"Black Dead Thing": Conducting Research With Black Boys in an Era of Public Black Death

• In Event: "Dangers Seen, Unseen, and Unforeseen": The Experiences of Black Male Researchers Interviewing K–12 Black Males

Abstract

This paper examines how researchers can benefit from acknowledging the impact of racial trauma present in their lives in an effort to scaffold a transformative space of racial healing for themselves and the youth of color they engage with. Since the author began his doctoral studies, the extrajudicial killing of Black citizens has been ceaseless. Throughout the immediate-past academic year, the author conducted focus groups with elementary and middle school Black male students in efforts to learn about their schooling experiences; particularly investigating what barriers they see to their success both in school and society. However, deeply troubled by the national and international attention given to the aforementioned killings, the author became interested in the emotional process of conducting research with Black boys in this current era of the public death of Black boys.

Researchers have documented that living in a world, or system rather, where one’s life is not valued is psychologically damaging (Du Bois, 2007; Pierce, 1974; Steele, 2010). When engaging in conversations around race and oppression in school settings with Black males in this project, they expressed a range of emotions from frustration and anger to hopelessness and numbness. As a result, the author often thought about how he might partner with students to initiate a process of healing to help them transfer their energies into productive strategies that lead to the successful navigation of their academic and social worlds. However, the author understood that despite his position as a researcher, he is also a Black male that has experienced and continues to experience trauma. Where is the Black male researcher’s space for healing?

The above question guides this dilemma in qualitative research, which is, how do researchers help initiate a process of healing for themselves while simultaneously scaffolding a process of healing for their participants? Building on the notion of racism as traumatic (Burstow, 2003; Daniel, 2000; Harvey, 1996; Sanchez-Hucles, 1999), the author uses racial trauma as the theoretical framework, which, according to Sorsoli (2008, p. 101), can occur for people of color throughout their lifetime; tearing at one’s self-esteem, shaping one’s relationship with the larger world, and, potentially, having a complexly traumatic impact on the developing individual. The author purports that researchers from historically marginalized communities doing work with and for those communities experience racial trauma, and that they must acknowledge the effects of this trauma present in their lives. More specifically, the paper takes an in-depth look into a Black males’ engagement in research with Black males and the conceptualization of creating a research space with students that is transformative and healing for both the researcher and the research participants.

The scholarly significance of this work is present in the author’s complication and extension of the notion that research is me-search by exposing the often-emotional racial traumas present in the “me.” Additionally, research that addresses the experiences of Black male researchers through the analytical frameworks of racial trauma and racial healing are close to non-existent.

Author

• Justin Avery Coles, Michigan State University