Racially-just epistemologies and methodologies that disrupt whiteness (part II)

Introduction

In part two of this special issue, we continue to explore Boaventura de Sousa Santos’ (2014) clarion call to embrace ‘ecologies of knowledges’ as educational researchers. Santos (2014) reminds us that as educational researchers who are committed to social justice, we cannot draw boundaries between ‘inquiries into ways of knowing’ from ‘inquiries into ways of intervening in the world with the purpose of attenuating or eliminating the oppression, domination, and discrimination caused by global capitalism, colonialism and patriarchy’ (p. 238). For Santos, epistemologies which stem from the Global South are born out of struggle against oppressive systems, and hence it is little wonder that Eurocentric critical theorists do not recognize or comprehend the practices, ways of knowing, and values that stem from the Global South. Critics of pursuing racial justice within educational research may argue that such epistemologies, methodologies, methods and reflections are not only deeply political and ill-placed in a field such as educational research, but that they also fall short of conventional standards of rigour and validity. However, issues of legitimacy are neither new nor specific to racially-just epistemologies and methodologies. As Evans-Winters (2019) suggests, ‘our “truths” must be validated from within, with less concern for how outsiders legitimate (or receive and perceive) our assertions’ (p. 23). Moreover, national organizations such as the American Educational Research Association (AERA) have not only acknowledged the legitimacy of theories such as Critical Race Theory (CRT) within educational research, but also issued a memorandum in 2009 to honour the contribution of CRT as ‘humanities-oriented research’ (Matias 2021, p. 4). Scholars such as Cheryl Matias and Venus Evans-Winters and others engaging in racially-just epistemologies and methodologies have also challenged this imposed gatekeeping and exclusion by traditional empiricists (not to be confused with empirical), which not only undermine methods such as counter stories but also continue to reinforce deficit narratives of marginalized communities.

The papers in this special issue confront this history of gatekeeping as well as revealing the cost of adopting theories, methodologies, methods and positionalities that are ‘consistently swimming against the current’ (Ladson-Billings 1998, p. 28), so that they may expose racism within education and educational research and propose radical solutions. These papers are consciously political because historically, educational research has problematized many minoritized communities to construct the dominant political discourse. They also speak to the dangers of co-optation and the intellectual erasure of scholars of colour from within educational research, when mainstream scholars are eager to utilize racially-just methods without careful reflection.

The papers in the second special issue

This special issue begins with a paper by Jackson et al. (2022), which (re)visions oral history research and traces its Indigenous roots. The authors argue that oral history has not only been co-opted by mainstream researchers but also separated from its Black and Indigenous values and traditions. Jackson et al. (2022) draw on Dillard’s (2006) work, illustrating how oral history is deeply connected to a consciousness that is essentially spiritual in nature. They remind educational researchers that the methodology of oral history entails grave ethical considerations, which involves ‘being intellectually, emotionally, physically, and spiritually ready to fully absorb cultural knowledge’ (Jackson et al. 2022, p. 5). They stress the importance of utilizing a ‘just us’ methodology that is authentic and which helps them to focus on their own connections to the communities they are situated in. In their paper, each author provides their own narrative of how they engaged with spirituality, storytelling and becoming aligned to Indigenous ways of knowing and researching.

For instance, Gallo’s narrative within Jackson et al. (2022) shows us how as a historian of LGBT movements, oral history provided her with the tools to trace the contributions of marginalized activists such as Cleo Glenn within those movements in San Francisco. Watson’s narrative in this paper utilizes the practice of walking meditation (Thich Nhat Hanh 2011) to reflect on her teaching and scholarship. By adopting a ‘child-like’ approach, she revisits and re-reads various scholars of colour such as Audre Lorde, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and others who have theorized from and storied their communities, using this to inform her own practice. Watson’s research with Black women in the gaming and entertainment industry also results in powerful storytelling from her participants, and a recognition of their history as American history. In a similar vein, Watson reflects on her own experiences of doing oral history and how it transformed her relationship with students who were a part of her teacher education research project. Every individual narrative in Jackson et al. (2022) stresses the essential role of building a community when doing oral history, as well as incorporating spirituality and healing when addressing the erasure of histories of those communities which exist on the margins.

The second paper in this special issue proposes a new micro-theoretical framework to examine the experiences of Muslim Americans. Noor Ali (2022) provides us with the much-needed innovation of MusCrit as a subset of CRT, created to specifically examine the educational experiences of young Muslims in the context of increasing Islamophobia. Ali (2022) explores how CRT has contributed to the development of various subsets (e.g. TribalCrit, DisCrit, LatCrit, QueerCrit, etc.), and more importantly, why a new subset is needed to critically challenge the racialization of Muslims. The author highlights how historically Muslim cultures have not only been presented as threatening, but that this projection has been ‘written by whiteness … ’ which ‘claims to comprehend people better than they understand themselves, offering a decoding of their worldview, and creating a narrative for them but without them and despite them’ (p. 7).

Ali develops MusCrit from their own longitudinal research utilizing narrative inquiry, and in working with female Muslim American students against the backdrop of Donald Trump in the U.S. Presidential elections of 2016 and 2020. Whilst MusCrit follows the strong tenets of CRT with a focus on counternarratives and intersectionality, notably, Ali (2022) adds the additional following tenets: (1) A focus on the oppression of Muslims that effectively categorizes them as threatening and irrational; (2) Muslimness as an identifier (e.g. Arabic name); (3) A consideration of how gender mediates this racialization; (4) Highlighting counternarratives that challenge mainstream discourse; (5) An examination of how whiteness as the norm consequently positions Muslims as requiring ‘white-washing’; and finally (6) A renewed focus on allyship that can help draw attention to the injustice of Islamophobia. Ultimately, Ali’s (2022) framework offers a relevant and critical tool for any Western scholar who is keen to examine educational experiences in the context of Islamophobia, to gain a nuanced understanding of the discrimination that Muslim students may face within education.

Boda et al. (2022) revisit Walter Mignolo’s (2011) call for epistemic disobedience (as discussed in part one of this special issue [Rizvi 2022]), by asking us to critically challenge a colonial mentality as well as the ontological erasure of disability when pursuing racially-just epistemologies and methodologies. Boda et al. (2022) urge educational researchers to leave behind a mono-categorical analysis of racism that excludes other liminal identities, positionalities and cultures. The authors in this paper urge fellow scholars to take up Wanda Pillow’s (2019) advocacy of epistemic witnessing if they are committed to decolonizing educational research. Pillow (2019) has defined epistemic witnessing as ‘a call to theoretically engage; to shake off epistemic laziness; challenge theoretical oppression and the privilege that comes with it and to hold research/ers responsible for doing this work’ (p. 183). Boda et al. (2022) query those educational researchers who are quick to adopt or engage with justice-oriented or decolonizing theories, before considering whether is it appropriate to use that particular theoretical framework in their particular context, and whether they have done extensive reading on how oppression is experienced in intersecting/intermeshing ways.

Boda et al. (2022) remind us that much of the scholarship produced within special education tends to reinforce deficit narratives about disabled students, which positions them as ‘less than’ normative standards and which is often written ‘about’ them rather than written ‘with’ them. This type of scholarship risks making disabled people the objects of research. The authors state that whilst they do not believe it is necessary to create new disability-just methods, it is important that existing racially-just approaches centre on disability and other liminal positions and acknowledge the interlocking oppressive structures. This is particularly important for able-bodied researchers who may overlook the role of power and positionality within disability research.

The fourth paper in this special issue by Calderon-Berumen et al. (2022) also takes up the baton for epistemic witnessing, highlighting the use of pláticas and testimonios as epistemological and methodological ways of disrupting Eurocentric spaces within educational research. The authors identify themselves as Malintzin, Latin American researchers who hold multiple positionalities within and outside academia who are ‘learning to control how and where to share and interpret ours’ and our participants’ stories’ (Calderon-Berumen et al. 2022, p. 2). As discussed in part one of this special issue (Rizvi 2022), pláticas and testimonios have strong roots within Chicana feminist movements and draw upon cultural, familial and experiential knowledge of Latin communities. These epistemologies and methodologies exist because for women of colour scholars, ‘many a times the opportunity to show who we are is taken away from us’ (Calderon-Berumen et al. 2022, p. 3), and these approaches disrupt this epistemicide. The authors also acknowledge the cost of using such methodologies, and how it often affects their prospects for career progression and tenure when colleagues assess their scholarship and research practices as not being objective or rigorous enough. However, the authors seek validation from within their own communities and from the guidelines laid out by Global South scholars. Espinosa-Dulanto and O’Donald then provide us with their testimonios within this paper to document their struggles, their trauma of constantly having to navigate these borderlands, and of theorizing from their own lived experiences. By sharing their pláticas and testimonios with other women, scholars and communities, the authors are adamant on the need to create spaces within educational research that do not require mainstream scholars to validate or attest to the relevance of such epistemologies and methodologies.

The next paper by Young and Young (2022) offers a fresh and much-needed QuantCrit intervention, as an alternative to conventional statistical practice when researching the achievement of Black students in the U.S. Young and Young (2022) illustrate how problematic the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is for assessing the current national achievement gaps, because it uses between-group differences among White students and Black students. They posit that whilst White students become the standard for group analyses, such analyses ignore statistically significant differences between Asian and White students where Asian students perform better. This type of analysis reinforces a ‘racial achievement hierarchy’ (Young and Young 2022, p. 4), and does not really capture within-group variance and growth.

Young and Young (2022) present the results of two meta-analytic studies, using data from Long-Term Trend (LTT) NAEP assessment to measure the achievement of Black students. In the first study they use White students as a comparison group to measure achievement, and in the second study, they utilize a single group summary meta-analysis that measures mean differences longitudinally. The authors offer their readers a QuantCrit methodology as a counter-analysis to represent statistically stigmatized and stereotyped students (4S) in more nuanced and holistic way. Their QuantCrit approach has five tenets: (1) Centres on racism; (2) Refutes the neutrality in numbers; (3) Challenges the assumption that conventional categories are a given; (4) Focuses on giving voice; and finally, (5) Utilizes numbers for racial justice. By using a QuantCrit lens, Young and Young (2022) show us how to de-centre whiteness at the data collection stage rather than to do this retrospectively after the data has been collected.

The sixth paper, authored by Tanksley and Estrada (2022), echoes the concerns of Jackson et al. (2022) that existing ‘inclusive’ methodologies and frameworks need to examine the role of race, power and positionality and how this mediates the field experiences of women of colour scholars (Rizvi 2019). Tanksley and Estrada (2022) focus on Research-Practice Partnerships (RPP) as a framework, which has over the years explored the inequitable relationships between school practitioners and university researchers but which is, nonetheless, based on the assumption that practitioners occupy a minoritized status and researchers hold institutional power and privilege. The authors challenge this assumption by questioning what happens ‘when the roles are reversed?’ (Tanksley and Estrada 2022, p. 2), and examine whether frameworks such as RPP are appropriate when the researchers involved occupy a historically minoritized status and practitioners occupy privileged positions. They also critique how race-evasive frameworks weaponize ‘niceness’ (Davis 2016), leaving scholars of colour ‘hyper-vulnerable to and under-protected from racial and gender microaggressions’ (Tanksley and Estrada 2022, p. 3).

Reflecting on their experiences of jointly working on a research project that employed RPP that used a critical race counternarrative approach, Tanksley and Estrada (2022) highlight how teacher/researcher collaborative meetings can demonstrate ‘niceness’ in action – whereby White researchers and practitioners undervalue and invalidate the experiences of Black scholars and label them as too aggressive. These frameworks are also ill-equipped to stop the racism experienced in real time by Black and Chicana researchers. Based on their experiences, the authors suggest that RPP requires reforming from a critical race (CR) perspective and propose a revised framework, namely CR-RPP which: (1) Recognizes that white supremacy and institutional racism are deeply embedded within school practices; (2) Considers how power imbalance mediates researcher/practitioner partnerships; (3) Consistently addresses racism and forms of oppression during such partnerships; (4) ‘Privileging’ rather than creating equal opportunities to participate; and lastly, (5) Making the overriding goal of such partnerships to be to improve student and community experiences rather than benefitting the partners in this relationship. Tanksley and Estrada (2022) critically unpack how methods and methodologies can be performative and become sites of real oppression for those who hold liminal positionalities, and why conversations around intersecting oppressive structures are essential if research is to create meaningful change.

In the final paper in this special issue, Perez et al. (2022) invite our readers to embrace new knowledges, and to reconnect our mind-body-spirit by engaging with Black and Chicana feminism and Womanism scholarship. Drawing on the works of Collins (2008), hooks (1994), Anzaldúa (1987), and Maparyan (2012), Perez et al. (2022) illustrate how BIPoC scholars can find ‘theoretical homes’ (p. 2) that disrupt oppressive research practices. The authors’ work demonstrates theories in the flesh, ‘one where the physical realities of our lives – our skin color, the land or concrete we grew up on, our sexual longings – all fuse to create a politic born out of necessity’ (Perez et al. 2022, p. 3). Whilst the authors acknowledge that each theory or school of thought has its own tenets and standpoints, there is an opportunity for scholars from these different positionalities to engage in ‘interrogating various forms of oppression and coalition building’ (Perez et al. 2022, p. 2), and to recognize that all oppressive systems are interlinked.

As examples for their readers, Jones and Abril-Gonzalez also provide their own narratives of reconnecting with theories in the flesh in this paper. They show us how they have engaged with Black and Chicana feminist epistemology in their research and practice. One of the examples provided by Abril-Gonzalez talks to how researchers can utilize ‘funds of knowledge’ and build long-term relationships with their communities. Abril-Gonzalez not only incorporates poems as part of documenting and witnessing the fears, hopes and dreams of bilingual Latinx second graders as they progress through to high school, but also shows how relationships within research need to be based on ‘confianza, kindness and care’ (Perez et al. 2022, p. 7). An important concluding point that the authors make, is that coalition building requires recognition of the link between anti-Blackness and other forms of oppression that different communities of colour experience. This point is not to be taken lightly, as it does require non-Black researchers to carefully consider their proximity to whiteness and how their power and positionality frames their analyses of educational issues.

The issue concludes with a book review by Smith (2022) of the recent publication by Caine et al. (2022) on ‘Narrative inquiry: Philosophical Roots’. As reflected in this review, the book invites readers to engage with different epistemologies and philosophies of narrative inquiry and offers a theorization based on experiential knowledge.

Possibilities, responsibilities, and the next steps

In part one of this special issue (Rizvi 2022), we asked ourselves what we could learn if we opened ourselves up to different knowledge systems and reimagined educational research. Matias (2021) suggests that whilst mainstream White scholars occasionally do get to reimagine and ‘theorise education in ways that make educational researchers think, practice, and test anew, this latitude is not afforded to scholars of color’ (p. 3). The papers in part two of this special issue have highlighted how traditional epistemologies, methodologies or methods either require revisioning, or that we need entirely new epistemologies, methodologies and frameworks that are more relevant to and speak more closely to scholars of colour and their communities. The contributors in this special issue urge us to think carefully about how existing racially-just methods may reinforce ableism and patriarchy in the absence of an intersectional analysis, as well as introducing new and innovative racially-just frameworks such as MusCrit.

Papers in this special issue also demand educational researchers to bear witness to different forms of injustice. This form of witnessing is a major consideration in Black feminism, Chicana feminism, Womanism and other critical racially-just theoretical perspectives. Pillow (2019) calls for more witnesses and the ‘need [for] methodological stories; records of lives lived, thought and retold; data that compels and confuses; witnessings that confront ontological gaps and epistemological arrogances and are told with decolonial attitude and reparative love along scored, lenticular edges of responsibility’ (p. 130). One might ask what is the outcome of such witnessing for educational researchers in the context of state-sanctioned brutality of minoritized communities, whether in the form of police brutality of Black lives or immigration raids on undocumented people or the mass surveillance of Muslim communities? Evans-Winters (2019) suggests that as a result of research that was framed through a CRT lens, we now know that both the severity and frequency of school punishments meted out against Black girls and boys are greater than children from other communities. Therefore, as educational researchers we have a responsibility to root out false equivalencies, and the myths of colour-evasiveness and meritocracy, so that we can understand how communities of colour continue to be problematized by research. The papers in both special issues demand that educational researchers adopt an asset-based perspective and address the power and privilege they hold when they enter the research field.

The initial motivation for these special issues was to uncover whiteness in educational research and create space for BIPoC scholars, and for Global Majority scholars to share their practices, methods and ways of knowing that ‘talk back’ to the Western interpretation of their lived experiences (hooks 1989, p. 9, Collins 1990). It is clear from each paper included in both special issues that we have merely scratched the surface. Black American, Pan-African, Indigenous, Asian, Latinx/Chicanx, and Global Majority scholars have been publishing scholarship in this field over the last four decades and have enriched the field of educational research with different ecologies of knowledges as a form of epistemic disobedience. However, we cannot expect this vast undertaking to be the burden solely of BIPoC scholars and Global Majority scholars. Reform and revisioning is needed at various levels and areas of educational research, beginning with the teaching of educational research methods, to understanding the politics of citational practices, to dismantling gatekeeping and creating spaces within journals and editorial boards, and to changing the ways we research with racialized communities. Each of us serves in all these positions, in editorial boards of journals, as reviewers, as instructors/educators of future researchers and teachers, or as faculty members in mostly White departments. My hope is that every scholar within the field of education approaches racially-just goals with intellectual humility and makes the changes necessary in their own everyday practices at every level possible.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).