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Abstract

The literature is rife with problematizations of researcher positionality (Lin, 2015; Milner IV, 2007; Sheldon, 2017). The discussion of positionality ranges from researchers not acknowledging their own and others’ positionality (Lin, 2015; Milner IV, 2007), being aware of the position of research studies one reads (Lin, 2015), or not continually deconstructing one’s own identity throughout the course of the research they conduct (Sheldon, 2017). We confront the issue through the lens of a collaborative critical autoethnography between burgeoning researchers. As racialized cis-women in the academy, we examine our experiences through the interstices of belonging – nominally excluded from belonging in both the academy and the community. Through this work, we confront the question of how we, as racialized cis-women in the academy, confront and navigate the complex dynamics of race, class, and gender when approaching research in our own communities. Our experiences are framed within critical race theory, which assists in demonstrating the ways in which the racialized and gendered dynamics of marginalization in an seemingly inclusive academy are contrasted with the racialized and gendered dynamics of inclusion in ostensibly exclusionary communities. This work extends our knowledge of how individual researchers begin to make sense of it all. Moreover, through this work, our hope for this paper is for those in academia to see themselves, or their colleagues, but also to serve as validation for those yet to come who share these tensions.

Keywords

autoethnography emancipatory research feminist research social justice oral histories

Introduction

Our experiences are framed within critical race theory. This theoretical lens assists in demonstrating the ways in which the racialized and gendered dynamics of marginalization in a seemingly inclusive academy are contrasted with the racialized and gendered dynamics of inclusion in ostensibly exclusionary communities. This work extends our knowledge of how individual researchers make sense of it all. Moreover, through this work, our hope for this paper is for those in academia to see themselves, or their colleagues, and also to serve as validation for those yet to come who share these tensions.

Research and the Racialized Researcher

The researcher is a central figure that influences every step of the research process (Finlay, 2002). This reality is particularly important in qualitative research. Although research questions are framed and operationalized through the researcher in quantitative research, the particular modalities of data collection in the qualitative process means that researcher embodiment shapes the actual data that is being analyzed (Brewster, 2020; Etherington, 2004; Finlay, 2002; Mason, 1996). Researcher identity and behavior work to shape participants’ responses, as well as the ways in which meaning is ascribed to those responses (Finlay, 2005). In this way, qualitative research can be understood as being co-constructed (Finlay, 2002). The identity of the researcher is itself an aspect of the work-research. Similarly, we may understand the conclusions that arise as a function of research broadly, and qualitative research particularly, as being fundamentally situated within the researcher’s own cultural systems, world views, and societal experiences (Douglas, 2017, 25; Milner IV, 2007).

Given these realities, the extant literature positions reflexivity in qualitative research as fundamental to the endeavor of the responsible and ethical researcher (Brewster, 2020; Etherington, 2004; Finlay, 2002; Mason, 1996; Norwood, 2018). Reflexivity requires the researcher’s urgent, continual, and subjective self-awareness during the research process. At minimum, reflexivity is the process of “engaging, reflexively, with the participant’s lived body, our own body and our embodied intersubjective relationship with the participant” (Finlay, 2005, 3–4). By acknowledging their own positionality, in terms of race, gender, class, occupation, education, and other aspects of identity, the researcher can begin to elucidate the framework through which the research can be completed and understood. Yet this “comfortable reflexivity” may be insufficient, “never progressing to the point of real interrogation of self, the body, and, ultimately, application” (Norwood, 2018, 4). Keeping this in mind, researchers require further critical reflection to move beyond what may feel comfortable and into a meaningful examination of themselves within the research process.

To be clear, this type of real interrogation has the potential to enrich the qualitative research endeavor (Adams, 2021; Cottingham et al., 2018; Finlay, 2005). While the ways in which intersections between researchers and participants can work to open the door to empathy and mutual understanding (Finlay, 2005), an acknowledgement of the researcher’s personal characteristics is insufficient (Mason, 1996). Rather, Etherington (2004) suggests that a researcher’s personal history– beyond identity, including presuppositions and manner of training, position in relation to that training, and ascriptive characteristics like gender, race, class, and culture – all influence relationships with participants. Only through an active engagement with the ways in which the intersectionality of lived experiences held by both researcher and participants can the empathetic researcher become an active participant in the relationship (Finlay, 2006; Underwood et al., 2010).

Yet a singular focus on similarities and intersections threatens to obscure attention to differences between researcher and participant (Brewster, 2020). MacPherson and Fine (1995) interrogate the ways in which qualitative research may work with the realities of concurrent sameness and difference. Despite participant focus on building solidarity through reflexive practice, some participants—privileged as a function of social circumstance—expressed a sense of responsibility for others that was evocative of a larger power imbalance, which they left largely uncritiqued by them (MacPherson and Fine 1995). Reflexivity, however, critically engages in these dynamics and allows researchers, participants, and the broader scholarly community to problematize existing power disparities, boundaries, and the ethical dilemmas they may engender (Underwood et al., 2010). We draw from critical race theory, which allows us to examine the nature of race, racism and power dynamics. In particular, how race may influence interactions and belonging in academia and community. Reflecting on our own praxis is vital within this framework.

The need to have representation of the views, theories, positions, and discourse that emerge from people and scholars of colour within the research community and more broadly within academia builds off of the pivotal work of feminist scholar Patricia Hill Collins (1998, 2019). The intersectional lens used throughout this article draws heavily from her work, looking meaningfully at the intersections of our identity and how broader power structures may reveal or conceal themselves within our interactions as researchers and emerging scholars. Hill Collins (1998) also examines how Black feminist thought and research does not come from elites, but rather challenges the broad brush of colonial, patriarchal, and racist approaches dominant throughout the academy. The existence of racialized people within academia is often regularly not formally structured or supported (Arnold et al., 2016).

Feeling ‘out of place’ is a common experience for racialized scholars, as the existence within academia is conditional based on behaviour to meet the tokenized model scholar of colour deemed acceptable by the institution (Niemann, 1999; Overstreet, 2019). Academia, as all places and spaces, “hold[s] certain norms, mores, formal and informal ways of operating that materially and subjectively impact certain individuals, from their sense of being to the entitlement they receive” (Arnold et al., 2016, 903). There are common experiences of racism, isolation, and feeling unheard by colleagues, superiors, and students (Arnold et al., 2016; Niemann, 1999; Puwar, 2004). For emerging racialized scholars, our place in academia can be understood as idiosyncratic to the particular context of the Global North over the last 50 years (Ahmed and Swan, 2006), rather than an integral and embedded characteristic of the institution. In recent years, there has been a global push for the inclusion of racialized scholars. In accordance with Derrick Bell’s (1980) interest convergence theory, racial equality efforts are occurring because they are now of benefit to those in power. While racialized scholars may benefit from interest convergence, this inclusion is not necessarily supported by programs, supports, or policies that would allow such scholars to flourish in institutions rife with oppressive histories (Ahmed and Swan, 2006; Thomas, 2018).

In this article, we problematize the framework in which a common racialized identity in a space is understood to create a commonality between researcher and participant in qualitative research, providing nuance using our own identities and experiences as data. We push for a more intersectional understanding of reflexivity in research—one in which sameness and difference are both attended to intentionally. We argue that constructing racialized groups as both monolithic and as an essential categorization that usurps other social facts does a disservice to research in racialized communities (Seamster and Ray, 2018). We further examine themes around race and places, tensions between race and aspects of privilege, and the racialized gendered experience.

Race and Racialization

Race can be understood as the classification of people into groups based on phenotypic traits, including skin colour, hair texture, physical features, and ancestry (Desmond and Emirbayer, 2009). Race is a social construct that operates as a symbolic category for meaning-making (Desmond & Emirbayer, 2009). The use of racial categorization as the essentializing attribute of the individual began in European philosophy and scholarship during the Enlightenment and was tied to temporal and geographic understandings of the world (Eze, 1997; Seamster and Ray, 2018). The resilience of this concept, if not of the particular groups, may be understood as part of larger colonial and capitalist imperatives to classify and rationally order bodies in service of power-holders (Fanon, 1952; Go, 2013). As such, race is not static. Rather, it is a process that garners meaning through social practices. Scholars have posited that, to this point, the realities of the individual racial classifications that shift as a function of time and place are less pertinent than the bifurcation that the racialization process allows to occur—between the civilized and the uncivilized (Mills, 1998; Seamster and Ray, 2018). Thus, while race is a fluid concept, there are daily real-world implications of race, including racism and discrimination.

We are therefore forced to hold two mutually exclusive realities simultaneously: 1) it is impossible to do critical social science research without carefully attending to the reality of race, and 2) race is a social construction and its manner of employment is invariably shaped by socio-political power hierarchies that position racialized people and communities as inferior (Seamster and Ray, 2018). We interrogate what it means to imagine the existence of an essential solidarity of lived experience as a function of racial identity when race is, itself, a White Supremacist invention. Despite this real philosophical quandary, Thomas Theorem (Thomas and Thomas, 1928) suggests—and critical race theory (Delgado and Stefancic, 2017) extends—the premise that what is defined as real in the social becomes real in the individual. This extends to the role of racial construction in qualitative research methods (Anderson et al., 1988; Moorman et al., 1999).

The Racialized Researcher

The case of Black people in the Global North is illustrative. Research demonstrates that Black participants are more likely to agree to be interviewed by Black researchers (Moorman et al., 1999). Black participants also expressed significantly different civic and political attitudes when interviewed by Black and non-Black interviewers—so much so that National Election Survey results were influenced by changes in the racial composition of the interviewer (Anderson et al., 1988). This phenomenon is known as the Race of Interviewer Effect (Hill, 2002; Samples et al., 2014). Simply put, the race of the interviewer matters, especially, but not necessarily exclusively, for racialized research participants.

For racialized researchers in this case, the reality of Race of Interviewer Effect presents a dilemma in the style of Scylla and Charibdis. The researcher’s race works to render them more legitimate and authentic, and works to elicit more open and revealing responses from racialized participants (Hill, 2002; Samples et al., 2014). Thus moving away from it and positioning oneself as more proximate to Whiteness—whether physically or culturally—would presumably work to deteriorate the quality of findings. But Black people are simultaneously constructed as inherently untrustworthy, illegitimate, and unprofessional (Cumberbatch, 2021; Fries-Britt and Griffin, 2007; Kwate and Meyer, 2011). Thus, by being Black, the researcher’s findings become less credible, and this lack of credibility theoretically increases as proximity to Whiteness, whether physical or cultural, decreases. However, race is fluid. Osanami Törngren and Ngeh (2018) find that although race may influence participant responses in research, these responses are also influenced by age, gender and class. Reducing racialized researchers experiences through the singular lens of race negates other important dynamics of identity. Moreover, it contextualizes race as homogenous.

In The Cultural Politics of Emotion, Sara Ahmed (2013) argues that those who are socially marginalized are meant to be viewed with ingrained dismissal, and that this dismissal becomes emotive through socialization processes in the marginalizing society. Institutionally, formal social controls enforce colonial paradigms of inclusion. Informally, however, peers replicate similar forms of social control for racialized and marginalized people by responsibilizing individuals for disparities between dominant cultural ideals and their own behaviors, thereby further ostracizing them from their own communities (Cacho, 2012, 15, 149). This dynamic adds further nuance to the relationship between co-racialized researchers and participants. Thus, theoretically suggesting that in-group researchers may be encouraged to espouse White-approximating behaviors in order to be valorized by non-White participants.

Axes of Identity Beyond Race

Navigating Power Dynamics in Research

The importance of researcher positionality is theorized by racialized and marginalized scholars, who often share some in-group characteristics with their participants, while also holding privileges that separate them (Adams, 2021; Dwyer and Buckle, 2009; Merriam et al., 2001; Yakushko et al., 2011). Often referred to in the terms of ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’, this positionality plays a crucial role in research ideas, design, data collection, and analysis (Milner IV, 2008; Dwyer and Buckle, 2009; Yakushko et al., 2011). In context of this paper, the term insider refers to “[the researcher] sharing the characteristics, role, or experience under study with the participants” (Dwyer and Buckle, 2009, 55), and outsider as the role a researcher has as an “outsider to the community shared by participants” (Dwyer and Buckle, 2009, 55).

There are both gifts and challenges that are associated with a researcher occupying the space of both insider and outsider (Yakushko et al., 2011). Both are identities in which power dynamics become particularly muddled. Sharing experiences of marginalization and discrimination can open the dialogue further with participants through a sense of familiarity and level of comfort. The researcher can also honor cultural norms and values of participants because of their intimate knowledge (Milner IV, 2008; Yakushko et al., 2011). Being an insider allows researchers to also challenge ingrained systems of knowing that often place racialized knowledge and ways of knowing as non-normative, or frame these marginalized ways of knowing as inherently negative. Yet these seeming opportunities may also open the door to exploitation.

A challenge faced by researchers inhabiting both roles is the need to recognize these power dynamics, considering the power and privileges held as a researcher in relation to participants is vital to honor these dynamics (Yakushko et al., 2011). Further, there are at times questions raised by other researchers and scholars about the objectivity, reflexivity and authenticity of a research project when the researcher is considered by some to be too close with their participants (Kanuha, 2000). These challenges are based on a normative, white, patriarchal, colonial understanding of research that in of itself often contests the existence of racialized scholars, particularly women scholars of colour (Adams, 2021).

Professionalism as Privilege

Through our insider-outsider status, racialized academics are often invited, and agree, to take part in committees, advisory groups and other professional associations that enable them to speak to pertinent social issues. At face value, this appears to be beneficial and a catalyst for action. Taiwo (2020) argues, however, that such groups often defer to those members designated as most informed, a tendency that can counter that group’s interests, as well as the interests of participant racialized academics. Professionalism and others’ expectations further complicate this so-called ‘being in the room privilege,’ with the success of having been included effectively negated by the invisibilization and exclusion from the table’s power.

Professionalism is used as both a mechanism and racial construct to set standards of how to act in the workplace (Goodridge, 2022). Simply put, idealized professional appearance and behavior is masculine, White, and upper-middle class (Goodrich, 2022). Gender and racial biases permeate academic institutions and oftentimes create unsafe working environments, particularly for racialized women (Gause, 2020). Dickens and Chavez (2017, 760) assert that “a combination of educational and professional obstacles, including racism and sexism, all exact psychological tolls on Black women.” New and emerging academics navigate these complex systems by accepting, rejecting, or challenging the notion of professionalism, but the capacity to demonstrate it can be understood as a relative privilege.

Yee (2011) argues that there is an academic-industrial complex that serves to reinforce pre-existing notions of worthiness. Examining the context of privilege within academic spaces, particularly in graduate studies, there are intersections of marginalization that have negative outcomes for those who face class barriers (Yee, 2011, 37). Academic institutions are shaped by colonialism and measure actors against Eurocentric standards. In particular, what is considered knowledge, and the value placed on western-centric knowledge production, inherently devalues alternative worldviews, thereby reinforcing spaces of exclusion for racialized scholars (Lowe, 2015; Yee, 2011). Exploring positionality is one way in which we push back against these Eurocentric standards.

The Gendered, Racialized Body

As with any intersectional identities existing on multiple matrices of oppression, feminized and racialized academics are doubly-marginalized within academia (Sharpe and Swinton, 2012). Because of the ways in which emotional labour, or the labour of making people feel comfortable, included, valued, heard, and seen, is disproportionately born by racialized and feminized people (Wharton, 2009), racialized women academics are often charged with the emotional labor of higher education. Beyond the intricacies of more commonly discussed micro-aggressions with superiors, this emotional labour sustains itself throughout all areas of academia, leaving racialized women to automatically take on a comforting and calming role without recognition of the additional strain of this work (Moise, 2021). This elimination of choice regarding who takes on this labour only serves to reinforce the institutionalized colonial harms that often come with occupying a role within historically masculinized White spaces (Mignolo, 2011; Owusu-Kwarteng, 2021).

For racialized women, this means an intersectional framework becomes crucial to navigating both career and research endeavours (Hill Collins, 2019; Crenshaw, 2017). We recognize the dynamics of race that render racialized bodies simultaneously in-group and out-group for research subjects and colleagues. Moreover, when bodies are additionally gendered, the racialized, gendered body becomes simultaneously the subject of discrimination while also responsible for amending their behavior to ensure those around them are comfortable (Cottingham et al., 2018; Kessler-Harris, 2007). Additionally, the racialized, gendered body is responsible for the cultivation and replication of group identity (Reynolds et al., 2017; Settles, 2006). Insofar as racialized, gendered academics and researchers bring their embodiments to work, we would expect to see them narrate their exclusion and marginalization as unremarkable and normalize it for research subjects and others (Mahmud and Islam, 2022).

Method

In this paper, we employ a collaborative critical autoethnographic method (Cann and DeMeulenaere, 2012; Chang et al., 2016) to interrogate the ways in which racialized women scholars grapple with the dynamics of race, gender, and class in their positions as academics. We interrogate how positionality can influence interactions in research within our communities and in academic labour. Our approach to research is broadly embedded within community, social and racial justice, and centering counter-narratives. Consistent with critical theory, feminist theories, and critical race theory, collaborative critical autoethnography offers a framework “for solidarity among marginalized groups as well as across difference, inspiring those in spaces of privilege to be allies in social justice work” (Cann and DeMeulenaere, 2012, 147). As racialized women graduate students, we occupy a space of some considerable privilege in our communities, while simultaneously experiencing disadvantage in the proverbial Ivory Tower. Our individual and collective experiences as racialized women graduate students are valuable and can work to inform not only ourselves, but others like us.

Autoethnography is defined as “a reflexive means by which the researcher-practitioner consciously embeds themselves amidst theory and practice, and by way of intimate autobiographic account, explicates a phenomenon under investigation or intervention” (McIlveen, 2008, 13). Autoethnography combines ethnography, biography, and self-analysis to create a qualitative data method that integrates understandings of the self and the social to illuminate the nature of the relationship between the two (Chang et al., 2016). Autoethnography’s strength is to give the lived experiences of the underrepresented, oppressed, and marginalized the validation enjoyed by those of White people with class privilege, making clear that these experiences are all equally valid as centers of knowledge (Anderson, 2006; Chawla and Atay, 2018; Chang et al., 2016). The power of autoethnography lies in the way it makes the implicit explicit. Although the positionality of the researcher is always fundamental to the research, that positionality is only centered in autoethnography.

Although autoethnography necessarily engages with the self in conjunction with others, the distinction between “others of similarity” and “others of difference” is under-explored (Chang, 2008). Collaborative autoethnographies allow scholars to intentionally engage with those in intentionally similar, or dissimilar, positionalities to construct meaning (Chang et al., 2016). By working collectively to understand both shared and diverse experiences, collaborative autoethnographers are able to add depth and breadth to our understanding of the relationship between case and context. Collaborative autoethnography is defined as “a qualitative research method in which researchers work in community to collect their autobiographical materials and to analyze and interpret their data collectively to gain a meaningful understanding of socio-cultural phenomena” (Chang et al., 2016, 23–24), Consistent with this methodology, this paper is grounded in critical race theory. Although critical race theory originated in legal scholarship, it is gaining traction in other fields, including sociology, as an important framework to problematize race and racism (see, Ray, 2022; Samuels-Wortley, 2021; Sanchez and Romero, 2010; Seamster and Ray, 2018). Critical race theory is challenging to define. However, the central tenets of critical race theory include: race as a social construct; racism as ordinary and used for subordination; and race neutrality (colour-blindness) serves to obscure discrimination and social structures that maintain racial subordination (Delgado and Stefancic, 2017, 8–11; Crenshaw et al., 1995). In order to interrogate and disrupt racial orders, critical race theory employs counter-storytelling, which centres the experiences of racialized and marginalized people within a socio-political context. As such, in this paper, we discuss our experiences as racialized women graduate students navigating academia and research with our communities through the lens of critical race theory.

The idea for this work originated when we first met each other through a mentorship program for racialized scholars organized by the Canadian Sociological Association in 2022. Over the course of the program, we discussed similarities in both our research areas and attending predominantly white educational institutions. Remaining true to our belief in social justice scholarship and community, this paper was developed. To be certain, we approached writing this paper with hesitancy because while we share some similarities (e.g., race, gender, educational attainment), our experiences in the academy and relations to community should not be taken as generalizable. However, the importance of sharing the experiences of racialized women graduate students in predominantly white institutions prevailed.

Over the course of the academic year in which the mentorship program ran, we participated in various workshops and discussed the barriers we experienced as we progress through our respective degree programs and research projects. It was through these discussions that the idea for this paper emerged. In April of the mentorship program year, we met individually with one another to discuss reckoning with belonging in, and between, academia and communities. The individual sessions were recorded and transcribed. We used open coding (Blair, 2015) to identify themes that arose in the conversations. After independently coding the transcripts, we met to discuss the themes we each identified. Three themes arose: 1) race and place; 2) intersection of race and privilege; and, 3) interactions between race and gender. To ensure consistency in coding, we re-coded the transcripts with the established themes. These themes illustrate commonalities of fractured identities for racialized women in different spaces.

Collaborative critical autoethnography is inherently personal because this methodology requires authors to share their experiences. However, as we are current graduate students, we chose to hold confidential interview sessions, which we believe facilitated a more open and honest conversation. For anonymity, pseudonyms are used.

To provide clarity on our inherent positionality within the research and with relation to the academy, we describe ourselves as follows: Jessica is a biracial African Nova Scotian cis-gender woman. She lived in predominantly rural, White communities in Nova Scotia before deciding to pursue her Ph.D at the University of Toronto. Vanessa is a biracial cis-gender woman, pursuing her Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Guelph. Maria is a PhD student in the Sociology department at the University of Waterloo. She is a cis-gender, biracial woman and a first-generation student. Mariah is a biracial cis-gender woman, pursuing her MA in Criminology at the University of Windsor. Together, we contributed our voices as burgeoning researchers to the compilation of autoethnographic data for this paper, as well as co-authoring the theoretical background that frames the findings. Natalie is an Associate Professor of Criminology, recently tenured. She is a US American working in a Canadian University as a cis-gendered woman, and is a multi-racial Latina, and a visible minority. Natalie helped to structure and anchor the paper, and the final manuscript thus also reflects her positionality, though she did not contribute to the creation of autoethnographic data.

Analysis and Discussion

The Racialized Researcher and Place

Race and place are inextricably connected (Massey, 1990; Nelson, 2008; Sundstrom, 2003). Place is demarcated by race and class, and operates to make social constructs of race and class real (Nelson, 2008). Anderson (2015, 2021) argues that despite the social and legal shifts since the civil rights movement that formally abolished segregation, the majority of society maintains predominantly white places—neighbourhoods, restaurants, universities—where racialized people are largely absent. Anderson (2015, 2021) refers to these places as “The White Space.” For white people, these places are perceived as “unremarkable, or as normal, taken-for-granted reflections of civil society” (Anderson, 2015, 13). For racialized persons, the requirement to navigate The White Space is an unavoidable and ubiquitous by-product of our existence (Anderson, 2015).

We are attending predominantly White educational institutions and some authors are the only racialized person in their cohort. Consequently, we are all navigating “The White Space.” Moreover, we have intersecting identities that shape our existence (e.g., race, class, gender, sexuality). At various points in time and across place, different aspects of our identities are more dominant. As Hill Collins (2000) explains, the matrix of domination demonstrates how multiple oppressions are structured. Matrices vary from one another and are dependent upon how oppression is organized (Hill Collins, 2000, 228). While we are acutely aware of our intersectional identities, racialization has been at the forefront of our educational and professional development.

Across all interviews, we each spoke about the influence race has on our scholarly development, professionalization, and informal acculturation to the academy. In short, our experiences are shaped by race and place. Our racial identities, and the ways in which racialization has rendered us often as a spokesperson for an entire racial group, places us on the subject side of the constructed researcher-subject divide. In these interactions, our racialized status, despite being socially constructed (Desmond & Emirbayer, 2009), result in powerful categorization through which we are rendered representatives of the “other,” yet accepted within the class for the edification of white researchers.

I’m the only Black person in my class. You wouldn’t know that from looking at me. And whenever people in my class find out that I am next [to speak], they expect me to be The Voice for all Black people. And I don’t think that they understand the implications of what they’re asking when they say things like that. I can tell you about my own experiences; they’re not every Black person’s experience. They’re assuming we are monolithic people when they say that. And I don’t like it. It’s just something I’m constantly aware of like every day, all the time. –Arianne

The implications of race within research is something we spoke of in various ways. In theory, universities are expected to be inclusive spaces. However, the above except illustrates the ways in which Arianne has become the ‘token’ Black person within her department and academic experience. Her frustration with being the only racialized voice is demonstrated through her discussion of Black people not being monolithic, and also frustration around pressure to represent the experiences of Black people when it comes to educating others who are not Black.

Arianne’s experience illustrates themes of the essentialization of Blackness in the academy. Her identity is deemed to not warrant further nuance beyond her Blackness. Consistent with Hill Collins’ matrix of domination, in the university classroom setting, race has often been the dominant organizing structure of oppression for us. However, the monolithic approach to understanding race is problematic. Race is a social construct that is temporally and spatially specific, and thus cannot be isolated from social context (Desmond and Emirbayer, 2009; Holdaway, 1997; Mirchandani and Chan, 2002). Homogenizing racial categories erases the diversity within racial categories (Sue, 2009). Attempting to understand racial categories as homogenous fails to acknowledge the intersecting identities, oppressions, and experiences of people across place. For example, education, income, (dis)ability, sexuality, gender, nationality, all intersect to shape one’s experiences in the world. As such, it is unsurprising that Arianne acknowledges that she cannot speak for all Black people—this would be an impossible task. But the expectation that she would works to reify Blackness as an essential and ascriptive characteristic in the White classroom.

During one interview, Renee shared her experiences which echo and amplify those of Arianne. She feels she has been used as a source of education and training for her peers.

I was the only Black person accepted in my department [for my cohort]. And so I’ve received a lot of questions, including being asked about Black experiences—I cannot speak for all Black people. And it’s something that I just don’t think they understand. I can talk about my own experience, but I am not the Black experience. That’s just not how things work. –Renee

In particular, Renee feels that an expectation has been placed upon her to educate her peers about Black communities and to give them a voice and vocabulary and knowledge about communities of which they are not a part. Indeed the perceived expectations placed upon her are unattainable as racial categories are not homogenous. Instead, the experiences of Black and other racialized people must be understood through an intersectional lens, which requires nuance.

While we each spoke to tokenization and objectification within the academy, we also spoke about our experiences of race and racism outside of the academy. Many of us not only attended predominantly white educational institutions, but also grew up in predominantly white neighbourhoods. Thus, we all negotiate The White Space in most areas of our lives. These spaces, however, have sometimes resulted in bigotry and prejudice, as alluded to by Riley: “My Blackness was never something that was questioned. Even though I am fair skinned, I grew up being called Oreo and Blackie and all of those racist things.” Although always harmful, racism is an ordinary part of social life (Delgado and Stefancic, 2017). It does not always occur in such blunt expressions, as experienced by Riley. Yet as we navigate places as racialized researchers and community members, we are acutely aware of our racial identity and how we are perceived across places. How we are perceived extends beyond our racial identity.

Privileges of Class, Education Privilege, and Social Capital

Throughout the interviews, it was evident that we sat at the nexus of holding varying levels of education, class and social capital privileges. We extensively discussed how our privileges were both an asset in graduate school, but may create a stronger divide between ourselves and participants in our research projects. This further solidified our understanding beyond the insider-outsider notions of researcher positionality to a more nuanced and multi-dimensional perspective (see, Lu and Hodge, 2019). Renee shares how she considers her class position in both carrying out data collection and analysis while in graduate school:

I often think about how I grew up—lower-middle to middle-class—and how I bring these experiences to research. I think about ‘where am I situated?’, ‘how may that present to participants?’, or how may it shape the questions I ask, ‘am I making assumptions as I’m analyzing my data?’ How does it all come into play? I’m consciously aware of my privilege, being able to do this work, and being able to pursue graduate school. –Renee

Renee’s dilemma, that she could consider herself as existing, and holding similar positionalities, as co-ethnics as a function of her embodiment but simultaneously collapsing the realities of class, is central in how she confronts her research. Although the role of the researcher is to investigate the lived realities of participants in order to illuminate the dynamics of societies and communities, Renee grapples with her own authenticity. Building on this, Riley describes her experiences working while completing her master’s degree which enabled her to pursue a doctoral degree:

I was able to obtain scholarships and work ridiculous hours to pay for a master’s and then get a scholarship for a PhD. That’s not always accessible for everyone. I’m very transparent when I'm working with participants and communities almost – I sometimes worry – to a fault, but I'd rather someone one hundred percent know where I’m coming from. –Riley

Riley describes a feeling of alienation based on her educational achievements, and a discomfort with the idea that she would be somehow tricking participants if she were not explicit about her own privileges. But this need to disclose, to define oneself, is particular to racialized researchers (Merriam et al., 2001). Merriam et al. (2001) explore the nuances of racialized researchers’ positionality and power. Class and education were particularly salient, as the racialized researchers in their essay reflect on their experiences and how they were perceived as both insiders and outsiders to their participants (Merriam et al., 2001). However, the practice is uncommon among non-racialized, non-gendered researchers of being “transparent” about their privileges before engaging with research participants.

Sometimes I find myself in a class position that is much lower than the people I’m interviewing, and that combined with age and race, I’m hyper-aware of how I’m presenting myself and trying to come across, as professional as I can, to put my best foot forward. - Renee

Here, Renee complicates the idea of belonging or the presumption of equality as an ipso facto good, engaging instead with the construct of professionalism. Although the extant literature has demonstrated that researcher inclusion in the subject social group leads to more accurate findings, these pieces rarely delve into the researcher’s own role. Social capital in the form of professionalism works, in many ways, as a uniform, that is, the donning of which establishes the worker as entitled to the role of scholar and interviewer. Social capital can be understood as the norms and networks used to facilitate action and cooperation broadly (Putnam, 2001). Social capital is always elusive for marginalized people, and the mechanisms through which racialized scholars are excluded from its acquisition in the predominantly White academy are varied and subtle. Yet, as the below quote demonstrates, even when researchers are purportedly in-group, they may have to claim out-group status to be understood as legitimate.

One of the things I find challenging with doing research or thinking about doing research about or with Black youth for example, research ethics, they come back to you and they say well how can you address this group and these issues that they have because it is a vulnerable group. So then for me, I respond and think about how I can identify with the group and use my professional experience [as a youth worker], training and development I have undertaken, all these things. But, yet still I’m you know—you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place, so you must continuously justify your position in order to actually execute. –Renee

Renee posits that her position as a racialized scholar has created challenges for executing her program of research with a marginalized population. Specifically, this raises an important barrier that racialized graduate student scholars may face: how they are perceived and challenged on their ability to conduct their research at various stages of the process. The existing social capital Renee has in relation to this marginalized population is framed as a potential issue rather than benefit, demonstrating potential challenges of translating racialized capital into a predominantly White institution. Racialized scholars are scrutinized for their ability to conduct their research/studies at different stages of the research process. In this example, Courtney describes some of the challenges with research ethics whereby indicating both personal and professional experiences and skills were questioned:

I’m cognizant of my privilege which can help break down barriers [with people]. When I speak to people, I’m sitting at their level. When I’m teaching, if it’s with undergrads, I’m not wearing my business suit to teach—it’s unapproachable. So for me, navigating and recognizing my position [of class and education] is something I need to be attuned to because I want everyone I’m around, and working with, to feel safe. But I also recognize that there are things that people may not want to talk about with me. –Courtney

In this example, Courtney shared her experience recognizing how her appearance, position, and environment creates an atmosphere where students feel safe. This may garner both positive and negative attention due to the standards and expectations within professional academic work settings. Throughout this section, we identified multi-dimensional notions of our positionality (Lu and Hodge, 2019), using our ability to engage in intersectional and critical reflexive practices. The multi-dimensional approach is better equipped to address the nuances and dynamics of researchers (Lu and Hodge, 2019). We believe that this is especially true for our positions as cis-gendered women graduate students from multi-racial backgrounds as we are constantly evaluating and critically examining how our positions change throughout the research process.

Intersectional Gender

When we talk about making others feel comfortable or included, it’s likely stemming from our own experiences of exclusion or feelings of discomfort, and not wanting others to experience it. It’s those things that shape not only your experiences of the world, but for me, in particular, it shapes how I interact with people to ensure they never feel excluded. –Courtney

The exclusion, invisibilizing, and overlooking of racialized women that occurs within society bleeds into academic experiences and experiences as a researcher. This leads to racialized women taking a personal stake in ensuring the needs of participants, and other junior scholars, that is based in gendered understandings of care. Courtney further explains:

You try to make people as comfortable as you can, and you see where the conversation goes, but my gender and privileges associated with my education and class is always something I’m cognizant of. So sometimes I may just wear jeans and a t-shirt to a [research] interview or to volunteer because it's going to look ridiculous if I wear a suit. It—especially with the type of research we do—is always something you have to be aware of because it will likely shape how people respond to you. –Courtney

Here Courtney discusses having to alter aspects of herself to present herself in a manner that is perceived to be minimizing her position in relation to others to carry out her roles as both a researcher in academia and non-academic settings.

As researchers, we are so lucky and fortunate that people are willing to share what they’ve been through and what that means to them. It’s something that I very much value and I’m always so appreciative of, such insightful things are said. Every time I’ve been interviewed or have been interviewed by someone, what comes up can be powerful. –Riley

This quote demonstrates how researchers are in a privileged position to be in conversation with the people that they are interviewing or conducting research with. When researching communities where the researcher is simultaneously an insider and outsider, acknowledging and recognizing their privileges contributes to their analysis and writing processes.

Conclusion

The researcher is a central figure that influences every step of the research process (Finlay, 2002). In this article, we sought to uncover the modalities of this influence for burgeoning racialized women scholars. We particularly focus on the production of qualitative research, and the ways in which research is co-constructed (Finlay, 2002). Given that the identity of the researcher is itself an aspect of the work-research, we may understand the conclusions that arise as a function of research broadly, and qualitative research particularly, as being fundamentally situated within both the researcher and participants’ own cultural systems, world views, and societal experiences (Douglas, 2017, 25; Milner IV, 2007). Uncovering these dynamics requires significant reflexivity, and our hope is for this work to have contributed to the literature.

This work draws from critical race theory, which provided a lens to examine the nature of race, racism and power dynamics, specifically how it may influence interactions and belonging in academia and community. Reflecting on our own praxis is vital within this framework and it has given us a structural paradigm through which to understand the complex push and pull between racialized researchers and co-racialized participants in The White Space of academia. The findings of this research indicate that the norms of professionalism—a gendered and racialized construct—shape these interactions.

The intersectional lens used throughout this article draws heavily from the work of Patricia Hill Collins (1998), looking meaningfully at the intersections of identity and the ways in which broader power structures may reveal or conceal themselves within our interactions as researchers and emerging scholars. In this article, the troubling of common racialized identity as an essentialized commonality between researcher and participant in qualitative research allows us to present significant nuance, using our own identities and experiences as data. We employed an intersectional understanding of reflexivity in research, one in which sameness and difference are both attended to intentionally.

Utilizing a collaborative critical autoethnography for the authors currently completing their graduate education, we have examined and extrapolated in the intricacies of our identities with respect to conducting research, and some extent, existence within the academy. As racialized cis-gender women, examining our positionality through the lens of Black feminist thought and power further informs the literature around insider-outsider status, and positionality and intersectionality. By examining themes around race and place, the nuances of privilege interacting with race, as well as experiences as gendered and racialized researchers, we have aimed to provide additional nuance of occupying roles, historically contrasting, while working in, within, and in proxy to institutions that push back through systemic measures against our existence. Much of the existing work interrogates these experiences from established scholars. As a majority of the authors are in graduate school, this article provides additional insight to those experiencing these tensions early in their academic careers.

We advocate for further critical engagement with intersectionality when discussing reflexivity, attending to similarity and differences with care and purpose. Our research adds to the growing literature that insider/outsider status is not dichotomous, but rather a living/reflexive aspect of research that must be purposefully thought about and interrogated to conduct ethical research. We also feel it essential to note that while we are grateful for our positions in our institutions, there is much to be done to make spaces welcoming to those with similar identities. Our hope is that this work provides guidance and insight to further make the academy and research welcoming and fruitful places for all.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs

Maria Brisbane

Natalie Delia Deckard

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All Things Considered: A Collaborative Critical Autoethnography of Emerging Racialized Scholars

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

Research and the Racialized Researcher

Race and Racialization

The Racialized Researcher

Axes of Identity Beyond Race

Navigating Power Dynamics in Research

Professionalism as Privilege

The Gendered, Racialized Body

Method

Analysis and Discussion

The Racialized Researcher and Place

Privileges of Class, Education Privilege, and Social Capital

Intersectional Gender

Conclusion

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Funding

ORCID iDs

References