A political investment: revisiting race and racism in the research process

Abstract

This paper draws upon a two-year Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded study into the educational strategies of the black middle classes to examine the role of race and racism in the research process. Specifically, it explores how my political positioning and experiences of racism, as a black female scholar, shaped not only my engagement with the research but also how I was perceived and positioned by others. This is analysed in terms of three areas: the recruitment and identification of research participants, the interview process and the dissemination of the project findings. While consideration of the researcher's race and racial politics tended to run parallel to or quietly intersect with the project development, fieldwork and analysis, it is argued that these factors, in actuality, play a significant and highly informative role in shaping a broader, nuanced conceptualisation of race and racism that is too often silenced and neglected in race research and the academy as a whole. Informed by Fanon and Critical Race Theory, it is posited that these seemingly peripheral race moments need to be foregrounded, named and analysed not just by scholars of colour but also by white colleagues electing to do race research. Such call to action remains fundamental within a wider socio-political context that increasingly is devoid of meaningful engagement with race and racism.

Keywords:

• Critical Race Theory
• whiteness
• Fanon
• race consciousness
• race matching
• methodology

Acknowledgement

Economic & Social Research Council Project Reference RES-062-23-1880.

Notes

1. That is, member of faculty.

2. Within the UK, the term ‘Black Caribbean’ is used to refer to Black families who can identify their heritage as being from the Caribbean. It is a term that can be applied to first-generation Caribbean families (who migrated to the UK in significant numbers in the 1950s and 1960s) as well as to subsequent, younger generations.

3. National Standard, Socio-Economic Classification.

4. In other words, contributing equally to the project development, design and funding application.

5. These campaigners seek to reclaim the use of ‘African’ as more appropriately defining the identities of those of Caribbean and African heritage (The African Or Black Question http://taobq.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/TAOBQ, accessed 17 November 2012).

6. That is those Black families who can identify their heritage as being from the continent of Africa. As with ‘Black Caribbean’, ‘Black African’ can apply across generation and is not limited to those born in Africa per se.

7. Within quoted text, ‘…’ denotes a pause while ‘(…)’ indicates where text has been edited for brevity or clarity.

8. These social events included dinner parties, public talks and gatherings that largely attracted a Black middle-class demographic mainly of whom had initially met through professional circles. Sometimes the boundaries between my professional and social networks blur. Experiences of racism and class position serve or inform, in some ways, the boundaries of Black middle class space.

9. This in itself can be regarded as a type of false empathy.

10. Although clearly due to issues of power, this has different implications for a white person compared to Black.

11. One Black colleague laughed when I explained the situation to him, referring to it as the ‘Obama effect’ to denote the high expectations that many Black people across the world had invested in the first, then recently elected, Black President of America. The Black middle-classes project began in 2009, the same year that Barack Obama began his first term.

12. While the definition of middle class varies, quite fundamentally, these findings echo research about the African-American middle class carried out in the USA (e.g. Lacy, 2007; Moore, 2008; Patillo-Mckoy, 1999).