In this article I draw on 3 incidents to investigate how teachers and students purposefully negotiate to manage incipient conflict when race is a confounding factor. I do so to propose a methodology and theoretical framework for researching multiracial classroom teaching and learning that could inform White literacy teachers' pedagogy with students of color. The approach construes race as a dynamic part of classroom social life in which expressions of race are affected by and affect teachers' and students' classroom norms of conduct. Race is observed in discursive practices that interactively and influentially construct social relationships, personal identity, and academic knowledge. I demonstrate the approach by illustrating how students manage problems and boundaries within commonplace classroom interactions.