The Paradoxes of Personhood: Banal Multiculturalism and Racial–Ethnic Identification among Latina and Armenian Girls at a Los Angeles High School

In the spring of 2005, numerous racially motivated, large-scale fights broke out in Los Angeles, California, high schools, from the San Fernando Valley to south Los Angeles. Most of the fighting occurred between youth who identify as ethnic–racial minorities, like Latinos, African-Americans, and Armenians. Just after one such fight involving several hundred students, which quickly became known as a ‘race riot’ at the school, I conducted a series of interviews with teenage girls asking them what they thought of this outburst of ethnic–racial violence, in their valley school's case between Latinos and Armenians. In the research, girls detailed to me their postracial attitudes (typified by such ideals as ‘race doesn't matter, we are all the same’), but their narratives evidenced extreme racial–ethnic segregation and their own racist sentiments. In this paper, I explore this contradiction and focus on how girls articulate multicultural and humanist ideals to situate themselves as antiracists. However, concurrently, I argue that the girls' racialized resentments of others illustrate their profound and wounded investments in difference. The girls' narratives and identities also indicate why multicultural attempts to foster respect of diversity in this urban high school have failed.