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The Shifting Ground of Race: The role of taste in youth's production of identities

The production of racial identities is situated within the play of history, politics, the economy and culture. For students at Fernwood High School (a pseudonym) in South Africa, 'race' is undergoing a transformation. No longer legally bound by apartheid racial categorisations, the formation of race rotates around new axes. Based on a 1-year ethnographic study of Fernwood, the author argues that students construct race through, in Bourdieu's terms, a discourse of taste. Racial identities are produced through an engagement with both local material forces and the global space of affect. Taste, specifically differences based in global popular culture, is a critical factor in the racial conflict and tension at Fernwood. However, taste's flexible and changing borders also allow for instances of border crossing and hybridity. Educators committed to multiculturalism and progressive change must engage with questions of youth, difference and power through acknowledging and working with this rearticulation of race.