Researching Race: Identifying a Social Construction through Qualitative Methods and an Interactionist Perspective

Although much of the sociological community now views race as a social construction, empirical research does not always identify it in this way. Many practices of designating a research participant’s race approach this process uncritically, implicitly framing race as uncom-plicated. Although this is more common in survey-based work, in this article I explore the tendencies and difficulties of studying race using qualitative methods. I discuss two prevalent but potentially problem-atic ways of “operationalizing ” race in qualitative methodology, and then elaborate on the difficulties of identifying race in practice, using examples from my own ethnographic research. I suggest that sym-bolic interactionism provides a unique perspective from which to express race as socially situated, as long as this process is approached reflectively. Much of the scientific community now adheres to the notion that race is a social construction. Increasingly, this idea has even crept into the public arena. Th