Culture, race and spirit: a reflective model for the study of African‐Americans

Abstract

The author introduces a reflective model of racial, cultural and spiritual engagement for researchers and research participants in an attempt to guide them in the development of perhaps more empowering research about African‐Americans. The model focuses on three essential areas to help guide researchers and participants: the cultural self, the racial self and the spiritual self. Maintaining and centralizing these areas in the study of African‐Americans can be critical in developing empowering research that produces knowledge to inform theory, research and practice. The interrelated phases of reflection in the model are (a) researcher/participant racial and cultural identity reflection; (b) spiritual reflection; (c) history/literature on race, culture and spirit; and (d) situational context. After a review of the literature on the cultural, racial and spiritual line, the author introduces the model and concludes with examples of the model in practice.

Notes

1. My notions of reflection have been inspired by the work of Freire (1998) and Zeichner and Liston (1996). I am defining race in this article as the essence and implications of a person’s skin color and the legal, historical, social and structural issues that frame how we perceive each other in society and thus the field of education. Please note, this discussion is not meant to assert generalizations about any group of racial beings. There is a wide range of diversity even within various races of people. I am defining culture in this article as implicit and explicit characteristics of a person that are developed through historical and current experiences, knowledge disposition, skills and ways of understanding that are informed by race (the color of one’s skin), ethnicity (history, heritage, customs, rituals, values, symbols), identity (how one perceives and represents himself/herself), class (economic/resource situation) and gender. These ways of knowing or seeing are often passed along through generations but not necessarily. Culture can be seen as a dynamic construct—one that is constantly changing based on experiences, opportunities, and challenges in the world.

2. For instance, the literature points to how many African‐Americans have been exploited through insensitive research; other work has pointed to deficit perspectives that focus on what African‐Americans do not bring into a situation rather than what they bring (Ford, 1996).