Crossfire in the Kitchen: Race and Class Role Tensions in Service-Learning

This study approaches service-learning through a critical dramatistic perspective. Erving Goffman’s concept of human interactions as staged performances combines with the structuration of race- and class-based power hierarchies to provide a theoretical framework for examining the interaction patterns between African-American college student volunteers and African-American clients at a faith-based community meal center. Employing an ethnographic method, the paper explores how intersectional identities foreground class differences in ways that fragment shared ethnicities. Observation of how volunteers and clients at the site react to each other’s backstage activities (moments when actors depart from roles scripted as appropriate within the service-learning context) reveals how class-based tensions reveal systemic power imbalances that can influence the conduct and impact of service-learning.