Communication as raced practice

Communication practice is raced, situated within the interpenetrating structures of whiteness, slavery, colonialism, and capitalism that simultaneously occupy, expel, erase, constrain, and reduce diverse forms of knowing and being. How we come to communicate in the world across diverse contexts is, on one hand, shaped by the knowledge structures that constitute our interpretive frameworks, and on the other hand, shapes the structures of (re)producing knowledge. In a transformative intervention, ‘‘Race matters’ in the Journal of Applied Communication Research,’ published in 2008, Mark P. Orbe and Brenda J. Allen interrogated through a critical reading the ways in which questions of race have been systematically erased from applied communication scholarship. They offered a typology for approaching race matters in applied communication scholarship and made six recommendations, (a) centralize race in applied communication scholarship; (b) resist the myth that race issues are salient only in certain settings; (c) engage in intersectional research; (d) explore the impact of methodological choices on research processes and outcomes; (e) explore the racialized dynamics of power at micro- and macro- levels; and (f) promote an engaged scholarship model for research on race.

The architecture of applied communication has been shaped by whiteness, taking-for-granted as universal the values of hegemonic white culture. Reproduced through knowledge categories that are generated from largely U.S.-based scholarship carried out with white populations, the body of this applied communication literature defines communication practice in the image of whiteness. This parochial framing of communication practice then severely limits how we come to understand and respond to problems emergent from and rooted in racism. Worse, the historic whiteness of applied communication scholarship reproduces racist norms in framing how we approach communication problems and go about finding solutions to them. Racism, in other words, is both a central problem in itself, and an embedded problem that underlies the applied approaches to addressing contemporary global challenges ranging from hunger, poverty and inequality to climate change.

It is, therefore, with great humility and admiration that I introduce this special issue ‘‘Race matters’ in applied communication research: Past, present, and future”’ edited by Mark P. Orbe, Jasmine T. Austin, and Brenda J. Allen. First, I want to note that these scholars are significant scholars in the discipline who have embodied the ethos of anti-racist scholarship by placing their bodies on the line. Second, the powerful critique they bring to the conversation on applied communication scholarship unsettles the hegemonic categories of applied communication. Here I note with humility that the 2008 intervention written by Mark and Brenda was not published in the Journal of Applied Communication Research. Their intervention interrogates the extent to which racism in editorial processes has historically shaped what gets published in our journals and what gets excluded. Moreover, it raises the question about the racism that is scripted into the blind peer review process itself, leading me to question my complicity in the reproduction of whiteness through participation in the normative editorial process established within disciplinary structures. To what extent do the peer review infrastructures of our journals reproduce the whiteness of the disciplinary ethos, silencing difficult questions that interrogate disciplinary whiteness? To what extent do existing formations of power mark and target those who raise difficult and necessary questions? To the extent that whiteness enacts and perpetuates its power and control through closed doors and opaque processes, how can we make transparent and accountable the black box of reviewing?

Mark, Jasmine, and Brenda suggest that opportunities for publishing applied communication research must be broadened, infusing race matters scholarship across the discipline and beyond. The articles in this special issue depict the powerful ways in which racist power and control are enacted across diverse contexts including schools, chambers of commerce, educational institutions, healthcare, and media organizations. They critically interrogate the ways in which race is a site of struggle across micro-, meso-, and macro-levels, offering openings for imagining anti-racist practices. I invite you to dialogue with the articles in this special issue, cite them extensively, and draw on the lessons they offer to center race in how you approach applied communication scholarship.