University of Liverpool Department of History Seminar Series

Schedule

Wed Feb 08 2023 at 03:30 pm to 05:00 pm

Location

South Campus Teaching Hub, Lecture Theatre 3 | Liverpool, EN

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‘Let me tell you how I see it…’: White Women, Race, and Welfare on Two Birmingham Council Estates in the 1980s, Dr Jessica White (Liverpool)
About this Event

Join us for the first seminar in this year's University of Liverpool Department of History Seminar Series!

Dr Jessica White will present her paper entitled '"Let me tell you how I see it…": White Women, Race, and Welfare on Two Birmingham Council Estates in the 1980s

This paper will examine how white women spoke about their relationship with their neighbours of African and Asian descent in the early 1980s and how this relationship was articulated through racialised concerns around welfare. Based on 48 interviews carried out between 1983 and 1984 with white working-class women in two housing estates in Birmingham for the sociological study The Logic of Racism, this article demonstrates that by discussing their experiences of social housing, social security, and education, white women adopted various rhetorical devices to paint the British welfare system as the exclusive domain of white people and ‘whiteness’. I argue that, through constructing this white subjective identity discursively as well as through adopting methods to acquire credibility in their interview, the women produced discourses ‘from below’ that contributed to, and sustained, a broader white supremacist system where people of colour in Britain were impacted. In doing so, it contributes to ongoing research that centres the themes of race and racism in the history of the British welfare state.

Please note: there is a content warning for this talk that it will contain racist language.

Students, staff, and outside guests are more than welcome to join us in person at the University of Liverpool, South Campus Teaching Hub, Lecture Theatre 3 at 15:30 on 8 February 2023. If you'd like to join us virtually, you'll find our Zoom link here.

Feel free to email Dr Katherine Arnold ([email protected]) for any queries.

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Where is it happening?

South Campus Teaching Hub, Lecture Theatre 3, 140 Chatham Street, Liverpool, United Kingdom

Event Location & Nearby Stays:

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Department of History, University of Liverpool

Host or Publisher Department of History, University of Liverpool

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