Researcher street race-gender in qualitative field work

Abstract

The assumption of shared racial and gendered identities with respondents can lead researchers to overlook many of the internal hierarchies that exist within those shared identities, and to reproduce the power dynamics embedded within those hierarchies throughout the research process. In this article, we propose researcher street-race gender as a reflexive framework for researchers to better interrogate how perceived race and gender shape their relationships with their respondents and their research process. As two differently racialized, cisgendered Latina researchers who do research with and about Latinxs in the United States, we draw on two case studies of our research on Latinx coffee shops and Latinx college communities to demonstrate how assumptions of shared Latinidad, or Latinx identity, can obscure the racialized and gendered narratives held by and about Latinxs and how these narratives shape our experiences in the field and throughout the research process. We demonstrate how considerations of researcher street race-gender create opportunities to understand anti-Black and anti-indigenous investments, as well as antiracist efforts in Latinx communities.