Family events as sites for racism and anti-racism

This chapter considers family events as important opportunities to both perform and contest racism. Racism within family events can create a significant tension between the urge to contest talk that one considers problematic, with the desire to maintain familial relationships. The discomfort that may be generated by a contestation of racism sits alongside the desire to create bonds with others through family events. The case studies presented reveal that racism can be reproduced, accommodated and tolerated at family events, such as family Christmas celebrations. Family events sometimes serve as a backstage for racial conversations. Family events also afforded some opportunity for reworking of racism within families. The reconfiguration of families that occurs through marriage and having children was, in some cases, an opportunity for the reworking of racism within a family, though this reworking may only hold within certain contexts and with certain groups of people.