeting sequence, African Americans often impute
motives to the speaker that call into question their intentions in performing the greeting
sequence. The requests for categorial information are particularly disturbing and raise for
African Americans the question, “What do they want to know all that information about
me for anyway?” The typical White greeting sequence is often described as an “interro-
gation sequence,” or “job interview,” by African Americans.
As Goffman ~1963! argued, persons use compliance with interactional expectations as
a measure of commitment to the interaction and to their own presentation of self. This is
necessary because everyone’s presentation of self is at stake, and also because if all par-
ticipants do not produce the preferred and expected forms of communication, others will
not be able to recognize their conversational utterances as speech of a particular type. This
prevents the achievement of mutual intelligibility which in turn jeopardizes the interaction
and calls into question the motives and moral commitments of the individual who has
violated the conversational expectations. Of course, in the case of interaction between

groups whose Interaction Order expectations are different, each party has violated the
other’s expectations, but neither will realize this.
While African Americans do seem to be more aware than Whites that there are com-
munication problems, and might be said in this regard to have what Du Bois referred to as
“second sight” because they are forced to interact in both worlds, they are not aware that
the problems are caused by differences in interactional expectations. African Americans
often assume that Whites cause these problems on purpose and for “reasons.” Whites, on
the other hand, remain generally unaware of the impression that their form of introduction
has on Black interactants and typically ascribe whatever misunderstandings occur to short-
comings on the part of the African American participants. Whereas African Americans
often impute devious motivations to Whites, Whites are more likely to think that African
Americans don’t answer their questions because of basic character flaws, e.g., that they are
rude, ignorant, or racist and don’t like talking to White people.
When persons from the “other” group violate Interaction Order expectations, narratives
about the “other” are developed in order to explain why their behavior diverged from what
was expected. These narratives, because they are generated in order to explain problems,
tend to explain behavior in negative ways. They quickly develop into negative stereotypes.
While I disagree with the argument that society consists primarily of interpretive nar-
ratives ~e.g., David Maines 1993! and would argue that this position overlooks a signifi-
cant level of concrete, recognizable social order without which narrative orders would not
be possible at all, I do think that narrative is becoming increasingly important in modem
society. This happens because whenever persons who cannot recognize one another’s Inter-
action Order practices interact, they will produce serious miscommunications. When inter-
action is not in the expected form, it cannot be recognized by the “other.” In such cases,
interpretation, which is not necessary when interactional practices are recognizably pro-
duced, does become necessary ~Rawls 1987, 1989; Sacks 1992; Garfinkel 1967!. Because
interpretation only occurs when recognizability fails, it must operate in the absence of
ordinarily recognizable practices and therefore is forced to proceed via narrative: telling a
story about what happened, and using shared beliefs to interpret and make sense of the
narrative.
It is my argument that when practices are mutually recognizable, they do not require
interpretation, and narrative interpretation does not, and in fact cannot, occur. In inter-
actions between members of the same social group, for instance, only those events are
noteworthy that deviate from mutual expectations ~Rawls 1989; Garfinkel 1967; Sacks
@1974#1992!. If I am a classroom teacher and a student raises their hand in class, I cannot
go home later and formulate that as a story: “A student raised their hand in my class today,”
unless there is some way in which the story can be heard as reporting on an unexpected
event ~i.e., the student has ever raised their hand in class before in spite of much prompt-
ing!. The expected is not noteworthy.
In contemporary life, persons often feel as if they live in a narrative world. This is not,
however, because narrative normally provides a basis for intelligibility, but rather, because
the world is increasingly losing its character as normal and familiar. At the end of the
twentieth century, shared Interaction Orders are less common and consequently mutual
intelligibility has become a tenuous achievement. As contact between different groups and
societies has increased, so have misunderstandings of talk and social practice and, with
them, the interpretive narrative moments and the negative narratives, or stereotypes, that
they generate.
It is not enough to say that Interaction Order differences are the cause of the explosion
of negative narrative moments in contemporary life, however. An explanation for the devel-
opment of conflicting Interaction Orders must also be considered. A partial explanation

may be found in a conflict between two presentations of self. As Maynard and Zimmerman
argue ~1984!, the preferences related to introductory talk are arguably related to issues of
preserving self and not placing the self in a vulnerable position. Information provided by
the self-presentation of others is used to check on the commitment of participants to what
Goffman ~1963! referred to as the “working consensus” of the interaction, and ultimately
to make sure that they are the sorts of persons who they claim to be. From a White
perspective, the reliance on categorization provides a way for strangers to accomplish this
quickly. As such, categorial information serves to preserve both the commitment to the
interaction and to safeguard the self.
For African Americans, however, the self does not consist of categorial attributes. Fol-
lowing Du Bois’s argument that the group must function as a nation under a racial emblem,
what must be displayed is a commitment to the group and to the personhood of group
members. For these purposes, categorial information is a threat and not a safeguard. The
presentation of an African American self requires a different set of Interaction Order
preferences.
THE PRESENTATION OF TWO DIFFERENT TYPES OF SELF

Some societies push human materials toward their collective limit, while others push them
toward the limits of competitive individualism. One set of expectations for self demands
the presentation of an orientation toward the community. The other requires a display of
those categories and corresponding values that comprise the differentiated self character-
istic of a western capitalist, division-of-labor economic system. The word “role” is used by
sociologists in speaking of social identities in both types of society. But there are two very
different senses of “role” involved.
In a society that pushes human materials toward a collective limit, persons will have
well-defined public roles. However, much of what goes on in daily life is private. That is,
if I stand in the role of father toward you, then much of my behavior and speech may be
proscribed by that role. However, if we are just friends, with no formally proscribed roles,
then our relations are private and not defined by roles. Roles in modern western society are
rarely like that. There are few public roles that are well-defined, proscribe behavior, or
have special speech rules. On the other hand, most informal occasions have come to have
a public aspect. The distinction between public and private has arguably been lost or
blurred ~Arendt 1958; MacIntyre 1984!, and few relationships, even intimate ones, are
without categorial significance.
When looked at in this way, there is an obvious relationship between Du Bois’s “double
consciousness” thesis and the arguments of the classical social theorists Durkheim, Sim-
mel, Toennies, and Weber, that there are not one, but two, forms of association between
persons in society, and that the particular form of association in a given society places
constraints on the social construction of self. The forms of association that constitute a
society could either be based on unity and sameness ~gemeinschaft! or on competition and
difference ~gesellschaft!.
If a society were based on unity and sameness, then, they argued, it would develop
forms of association that resist change and maintain tradition. The individuals within such
a society would develop a predominantly collective identity. The western individualistic
self, they argued, would not appear in such societies. If the basis of the society were
competitive, on the other hand, a development that, according to the classical social theo-
rists, resulted from a growth in both population and the complexity of economic exchange
within a society, then, in that society, identity would be based on difference instead of
sameness, and individuals within the society would develop a predominantly individual
identity. This public individual self they identified with the development of western
capitalism.
A competitive, division-of-labor society of this sort, they argued, would replace forms
of association that promote tradition and resist change, with forms of association that
promote change and tear down tradition. The public individual that results from this change
in the underlying forms of association is constantly made and remade in the various public
encounters in which it finds itself. It no longer has permanent public roles. On the other
hand, formerly private aspects of self have become public. Because the distinction between
the public and private self has collapsed and permanent public roles have disappeared, the
individual self is fragile and transient; it has no private, hidden “center” and no permanent
public face. It has become a self of categorial presentations.
Ironically, on this view, it is the transient and varying quality of such a self that allows
the individual to differentiate itself from the group and become a modern, western-style
individual. It is a separation based not on strength and independence, or on introspection,
as is often claimed, but rather on weakness and interdependence. This public individual,
the categorial self, does not have a private counterpart self with enduring or underlying
personal characteristics, as does the collective identity. The resulting fragile nature of this
self places many moral demands on the interaction on behalf of the individual ~Rawls
1984, 1987, 1989; Goffman 1963; Sartre 1976!. In more traditional or community-
oriented societies, the values of the community may place greater demands on the inter-
action than those of the individual self. But in modern western society, the Interaction
Order is oriented toward the needs of the categorial self.
According to Hannah Arendt ~1958:22–78!, in the transition to modern society, the
private and the public were both absorbed into the social. This “social” self in modern,
division-of-labor societies essentially replaces both the private household self and the
heroic public self who performed heroic deeds for and in the group. The “social” seems to
have taken over from the household a concern for sustaining life. The necessities of life—
food, shelter, wealth, and reproduction—have become public “social” matters in modern
society, governed no longer by the laws of nature or the household, but by social norms.
The social has also lost the heroic elements of the public self and been reduced to the
presentation of normative categories. Thus, the modern public person, operating in this
social realm, allows their social self to be governed by necessity, now in the guise of social
norms, and consequently, according to Arendt, is neither free nor heroic. Many writers
share this complaint about the mediocrity of modern society with Arendt, arguing that the
purpose of human existence cannot be to conform to social values, to present a categorial
self, and to do well materially through conforming.
When a self is presented before others, in modern western society, the presentation
consists of a display of categorial attributes on the basis of which a particular role is
claimed on a particular occasion. The roles may change from occasion to occasion, but the
categorial attributes, which are at least partly the result of personal achievement, remain
constant. Persons are on each next occasion making a categorial claim to different roles on
the basis of the same categories. This is what Goffman described in The Presentation of
Self in Everyday Life.
A community orientation, on the other hand, demands a presentation that treats persons
as members of a community, not as comprised of categories, and public roles as belonging
to the community and not to the self. This set of expectations demands a presentation that
treats selves as representatives of the community and its formal roles in public, and as
“persons” during informal encounters. In the latter case, the private aspects of public
selves are oriented toward the “here and now,” not toward categories or public roles. In the
former case, the self is oriented toward reproducing formally recognized roles and toward
the community as a whole, not the presentation of categories.
While modem western society is characterized by individualism, the set of expectations
that treats the person as a unique member of the group, rather than as a collection of
categories, is, ironically, found in the community-oriented group, not in western society. I
believe this is one of the problems that Africanists have had with the classical sociological
idea that persons in traditional societies do not develop a sense of themselves as individ-
uals ~Jackson and Karp 1990!. Even though the public identity of each person in a collec-
tively oriented society is in some sense a shared collective identity, research has shown
that persons in traditional societies have a strong sense of their own unique personhood
~Jacobson-Widding 1990:45– 6!. In such societies, persons can be treated as unique on
many informal occasions, so long as they have provided an adequate presentation of their
orientation toward a community identity on those public occasions where that was required
~Jacobson-Widding 1990:49!.
That persons in traditional societies have a personal self does not mean that they have
an individualistic self, however. The individualistic self, as Durkheim described it ~1893!,
is a very specific development that results from a high degree of differentiation in the labor
force. As a result of the division of labor, the categories which persons can occupy in the
society are multiplied to such an extent that the categorial differences between people
become a permanent and obvious feature of social consciousness. This is not an experience
of personal uniqueness, but rather of the different combinations of categories that can
legitimately be claimed. This form of individuation requires a presentation of self that
orients formerly private attributes of personhood toward the enactment of many different
social roles, through the display of appropriate social categories.
At its best, the categorial self offers the promise of freedom from traditional prejudices
and beliefs, forcing the self to exist entirely on the basis of an egalitarian mutual commit-
ment to an interactional performance.10 In spite of its apparent focus on hierarchy, it is in
an important sense the enactment of the enlightenment idea of the person. Civility, in the
guise of recognizable interactional practice, replaces tradition and heroic virtues as the
guarantor of equality and reciprocity. There is a potential in this for the development of
human personhood, unfettered by tradition, that should not be overlooked.
The problem with the categorial self is that for it to work, all other communities must
give up their traditions and join in an equal competition among selves. The self has to take
the interaction and the Interaction Order as an end in itself. In this fashion, civility, in the
form of perceptible practice, might replace beliefs and values, providing a basis for soli-
darity that is neutral with regard to beliefs. In this new sense, civility itself can be heroic.
If traditions are not completely neutralized, however, and equality made fact and not merely
ideal, the social constraints of civility will increase rather than decrease the inequality
found in traditional society.
As Du Bois pointed out, the same democratic form of society that is organized to
guarantee freedom and equality to all, severely damages many selves when the playing
field contains color, gender, and class barriers. The individual equality offered by such a
system of presentational selves is an illusion and leaves individual selves worse off than
they were in traditional society, unless and until equality on the playing field is guaranteed
to all players. It is on this uneven playing field that a special form of presentation of self,
responsive to the need for an African American “nation,” has developed.
10
This may be why Goffman is understood differently in Europe where, I am told, particularly in Germany,
there is no way of translating “presentation” except as a sort of sales pitch. The loss of traditional culture is a
peculiarly American thing, and even in advanced capitalist countries in Europe it has not happened to the same
degree.
AFRICAN AMERICAN PRESENTATION OF SELF: TEAMWORK
I propose a way of thinking about African American identity as oriented toward honor and
community that retains the significance of the distinction between public and private life,
a distinction that has collapsed for the categorial self. I refer to this self as the teamwork
self. This conception of self explains the differences between Black and White greeting
and introductory preferences examined above. It also explains differences in orientation
toward work and games, considered below in the context of conflicting notions of honesty.
An explication of the teamwork self requires a modification of Goffman’s treatment of
self. The argument as Goffman originally proposed it focused on the acquisition and main-
tenance of an individualist categorial self in a western capitalist, division-of-labor society.
Collective identities, however, are not based on the presentation of categorial attributes.
There is, however, one aspect of Goffman’s argument that fits the case. While Goffman’s
version of the presentation of self generally did not allow for the presentation of honor and
virtue in a close-knit group, Goffman did provide for the presentation of such traditionally
public attributes in his discussion of teamwork.
According to Perry Hall ~1990!, Goffman’s conception of teamwork is the only part of
his argument that accords with the African American experience of self. In engaging in
teamwork, participants subordinate their own interests to those of the group and for the
duration of the “game” become equals whose only goal is the team goal. Team members do
things like wearing or displaying team insignia, flags, or colors, to display team member-
ship. Hall argues that members of the Black team are constantly called on in everyday life
for displays of their continued commitment to and membership on the team, with very
little relief. This idea of teamwork is consistent with Du Bois’s notion of race as an emblem
with which to unify a community.
African Americans are, as public selves, members of their group or “nation,” as Du Bois
referred to it. Because there is no single traditional culture, however, even the public roles
have a very private “personhood,” quality to them. Among African Americans, individuals
are expected to treat one another as “persons” regardless of status and role. Not only is
personhood considered more important than “role” or category, but group allegiance is
also considered more important than either social or bureaucratic status. For African Amer-
icans, personhood and group membership are the essence of selfhood.11
Because in the White community categorial individualism is the dominant mode of self
in everyday life—there are certain special situations, developed over time, which provide
a sort of “time out” from strategic and categorial interaction.12 These occasions are referred
to as “sports” or “games” in which persons play as members of teams. During these special
“game” occasions persons are expected to forgo their own advantage and work solely for
the good of the group.13 Such games play an important role in a competitive and individ-
11
There is a close parallel between this emphasis and Jacobson-Widding’s ~1990:52! description of completely
egalitarian selfhood in the Lower Congo as “a state of freedom from any kind of role.”
12
Since the end of the nineteenth century, when the aristocratic classes began to succumb to categorial indi-
vidualism, sports have provided an arena in which individual White men and women of the “leisure class,” most
of whom are in private life wealthy and powerful, can put aside their personal interests and participate in strongly
egalitarian and communal activities. As the categorial individual took over from the collective presentation of
self in everyday life, the collective presentation of self in games became increasingly important. A new idea of
manhood developed at this time, more egalitarian than the old aristocratic idea but worked out now on the playing
fields of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton ~Townsend 1996!.
13
The development of team sports in which honor was purely a matter of forgoing one’s individual interests for
the benefit of the team, represents an important transformation of practices such as duels, that provided a public
display of individual honor, in the face of the increasing encroachment of capitalist individualism. The modern
notion of the team, as a temporary collective that represents no actual traditional place or values, can occur only
after the gentleman has given up the late-eighteenth-century battle against capitalist individualism and sub-
sequently found himself in need of some means of escaping this individualism from time to time and reinforcing
communal solidarity.
ualistic community within which there would otherwise be no time when everyone was
equal, and no time when persons work together for the common good of the community.
Consequently, in the White community, good sportsmanship and the sublimation of indi-
vidualism are essential to team play.14
Games do not serve the same function, as a relief from individualism, for a teamwork
self in a community-oriented group. For a teamwork self the need is for relief from the
constant commitment to community, not relief from individualism. Games in such a soci-
ety provide a time when persons, otherwise constrained to go through life as equals, as
team members, can compete with one another and excel as individuals. Sports and games
are where the African American community supports a degree of public individualism,
although even then it has collective aspects.
When African Americans are actually on teams, to play what are called games, they
essentially reverse with White players and do something closer to a White presentation of
self. It is not just that Black and White identities are different from one another. They are
mirror opposites, and during game play they are mirror opposites of those mirror oppo-
sites. Whites present an individualistic self in everyday life. African Americans present a
more individualistic self in games. Black Americans present a teamwork self in everyday
life. White Americans generally function as members of a team only when they play
games.
The different function of games for the two selves has had negative consequences for
African Americans. When African American athletes call attention to themselves while
they are playing professional sports, they are accused, by sports announcers, National
Football League ~NFL! and National Basketball Association ~NBA! authorities, newsme-
dia, and fans, of “grandstanding,” “showboating,” “hotdogging,” etc., implying the ath-
letes are violating the tenets of good sportsmanship. From a White perspective, it is
considered a violation of good sportsmanship to call attention to the individual self during
games when, if one is a categorial self, one is expected to be celebrating the group. For a
teamwork self, however, the game serves a very different function.15
As Vernon Andrews ~1990! has argued, Black NFL players who spike the ball in the
endzone after a touchdown, a practice that was common during the late 1980s and early
1990s, were treated by the NFL as bad sports who had placed their individual gain above
the glory of the group. As a consequence, the NFL wrote new rules to deal with this as
“unsportsmanlike conduct.” Individualistic Americans resent the fact that African Ameri-
cans are not “team players” or “good sports” as they see it. The attention called to self in
“hotdogging” and other so-called “antics” on the playing field is seen as a basic character
flaw by the categorial and individualistically oriented American. It is interpreted as an
aesthetic style of play that represents an African American focus on flamboyance and an
inability to control emotions. But these behaviors represent more than stylistic or emo-
tional differences between the two groups. African American men and women do not
present competitive individualistic categorial identities in the ordinary course of everyday
14
This idea of gentlemanly sport in modern western society must be clearly distinguished from sports in
preindustrial Europe and in other traditional societies. It is only the modern western phenomenon that is intended
here.
15
In interviews that I have conducted with both college and professional football players over the past seven
years, White and Black athletes speak of this practice very differently. The sample interviewed is not large, but
the differences between Black and White players are evident in every case. In describing what they are doing,
African American athletes emphasize the aspect of the celebration that involves the crowd in their achievement.
They are not only aware of this, but speak of it as part of their obligation to the fans. The involvement of the
crowd in this behavior is also emphasized by African American sports fans who apparently see the endzone dance
and “hotdogging” as for the crowd in essential respects. White players, on the other hand, do not recognize any
communal character to the behavior, referring to it as egocentric and unsportsmanlike for calling attention to the
self.
life. In everyday life they are team players. The game fulfills a different function for
persons whose self is oriented toward a “team” to start with.
It would be egocentric for a categorial self to make such a personal display during a
game, but not for a teamwork self. A teamwork self does not compete and call attention to
itself individualistically in everyday life. It is required to perform identity work through
constant displays of commitment to the group in daily interaction. When scoring a touch-
down during a game, however, the individual player is entitled to call attention to their
individual achievement because, for a teamwork self, games serve the purpose of escaping
from the collective obligations of everyday life. Furthermore, even the act of calling atten-
tion to self has, for African American athletes, a community-oriented character. While the
endzone celebration does call attention to the individual self, it also invites the crowd to
celebrate the achievement. The touchdown, and the ensuing endzone dance, are for the
group, by the individual. Thus, the endzone behavior is both individual and communal at
the same time. The African American football player spikes the ball, dances in the end-
zone, and celebrates his personal achievement, with the crowd.16 Those moments may
achieve a heroic quality. The performer celebrates their success for the group. It is not a
face put on for an occasion. It is a moment created by an occasion which is enacted as an
instantiation of the group by a member of the group as a group member, who seizes the
moment for that purpose.
Therefore, ironically, in punishing displays of apparent individualism on the part of
Black football players, the NFL was violating the purpose of the game for the African
American self: to provide an oasis of individualism for a teamwork self. According to Hall
~1990!, persons playing on the Black team in everyday life are not supposed to call atten-
tion to their individuality.17 They are not supposed to dwell on categories that are attributes
of the individual person. To do so is frowned upon and censured. They are also not sup-
posed to reveal things about themselves, or about one another, as that would threaten the
sense of equality fostered by the team. A team is composed of equal members; it is not a
stratified group. Finally, team members are never supposed to play as, or root for, or even
dress or act like, members of other teams.
Goffman describes the presentation of self in terms of an actor backstage managing their
frontstage presentations. The self, as a collection of roles and categories, chooses and presents
a particular role, collection of categories, or face on each next occasion, monitoring the re-
actions of others and making subtle adjustments where necessary. In presenting a self with
the expected qualities, such as emotional control, voice control, physical presentation, etc.,
the performer displays their trustworthiness. Insofar as participants to the interaction need
to be able to trust one another’s claims to some degree, and also to trust that their own dis-
plays of self will be treated with respect, trust with regard to categorial displays is an essen-
tial element of the modern western presentation of self.18 Actors are extended the benefit of
the doubt so that when small discrepancies arise, they may be ignored.
16
Kochman ~1981:9! argues that style is the expression of personal power through the expression of public
cultural imagery. In this view Black basketball players make use of general cultural forms to express personal
style. In other words, it is like poetry where the idea is to make a unique expression through a highly constrained
and recognizable form. The idea is not to be egocentric, but to reach new heights of expressing the self through
a shared cultural medium: a public form.
17
Style is arguably a display of honor and greatness before the group and not an individualistic pursuit. ~See
Kochman 1981 and Majors and Billson 1992 for discussions of style.!
18
This loss of the importance of virtue as a feature of the interactional presentation of self may explain the
resistance to capitalism and feelings of anomie on the part of aristocratic elites whose class culture was originally
oriented around ideas of honor and virtue ~Greenburg 1996; Manning 1998!. The anti-capitalist presentational
practices of such groups bear a remarkable resemblance to African American Interaction Order preferences ~see
especially Greenburg 1996!. This clash between traditional community values and capitalism in western culture
may also explain why women have often found male culture less “moral” than their own.
The presentation of a Black self cannot be described analogously. It is not experienced

as a choice of categories to present, and trust has nothing to do with a commitment to
carefully monitored presentations of categorial attributes.19 In fact, the very idea of choos-
ing a face or carefully monitoring one’s performance would be interpreted as inauthentic,
or dishonest, from an African American perspective.
The African American teamwork self is held to two conflicting sets of obligations,
neither of which it can entirely satisfy. A Black American is torn between a public self,
based on egalitarian teamwork, and competing for a place in division-of-labor capitalism.
The two are not compatible. It is as if the White world asks them to “hotdog” in everyday
life. That African American athletes have continued to make displays of group commit-
ment, at great cost to themselves, testifies to the importance of such displays within the
African American community. That they pay for this in terms of negative appraisals by
Whites is the consequence of always being judged by someone else’s expectations. The
problem is that the two forms of social order are the opposite of one another, and yet the
African American self is simultaneously and on all occasions held accountable to both.
The White self, on the other hand, is held accountable only to White ideals. The effects of
this conflict of double-consciousness are to be seen in all facets of everyday life.
From a Black perspective, the White presentation of self in the guise of “roles” is
dishonest, plastic, or manipulative. It is “playing a game.” In fact, the idea that Whites are
“playing games” in everyday life, and that one has to play games in order to compete
successfully with them, is a popular complaint among African Americans. This is a clear
reversal of game play with the ordinary presentation of self in everyday life. What Whites
think of as serious business, looks to African Americans like playing a game.
HONESTY IN BLACK AND WHITE

As a result of these differences in the self and its orientation to the group, Black and White
Americans have very different understandings of what honesty requires of them inter-
actionally. For African Americans, the focus on personhood and group loyalty means that
the personal feelings of participants must be completely and accurately expressed. In order
for persons to meet authentically face to face, a full disclosure of feelings about one
another seems to be required. The White practice, noted by Maynard and Zimmerman
~1984! and apparent in our own research, of deciding what social categories can be given
negative or positive assessments by identifying categories relevant to the person the speaker
is currently talking to, and avoiding issues with negative category relevance, is considered
extremely hypocritical from a Black perspective. It is expected among African Americans
that persons will express their “true” feelings regardless of the social category or social
status of the person to whom they are speaking. Among strangers, all categorial topics and
assessments are avoided; therefore, no particular categories are avoided. However, in the
workplace, when, for example, the boss tells an employee to do something he does not
want to do, the African American notion of honesty seems to require that the employee
speak his mind. One Black Fortune 500 corporate executive told me that when White
coworkers criticize this practice, he tells them that “White people must have been dishon-
est for so long that they can’t even remember what ‘honesty’ means anymore.”
19
In traditional African society, persons generally inherited their roles at birth or earned them at various ritu-
alized life stages. The clan was hierarchically ordered and everyone’s relationship to everyone else was ordered
in terms of that hierarchy. Persons had well-defined roles and behaviors belonging to those roles. Jackson and
Karp ~1990! argue that because persons had little to do with the roles they occupy, role performance was not
considered the “real” self in traditional African societies. Informal notions of a real shadow self developed. In the
African American community the formal hierarchical roles seem to have disappeared, and the informal realm of
what in Africa would have been the individual shadow self has come to predominate.
From a White perspective, however, deference with regard to categories is considered

diplomatic and is not only socially expected, but required.20 Whites are much more likely
to tell their true feelings to close friends in private. In public, and particularly with persons
of higher status, “diplomacy” and careful control of one’s feelings is the accepted practice.
In a hierarchical setting it is suicidal to tell the boss that you don’t want to do as they say.
It may be brave, take courage, and be in some existential sense more honest, but it does
not fulfill the role expectations of the position that the employee has assumed. It also does
not respect the role expectations of the boss. Yet, African Americans judge harshly per-
sons who make a “compromise” with regard to this issue, and often assume that all Afri-
can Americans who succeed in American society have “compromised” their honesty in
this way.
However, there is a real question as to whether the notion of honesty even makes sense
if interpreted literally. Where does one draw the line? As Harvey Sacks ~1975! demon-
strated in “Everyone Has To Lie,” when persons are asked “How are you?” in the form of
a greeting, the literal truth would be a description of their state of mind or health. However,
those few people who do respond to this question with the literal truth, whether Black or
White, will likely not be asked the question again. The person doing the greeting does not
expect, or want, a literal answer in return. Given that there is no such thing as the literal
truth and that a line has to be drawn somewhere, it is not that Whites are dishonest while
African Americans are telling the truth, but rather that members of the two groups draw the
line between honesty and dishonesty in different places. The problem is with conflicting
sets of Interaction Order preferences, not with the literal meaning of honesty.
The consequences of this difference are serious. Wherever it occurs, it leads to the
creation and reinforcement of negative racial stereotypes. However, the consequences for
relations in the workplace are probably the most serious. Workplace misunderstandings
immediately affect the ability of individual African Americans to compete successfully in
the job market, and may seriously hamper not only their access to promotions, but even
their ability to keep the jobs they have. When differences over the conception of honesty
have an impact on relations in the workplace, African American employees will not under-
stand why they receive negative evaluations from White employers, and will protest that
the employers must be racist. Employers, on the other hand, will not understand why an
employee who from their perspective is “not doing his job” is complaining about a bad
evaluation.
What is racist, in this case, is not the attitude of a particular employer toward skin color,
but rather, that White Interaction Order preferences are unquestionably assumed in the
workplace, while Black Interaction Order preferences have no credibility.
AFRICAN AMERICAN HONESTY IN THE WHITE WORKPLACE
Observational research on a variety of interracial workplace relationships, combined with

interviews, workshops, and focus group discussions of these issues, reveals that African
American employees say “no” to work assignments much more often than White employ-
ees, and for very different reasons. Evidence to support this comes both from the self-
reports of African American employees and from field observations of workplace behavior.
In group interviews, Black employees consistently argued that saying “no” to their super-
visors was a “right” that they felt it was essential to their dignity as human beings to
exercise. As one Black employee explained:
20
It has been reported to me that other groups that try to maintain the boundary of the group through the idea
that the group is stigmatized, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses, share a similar notion of honesty.
I don’t know if she should say no. Okay, I think that she had a right to say now this
is happening and this is happening and this is happening. For you to understand that.
~C2!
The right to say “no” expresses the sense of egalitarian selfhood that characterizes the
teamwork presentation of self. Everyone has the right to say how they feel. They also have
an obligation to express those feelings. Honesty requires it. Status relationships in the
workplace are no exception. From an African American perspective, the employer has the
obligation to listen and understand. Furthermore, honesty requires that both parties say
exactly what they feel. These obligations often lead to conversations in which African
Americans confront one another with conflicting feelings and viewpoints. The expectation
is that once the feelings are expressed, a solution agreeable to both parties will be reached.
According to Kochman ~1981!, the expectation that issues will be talked through “on
the spot” often leads to the perception by White speakers that African Americans have a
confrontational and intimidating style of speech. In the workplace, in public forums, and in
chance encounters, Black speakers insist on seeing an argument through. This often takes
a good deal of energy and drama. Because of this, Whites have complained that African
American speakers are “loud,” and often report that they have been scared or intimidated
by such encounters.
Because sticking with an issue until agreement is reached is treated by African Amer-
icans as a sign of mutual respect and commitment to one another’s personhood, the White
practice of retreating from or being “intimidated” by such “scenes” leads Black speakers to
assume that White speakers have something to hide and that retreating from the interaction
is a sign of dishonesty and cowardice ~Kochman 1981!. In fact, whenever Whites control
their feelings in order to keep up “appearances,” or maintain their role, African Americans
report experiencing them as fake, dishonest, or plastic.
What White and Black Americans are intimidated by is not at all the same thing. Afri-
can Americans report feeling intimidated by a standard White greeting sequence. This is
something that a White American would not understand and would not realize is occurring.
Whites, on the other hand, report feeling intimidated by African American “confrontation-
al style,” or honesty. This is a claim that Black Americans are aware of, but do not at all
understand. When Whites make this complaint, African Americans tend to chalk it up to a
basic dishonesty on the part of Whites. Racial narratives about White dishonesty are wide-
spread in the Black community. That White Americans often find Black Americans intim-
idating is also the subject of narrative. That Black Americans often find White Americans
intimidating, however, goes generally unrecognized by Whites.
During ongoing research on another project, a situation developed between a White
female research assistant and a Black female research assistant whose work she was super-
vising. The White research assistant felt that the Black research assistant was being insub-
ordinate, refusing to take direction, and generally “making excuses” to get out of doing her
work. The situation had many of the characteristics that I have already identified as indic-
ative of interracial miscommunication. I knew that the African American researcher was
working very hard and suspected that her responses to the White supervisor were being
misunderstood. Furthermore, I suspected that the responses of African Americans and
Whites to the interactions between the two assistants would be completely different.
In order to test this idea, a videotape was made of an interaction between myself and the
Black female research assistant. With the prior permission of the research assistant, a
routine interaction was videotaped, which would have occurred on the same day and in
much the same way in the normal course of the research, during which I expected her to
express herself in the way that I thought was bothering her White supervisor. During the
videotaped interaction I told the research assistant that we would be traveling to a confer-
ence to present papers on our research, and that I expected her not only to travel with us,
but to present a paper. The research assistant responded vigorously that she would not go,
could not present a paper, and was already doing too many other things. This was, from my
perspective, her normal response, which I never took literally. Presenting papers is a nec-
essary part of an academic career, not “extra” work for the employer, and she was very
career-oriented. In fact, she did present a paper at the conference and later reported that she
never meant that she would not do it. What she meant was that she did not want to do it and
was feeling overwhelmed by the responsibility. This was exactly the sort of response that
my White research assistant had reported interpreting as insubordinate and complaining.21
This videotape was played for many different interracial groups. Some of these were
workshops on interracial miscommunication. Other occasions occurred in the classroom
or in smaller focus group sessions. All research sessions were videotaped. After watching
the videotape, session participants were asked for comments on the interaction. At several
of these presentations the graduate research assistant with whom I made the videotape also
participated in the discussions.
The tape was very effective in generating responses. White participants often responded
first and invariably remarked that the Black graduate assistant was very loud and confron-
tational. They interpreted her comments, particularly the repeated saying of “no,” as a
refusal of the work assignment. The fact that she said “no” was astonishing to Whites. As
one White woman said:
I would never be like “I’ve got this to do there’s no way I can do it.” I would never
talk that way to my boss. I say “yes” and I mean “no.” But I say “yes.” And then I’d
go home and say “I can’t believe she asked me that.” ~W2!
Following such assessments, African American participants invariably came to the defense
of the Black research assistant. They did not find anything offensive in the loudness and
firmness of her response. In contrast to the White expression of disbelief, Black partici-
pants characterized the response as typical. One Black woman said: “I’m used to that. Hers
was just a typical response.” ~W3!
Some African Americans were aware that the White employer might be offended, but
still did not see this as a problem with the research assistant’s behavior. Rather, they found
fault with the behavior of the advisor/employer. My responses, as the advisor/employer,
were frequently described by Black participants as patronizing and inconsiderate. Phrases
like “it will be good for your career” and “I know you can do it” met with cries of “typical
White response” and “White people always think they know better than Black people what
they should do.”
Well, see, I saw a lot of things that she @myself as the advisor/employer# did that
happens often, nurturing, . . . telling to do what’s good for you. “You folks just don’t
try hard enough” and then I kinda saw you @the research assistant who is present for
the discussion# giving in a little bit. ~W1!
21
In fact, at one point, the White research assistant came into the room as the Black research assistant and I
were viewing the tape. The Black research assistant had just been explaining to me the importance of honesty and
that what she had been doing on the tape was trying to be honest, not to refuse the work assignment. Just after she
finished explaining this, the White assistant came to the door and watched about a minute of the tape. Then she
said, “See, that is exactly what I have been telling you about. She is making excuses and complaining about her
work.” It was amazing to see the two versions of the interaction juxtaposed so clearly.
The complaint is about the White advisor/employer who continues to press the request
in the face of the research assistant’s response. The African American research assistant is
encouraged not to give in. African Americans comment that it is wrong for the employer to
have decided for someone else what they were going to do. The employee should be able
to decide whether to take on an increased workload:
It seemed to me in the first place she had a lot of work to do. She was working hard
in getting this stuff done. And here you come, giving her something else to do. And
it’s like, where as her advisor ~.! How could you do that? Knowing what’s going on
with this woman and you had to know because you’re her advisor. And then to take
on this other project. I felt sorry for her.” ~C3!
It would be more humane if workers could dictate their own workload. As Marx pointed
out, there is something essentially dehumanizing about having one’s labor owned by oth-
ers. However, claiming this as a right within the current work context is foreign to the
White understanding of workplace relationships. Furthermore, in a highly competitive
professional setting in which the employer/employee relationship is essentially one of
apprenticeship and the eventual success or failure of the employee in securing a highly
paid and much sought-after position will be almost entirely determined by their employ-
er’s evaluation of their competence, a failure to live up to an employer’s expectations can
end one’s career. The employer does, in fact, know better than the employee what the job
requires.
In contrast, White participants expressed their amazement at the boldness of the Black
employee and interpreted the response of the White employer as very “patient” and
“nurturing”:
I thought you were really much more patient with her and all her excuses. I mean,
they just went on and on and on, and she was really a master at it.” ~C3!
From a White perspective the protests of the African American employee are seen as
excuses, and the employer is evaluated as patient to an extreme. While Black participants
feel sorry for the research assistant, White participants empathize with the employer and
experience the research assistant as manipulative. Whites characterize the research assis-
tant as a “master” at making excuses.
However, from a Black perspective the employee is not expressing “excuses” at all, but
rather facts:
I didn’t see them as excuses. I saw them as facts. She had this paper to do and that
paper to do. ~C4!
There is a very significant difference in perspective between the two groups. White
participants say things like “Oh, my god, if I ever talked to my employer like that, I’d get
fired” and “if anyone ever talked to me like that, I’d never ask them to do anything again.”
Clearly, Whites find such behavior intimidating and offensive. African Americans, on the
other hand, see it as not only their right but their obligation to let others, including their
employer, know just how they feel. African American participants explained that if the
employee did not tell the employer how she felt, it would be dishonest. Feelings should be
communicated. When it was suggested that it would be more “diplomatic” to keep one’s
feelings to oneself, one Black woman responded:
That’s what’s wrong with White people. They are dishonest about their feelings.
When they are upset about something, they will pretend everything is all right, and
now you want us to do it too. ~C4!
The problem is compounded by the fact that an African American who is a very hard
and committed worker is even more likely to say “no” than the African American employee
who really is trying to get out of working. Because the obligations with regard to “hon-
esty” are reversed, in the African American community the one who always says “yes” is
more likely to be the insincere and dishonest worker. Because the Interaction Orders con-
flict, Whites cannot accurately assess the sincerity of African American behavior. The
reverse is also the case.
When White participants argued that refusing work assignments might jeopardize their
positions in the workplace, African American participants responded that sometimes refus-
ing work was part of doing a good job. If they were working hard on a task which had
already been assigned, and then were assigned additional work which might interfere with
accomplishing the first task, they argued that they would need to let the employer know
that they felt the additional assignment threatened the quality of the work they were already
doing. For example, one Black woman said:
If you’re new to the system, you’re thinking “I want to do my best at what I’m
working on. But don’t give me something else. You don’t have resources. Don’t have
anyone else to go to for help.” ~C4!
This woman went on to say that it was difficult to learn about these White expectations
because when you come on a job you are, as an African American, usually fairly isolated
and don’t have anyone showing you the ropes.
If you don’t know the rules of the game, like you say, you would say ‘yes’ because
you think in the back of your mind, you know, “I want that promotion,” or because
maybe you seen that’s how someone else got it. But if you’re new in the game, you
don’t have the examples and you don’t know ‘Oh, I’m supposed to say ‘yes’ if I want
that promotion.’ ”~WCP5!
Because of the differences in Interaction Order preferences, the idea that saying “no”
might not be a good move is not immediately apparent from an African American perspec-
tive. Someone White would have to explain this carefully. Isolation on the job would tend
to prevent this. However, even if an African American did become close friends with a
White employee, the White employee would likely not realize that the African American
employee needed to be told not to say “no” to the boss, and therefore would not explain
this unless he overheard the exchange. The taboo is obvious to a categorical self and is
simply taken for granted among Whites.
Most importantly, however, even when African Americans do figure out what is expected
of them, they face a dilemma. The expectations that Whites have of workplace behavior
look from a Black perspective like they compromise the personal integrity and racial
identity of the African American worker. To what degree can African Americans comply
with White expectations without compromising their own identity and integrity as a mem-
ber of the Black community? Many African Americans in corporate and white-collar posi-
tions express these concerns. When Whites respond by saying “That’s how it is. They’ll
just have to learn,” they are using their White Interaction Order expectations to evaluate
African American behavior. This is another case of double consciousness as Black inter-
actants are held to two sets of standards while Whites are held only to one. Whites have an
additional advantage in that the expected practices are known and adhered to only by their
own group and not by African Americans. It is impossible to conform to standards that one
does not know about. Thus, the very conversation in which White employees might be
telling Black employees about the “ropes” will become highly problematic and likely put
an end to the relationship.
HONESTY VS. HIERARCHY AND BUREAUCRACY

The premium that African Americans place on personhood, honesty, and self-expression,
is at odds with White expectations regarding hierarchical relations in the workplace. A
White boss expects his employees to comply without explanation. Things will not go
smoothly at the workplace unless employees do as they are asked. Given this conflict in
expectations, African Americans are not likely to develop respect for a person’s wishes just
because the person is higher up the status ladder. The boss will have to command respect
through charismatic leadership, not through status claims.
In a series of focus group discussions of preferred workplace behavior, African Amer-
icans in positions of responsibility frequently explained that they expected to have to win
the respect of their employees before they would do as they were asked. The African
American expectations may change somewhat with exposure to White employers over
time, creating a degree of class variation. However, most of my participants were Black
professionals with many years of experience working in White-dominated corporations.
They consistently reiterated that they would say “no” whenever they felt that they should:
“If it was me? I might not say yes.” ~P 17!
“I would with no uncertain terms say no.” ~W!
In fact, African Americans are consistently incredulous that Whites really say “yes”
when they feel like saying “no.” Black employees say “Why would we go home and
complain to our spouses and family about a situation at work?”; “Why would we let
ourselves be overworked?”; “Why don’t you just say ‘no’ when you realize that it is too
much work, you can’t do the job, or have some other problem with the request?”
These are good questions. Recent research has shown that stress on the job is one of the
biggest health problems in America. So, while it may seem obvious from a White perspec-
tive that Black employees need to change their behavior in order to succeed, a reevaluation
may be in order. An occasional “no” might relieve some of the stress of White employees.
Maybe it would even improve the quality of work. As one White male participant
commented:
Um, I think it’s very interesting because, um, one of the things I’m trying to work out
is to say ‘no’ and it’s very difficult. I’m used to just saying ‘yes’ and end up upset
with a chip on my shoulder and say ‘How the hell can you load all this stuff on me,
what do you think I am an ox or something to carry all this burden?’ I’m learning it
because I have to, and I’m learning that if there is a good reason, you can get away
with it. But another perfect example: a fellow I’ve known for several years, one of
his student employees was leaving and he was always telling them don’t disagree
with the boss, and that’s the culture. ~W12!
This White male would like to learn to say “no,” and his point in this narrative is that he
is trying to learn to do so. However, his use of the phrase “get away with it” makes it clear
that even while he argues that saying “no” might be a healthier and more courageous thing
to do, he can’t help expressing that it is a deviant act from his perspective.
Having the courage to confront situations as they emerge is very important to African
Americans ~Kochman 1981!. Even when Black employees are being very careful not to
cause problems on the job, they may assert their “right” to refuse work. The following
response by an African American man is interesting because he begins by challenging my
claim that African Americans say “no” more often than Whites. He describes himself as
being very careful at his worksite not to give anyone a reason to find fault with his work.
Yet, he ends up by asserting that he would say “no” to his employer himself.
Not to be negative, but I don’t think that Black people necessarily have to tell their
superiors how they feel, and also at my place of employment there’s a difference.
I’m the only Black employee and I’m treated different. I don’t know why, but I’m
treated different, so I don’t say anything really to anyone at work. So I don’t really,
I don’t joke with anybody because I don’t want to give them any reason to slip or do
anything wrong. So, I don’t joke with them. I just go on with my work. However,
when I’m assigned a task which I feel is unfair or anything, I won’t go in a tirade, but
I will with no uncertain terms let my boss know that I don’t feel that this is for me to
do and the work is to be spread evenly and whatever.” ~W9!
This man claims to be stating an exception to the cultural pattern that I have suggested.
He says that African Americans don’t “need” to let their employers know how they feel
and that he would not “go in a tirade” to do so. He is so sensitive to his position as the only
Black employee that he describes himself as refraining from interaction at work so as not
to give offense to the other employees. Yet, he claims that he would say “no” in “no
uncertain terms” to his boss. Although he challenged my claim that Black and White
speech preferences are different, his story reinforces it. It is clear from his response that he
does not understand what White expectations with regard to workplace behavior are. Like
many African American participants, he expresses the belief that he is being treated dif-
ferently because he is Black. He gives this as one of the reasons why he is so careful about
what he does. But if we examine his statement carefully, we find that the way in which he
goes about being careful is highly problematic from a White perspective. He says, “I don’t
joke with them.” He avoids the very sorts of casual interactions that might further integrate
him into the workplace because he is trying so hard to do a good job. Then, after all this
care, he will “with no uncertain terms let his boss” know if he feels he should not be asked
to do something.
In terms of his interactional practice, this man is not just being treated as if he were
different, he is in fact acting differently. However, it is quite apparent that he has no idea
that this is the case. White expectations are as much a mystery to most African Americans
as African American expectations are to Whites. This makes it difficult to accurately inter-
pret behavior across groups. African Americans often mistake White diplomacy for a lack
of courage and honesty, while Whites interpret African American honesty as intimidation.
The high premium placed on honesty and full disclosure leads to the assumption among
African Americans that, between honest persons, problems will be articulated publicly.
Therefore, when African Americans believe the persons they are dealing with have integ-
rity, they expect that if they do something “wrong,” they will be told. Certainly, they
expect that if what they have done was so upsetting in the first place that steps were going
to be taken as a consequence, someone should have said something to them about it during
the encounter—not just said something, but confronted them with it and made them listen,
right there, right then, not later. As with greeting and introductory sequences, the emphasis
is on the here and now.
The model of communication on which African Americans insist is from their perspec-
tive more authentic. All participants say what they feel, and an eventual consensus is
reached without anyone having to repress their views. Persons simply come to respect the
force of one another’s positions by listening to them and seeing how important they are to
the other ~Kochman 1981!. It is a sort of conversational “taking the role of the other” in
literal terms—something which cannot be done if the respective positions are not stated
and defended.
During focus group discussions between Black and White students, Black students
expressed their feeling that whenever a conversation became the least bit confrontational,
White people would back out of the conversation. The White students in the room saw this
as diplomatic behavior. Not so the African American students. They felt very strongly that
if you care about the person you are speaking to, you don’t just back down and pretend
everything is fine when it isn’t. For African Americans, honesty requires disclosure. Diplo-
macy, on the other hand, equals pretense.
DIPLOMACY VS. HONESTY AND GEMEINSCHAFT VS. GESELLSCHAFT

In fact, diplomacy does have origins in the pretense and political intrigue involved in the
lives of European royalty and highly placed diplomats. In the watered-down version of
diplomacy which characterizes White middle-class expectations in contemporary every-
day life, we forget that diplomacy has origins in secrecy and intrigue and come to think of
it as authentic behavior. It feels authentic. In fact, in contemporary life it usually is authen-
tic. It has become a necessary part of the categorial presentation of self. As Goffman
argued, it can be strategically manipulated, but it should not be manipulated and there is a
moral requirement that one not do so. However, from a Black perspective, diplomacy
looks just like the pretense and intrigue it is descended from.
In thinking about the differences between the Black and White American perception of
diplomacy, the function of diplomacy in western society should be contrasted with its
function in a community-oriented society. Diplomacy had as one of its original goals to
facilitate complex and delicate negotiations between persons in status hierarchies without
offending anyone. In an egalitarian, community-oriented society, treating persons very
differently according to their status might be permissible with regard to outsiders who
threaten the group, but not with regard to insiders.
In western society from about the year 1000 until well into the twentieth century, the
danger was more often posed by a member of the family than by outsiders. We sometimes
forget that the various queens and kings of Europe who fought so many wars with one
another over territory and honor were generally members of the same immediate royal
family. The elaborate court protocols and “diplomacy” that developed should be under-
stood as originating in this context.
As originally practiced, diplomacy was between formal roles, however, and not between
either private or categorial selves. As western society industrialized and public and private
collapsed into the categorial self, the development of diplomacy took a new turn. As
ordinary individuals in society became more influential in political and economic rela-
tions, they began to pose important economic and political threats both to one another and
to the group. In a competitive, individualistic society, each next individual is competing
with everyone else for opportunities. Skill in the competition becomes not only necessary
but also valued and appreciated. The ability to convey information without either losing
face or threatening the face of the other is essential. Two quotes from an early twentieth-
century British novel provide illustrations of this point:
Revell perceived that the discussion, for the time being, was over, and he could not
but notice and admire the ease with which the other resumed his earlier manner.
Nerves or not, he certainly had them well under control.
“Come along and have tea with me one afternoon, if you can spare the time. So
long.” It was the pleasantest, politest, and most effective way of saying: “Don’t
bother me anymore just now”: and Revell, who himself specialized in just such
pleasant, polite, and effective methods, appreciated the other’s technique. ~Hilton
1928:25, 36!
Among categorial individuals, diplomacy is a social practice in which the skill of prac-
titioners is appreciated by the others. It is a parlor game with rules and expectations.
Everyone knows what is being said or not said. But the skill with which things are said
without being said is the essence of diplomacy. To the degree that all parties understand
what is really being said, diplomacy as a practice does not, in fact, conceal, but rather
conveys information. One might argue that diplomacy is geared toward conveying unwel-
come information in a face-saving manner, that, in its modern guise, it is responsive to the
presentational needs of a categorial self.
From a Black perspective, however, when Whites are being what Whites think of as
diplomatic, they are “really” pretending they are not upset about something which is upset-
ting to them. For Whites, on the other hand, direct references to unacceptable behavior are
embarrassing and face-threatening. Anyone familiar with the preferred social practices is
expected to pick up the subtle signs of disapproval.
Whites consider it a virtue to sublimate one’s feelings for the good of what Goffman
referred to as a “surface veneer” of consensus. African Americans feel that this is dishon-
est. Sticking with a conversation, and saying what one means, is not just a matter of
commitment to the conversation and loyalty to a friend, but also a measure of a person’s
honesty and character. African Americans don’t want friends and acquaintances who will
“pretend” everything is fine when it isn’t. The consensus should be real and explicit, not a
carefully managed fiction that allows people to save face.
African Americans who view compliance with White norms as compromising their
honesty often assume that Whites have similarly compromised their honesty. But because
the basis of the White self is different in the first place, the question of honesty is not the
same. The White basis for self consists of the performance of bureaucratic roles and cat-
egories. A categorial self has not given up any ultimately real, more human identity, or
feelings, in order to take on or “play” categorial roles. In suppressing “feelings,” a catego-
rial self is trying to make a better role performance. It is trying to make the performance
“true.” What a categorial self is doing is the opposite of what African Americans see
themselves as doing. The White individual is trying to become equivalent to the role. The
African American is trying to maintain his/her distance from the role and continually
assert the “real” self.
Furthermore, because the White middle-class self is an individual categorial self, and
has been for a century at least, Whites do not abandon the group when they present self in
this way. There is no group. White Americans have a different set of relations between self
and forms of association to begin with. There is no “community” in which one could hope
to achieve consensus. However, it is as hard to see that from a Black perspective as it is to
see the Black sense of self from a White perspective. There are many misunderstandings
which seriously affect Black achievement, recognition, and upward mobility which are
due to assuming that the same Interaction Order expectations hold for both groups.
INTERACTION ORDERS AND INTELLIGIBILITY

My own elaboration of the argument that the needs of self and intelligibility at the level of
“Interaction Order” place demands on conversation that are independent of formal insti-
tutions or cultural beliefs and values, in the form of constitutive expectations, initially
maintained that the distinctions between gemeinschaft and gesellschaft could be under-
stood in terms of the distinction between Interaction Orders and institutional orders ~Rawls
1987!. On this view, Interaction Orders provide for intelligibility and self. Institutional
orders, on the other hand, provide contexts of accountability within which persons produce
accounts and interpretations of their actions.
While this distinction holds within western society, there is a difference between Inter-
action Orders in western, division-of-labor society and Interaction Orders in what I refer to
as honor-based societies. Interaction Orders provide the closest thing to a gemeinschaft
domain of life in western, division-of-labor communities ~Rawls 1987!. For honor-based
communities, on the other hand, gemeinschaft is strong at all levels, and trust and loyalty
to the group appear to play a much more important role interactionally. While the Inter-
action Order still demands equality and reciprocity, the form it takes in honor-based soci-
eties reflects the distinction between public and private and the prerequisites for a teamwork
self. The forms of Interaction Order required of participants reflect this. While in the
western-style presentation of self described by Goffman a certain level of commitment
to the interaction itself is required while one presents one’s self, in an honor-based society,
the presentation of self is about one’s commitment to the society as a whole as well as to
the personhood of the individuals actually involved in the interaction.
That African Americans would have developed a community-oriented self determined
largely by “race” is explained by Du Bois’s double-consciousness thesis. He believed that
the African American community had become an honor-based group after the disasters of
Reconstruction. He argued that only by “huddling” together as a nation could African
Americans protect themselves and come to full self-consciousness. But he did not see this
as a return to a traditional gemeinschaft community. He argued throughout his work for a
brotherhood of human unity that he saw as standing in direct opposition to the capitalist
ethic of White society.
In this sense Du Bois can be compared with Marx. Both thinkers argued that capitalism
has serious dehumanizing effects that can only be overcome by rejecting the false con-
sciousness instilled by capitalism and turning the concepts of race and class, that comprise
the very essence of that false consciousness, against capitalism—using them to overthrow
or neutralize the system that has created them. Du Bois’s proposal that race solidarity can
be used to transcend race is certainly an instance of a contradiction dialectically transcend-
ing a contradiction.
What is essential, I believe, is the recognition of the part played by conflicting Inter-
action Orders in producing the phenomenon of double consciousness. There are those who
have criticized my Interaction Order ~1987! argument because I claim that a certain degree
of reciprocity and equality between participants is necessary for understanding. They point
out that there is inequality all over the place and people still understand one another. I have
argued, however, that beyond a certain degree of inequality persons do not understand one
another. Such conversations are highly problematic, moving quickly to interpretations
based on stereotypes, because preference orders are not mutually recognizable. Some inter-
actions achieve a mutually recognizable coherence. Some do not. Interaction Order pre-
requisites for intelligibility place limits on the degree of inequality that the achievement of
mutual intelligibility can tolerate. This article is a demonstration of the communicative

problems caused by a lack of equality and reciprocity. I think it is not too strong to say that
there is a complete failure to communicate.
When power relations become too unequal, persons cannot be part of the same group. They
form separate groups, and the form of the oppressed group will necessarily result not only in
different, but in contradictory forms of Interaction Order. It is to a great extent shared Inter-
action Orders that make the solidarity of a group possible in the first place. Intelligibility, at
the level of Interaction Order, will not tolerate a great deal of inequality. Du Bois’s double-
consciousness thesis demonstrates why this is the case at the level of self. The data on greet-
ings and introductory talk, and the problems with the notion of honesty, demonstrate the sort
of problems that result at the level of intelligibility. When inequality becomes too great, the
pressures on self and intelligibility dictate a change in the Interaction Order to protect selves
and intelligibility. The group cannot remain a single group. When persons standing in grossly
unequal relations to one another split into two groups, two contradictory Interaction Orders
will form in opposition to one another. As a consequence, intelligibility across Interaction
Orders that have formed as a result of political oppression or inequality is highly problematic.
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“Race” as an Interaction Order Phenomenon:

W.E.B. Du Bois’s “Double Consciousness” Thesis Revisited*

This article reports on a study of interaction between Americans who self-identify as

Sociological Theory 18:2 July 2000

DU BOIS AND DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS

It is the contradiction of double aims. The double-aimed struggle of the black

DU BOIS ON INTERACTION AND CONVERSATION

the interchange of ideas through conversation and conference, through periodicals

Du Bois’s treatment of interaction as an essential form of race contact suggests an aware-

BLACK AND WHITE GREETINGS AND INTRODUCTORY TALK:

WHITE GREETING AND INTRODUCTORY SEQUENCES

AFRICAN AMERICAN GREETING AND INTRODUCTORY SEQUENCES

This woman refers to a focus on categorization as “very intimidating.” Questions about

NARRATIVE AND STEREOTYPE AS A CONSEQUENCE

violated the conversational expectations. Of course, in the case of interaction between

opment of conflicting Interaction Orders must also be considered. A partial explanation

THE PRESENTATION OF TWO DIFFERENT TYPES OF SELF

AFRICAN AMERICAN PRESENTATION OF SELF: TEAMWORK

The presentation of a Black self cannot be described analogously. It is not experienced

HONESTY IN BLACK AND WHITE

From a White perspective, however, deference with regard to categories is considered

AFRICAN AMERICAN HONESTY IN THE WHITE WORKPLACE

Observational research on a variety of interracial workplace relationships, combined with

HONESTY VS. HIERARCHY AND BUREAUCRACY

“If it was me? I might not say yes.” ~P 17!

“I would with no uncertain terms say no.” ~W!

DIPLOMACY VS. HONESTY AND GEMEINSCHAFT VS. GESELLSCHAFT

INTERACTION ORDERS AND INTELLIGIBILITY

mutual intelligibility can tolerate. This article is a demonstration of the communicative

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