Information pools and racialized narrative structures

The concept of narrative structures is theorized as cultural master frames and is distinguished from the concept of story, which refers to anything reported that contains a plot. Drawing from the literature on African American folklore, the Church's Chicken story was presented to respondents as an instance of conspiracy and contamination narrative structures. Data show that story availability and believability are clearly race-based. The data ground a model of racialized narrative structures in which story content and story believability are conflated. It is argued that believability is not solely a function of storytelling performance and competence insofar as narrative structures prefigure believability. Racialized narrative structures are discussed as one element of the deep racial gulfs in America that co-exist with increases in cross-racial contact and friendship patterns.