Committing Acts of Sabotage: Black Women's Knowledge as Legitimate

• In Event: "Disruption, Interruption, Change...It's Not Enough. What We Need Is Sabotage": Critical Participatory Inquiry as Sabotage in/of the Academy

Abstract

Objectives or purposes: The university environment has a chilling effect on underrepresented populations, but recently as a result of racial turmoil and injustice in America this pressure has created circumstances to really examine the many facets of white supremacy and systematic injustice. The recent outcry of racial injustice in the American education system demonstrated in academic spaces, such as #BlackInTheIvory created by founders Joy Melody Woods and Dr. Shardé Davis, reveal the prevalent nature of racism and discrimination in higher education. This manuscript examines the author’s experience in a critical participatory action research (CPAR) study with first-generation college women of the African Diaspora and draws on Black feminist theory as an act of sabotage by centering Black women’s knowledge as legitimate.

Modes of Inquiry: A group of 20 women, representing a wide range of the African diaspora, operated as a research collective to examine the impact of systematic racism in higher education and explored our intersectional identities as first-generation college students. The author realized early on that by centering Black women’s experiences as a research collective, in which co-researchers were highly involved in the research process, Black women’s knowledge was at the center and their ideas were privileged and thus encouraged Black feminist empowerment. This manuscript draws on a Black feminist critical participation action research and interrupts Western cannons around research as it centers women of the African Diaspora’s experiences and considers how Black women’s knowledge is intelligible. The research is inspired by Black feminist foremother Anna Julia Cooper (1892), Black Feminist Thought (Collins,1990), endarkened feminist epistemology (Dillard, 2000), and Black Participatory Research (Drame & Irby, 2016).

Conclusions and Significance: The merit of research is often relegated to trustworthiness and predicated on the researcher’s ability to demonstrate validity of research. Engaging in a Black feminist critical participatory action research commits to acts of sabotage that disrupts power dynamics that fail to center Black women’s knowledge as legitimate. Though Black women’s work is historical unintelligible, by positioning it as a site of possibility over burden and investing in Black feminist theoretical thought the marginalizing effects of research is challenged. The act of engaging in antiracist and antisexist research seeks to sabotage Western ideologies around research. Throughout this study women shared experiences in which their knowledge was questioned, misunderstood and oftentimes disrupted. Not only is this work significant to sabotage normative claims around research and knowledge but also important in creating a new trajectory for future research.

Author

• Sharrell Hassell-Goodman, George Mason University