Utilizing Critical Autoethnography to Interrogate the Role of Positionality in Critical Qualitative Inquiry

• In Event: Decolonizing the "Critical": Working With Stakeholders to Dismantle Whiteness in Qualitative Education Research

Abstract

Purpose. There is a much-needed push for non-Black researchers, particularly those studying historically marginalized communities, to identify their positionality in choosing to engage in such work. Non-Black researchers are justly critiqued for the ways they research “on” rather than “with” communities (Haddix, 2015). These practices have been characterized as a form of colonization that perpetuate White institutional supremacy. If critical qualitative inquiry is intended to interrogate structures of power, how, then, can we expect such outcomes to occur when we neglect to consider our own roles in reifying these structures? In this paper, I ask: What role and responsibility do non-Black researchers, who represent a majority of university-level stakeholders, have when conducting research in Black communities and/or among other racialized people?

Framework. Critical Race Theory (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995) is an epistemological approach to understanding how race, racism, and White supremacy function as governing structures in our society. Two main tenets inform my interpretation: 1) the permanence and pervasiveness of racism, and 2) Whiteness as property. The first tenet guided me to consider how racism pervades the purportedly neutral research we engage in, while the second tenet points to the power and privileges of Whiteness that researchers presume when approaching communities of color.

Methods and data sources. Employing Boylorn and Orbe’s (2015) definition of critical autoethnography, I conducted a “cultural analysis through personal narrative” (p. 17) on how power, race, and researcher positionality are inextricably tied together in qualitative inquiry. As an Asian American scholar, I engaged in self-reflexivity that spanned personal experiences—as an elementary school teacher and graduate student—to societal events, particularly the 2016 Presidential election. The data sources were selected based on: 1) their influential role in helping me see how race, White supremacy, and complicity to Whiteness continue to thrive in our
country, and 2) how they functioned as a catalyst for engaging me in anti-racist scholarship and activism.

Results/Significance. The price for admission to gain access into Black and Latinx communities is often paid with the lives of community stakeholders (members of such communities). This study asks non-Black researchers, as another kind of stakeholder (institutional), to interrogate how Whiteness has allowed forced access into these communities, and what price needs to be paid for continuing to research in these contexts.

Author

• Alice Y Lee, University of California - Riverside