1) Force versus choice: the segregated lunchroom
The author focuses on the discourses of two girls, one white and one black, in examining the mechanisms that produce segregation in the lunchroom. Both girls profess that they are agentic in their decisions on where to sit and whom to sit with in the lunch room. However, both girls as well as their peers accept and reinforce the social boundaries between racial and gendered categories of students. They do not feel that this segregation is forced, but rather that it is just the “way it isâ€.
2) The ‘average person’ : identifying and spatializing racism
In this finding, the author argues that certain behaviors by students are practices of racism and racial othering. Through various discourses of white and black female students, the author finds that white students actively police white spaces utilizing a racist evaluation of black subjects to achieve racial othering. The discourses analyzed here a filled with stereotypical assumptions about racialized behavior, similar to that of oppositional culture. In these ways, racial differences are maintained and the boundaries between racialized spaces are policed. For an example, the stigma of “acting white†enters into racialized talk when a black student enters a white space such as the honors classroom. By labeling the black students as “whiteâ€, the whiteness of the space is maintained.