In Battle With Myself: An Autoethnography on Encountering Race

• In Event: Taking Responsibility: Autoethnography as Reflexive Practice in Social Studies Research and Teaching

Abstract

“It’s so frustrating (and exhausting!) when all you want to do is combat injustices and racism and prejudice, but you find out that you have to constantly battle yourself”
(author journal entry).

As a social studies teacher educator seeking to research and teach in social studies and toward social justice, I often ask my students to dig deep within themselves, to talk about prejudice and discrimination (both overt and covert), and become comfortable with being a little uncomfortable—especially for the sake of getting to know their students and themselves better. This autoethnography takes a journey through my own stories, experiences, discomforts, and evolution in addressing race-related issues in social studies education and research. Working toward social justice requires deliberate introspection and self-examination to decrease and avoid my own oppressive behaviors as a privileged, White educator and researcher. In a sense, it is necessary to turn the critical eye inward as “[r]eflexivity is a space in which to call into question the production and re-production of inequitable power relations” (Carrillo, 2014, p. 54). Therefore, I ask myself: how do I push my own boundaries, put myself in new locations/experiences, and allow myself to experience discomfort in order to grow as a person and an educator? How do I as a teacher and researcher engage in the deep reflection and reflexivity that must accompany such experiences? How do my past experiences influence how I interact with others in the present? And how does my role as researcher and educator work to end oppressive perspectives on race? This autoethnography arose out of an attempt to answer these questions and is particularly focused on continuing to unpack my viewpoints of and experiences with race, particularly in regards to Blackness, on a local, national, and global level.

Like Wall (2006), “I find that the relentless nudging of autoethnography against the world of traditional science holds wonderful, symbolic, emancipatory promise” (p. 3). The reflexive practice of autoethnography, therein, is an important practice as an educator and researcher, especially in social studies, where we are seeking to educate diverse democracies. In order to educate diverse democracies, we must first seek to understand how we interact with the “diverse.” Autoethnography allows the space to question our cultural lives in the world and the (capital “H”) Histories that dominate our knowledge of that world (Spry, 2011). In all, this performative autoethnography (Spry 2001; 2011) places my recent experiences, my research, and my desires for equitable education for all children in conversation with memories and journal entries from the past that shaped how I came to view the world, others, and myself.

Author

• Rebecca C. Aguayo, University of Missouri