‘They attacked you just like that’: Negotiating racial epistemics in making claims about racism

Social psychological research on race and racism has shown that claims about racism are not always accepted or received as valid reports. In this paper, I offer racial epistemics as one mechanism by which race-talk takes place. I examine how ascribing category-bound entitlements to experiential or other knowledge about racism is variously realised and complicated in the production of claims about racism. Through examining news media accounts where Black persons were invited to talk about their experiences of racism in India, I show that despite ascribing a privileged epistemic position to Black persons, recipients (interviewers and other panellists) could make salient epistemic entitlements to commonsense, specialised, or other forms of (racial) knowledge in collaboratively establishing, confirming or correcting, and challenging claims about racism in India. The findings are discussed in relation to the broader understanding of racism in social psychology. The data are in Indian English.