Contextualizing Inequality with Ethnographic Interviews (Pre-Recorded)

• In Event: Pluralism Meets Pluralism: Ethnography, Decolonization, and Civic Engagement

Abstract

The resurgence of Black Lives Matter protests in summer 2020 made the content of my fall course on “Inequality in America” all the more relevant and important. But how to ensure the successful delivery of this content on racial inequality in the US – with all its academic, emotional, and ethical considerations – to my largely international student body at an American university campus in Qatar? Educators who follow anti-racist pedagogy (Adams et al. 2016; Gay 2018; Hammond 2014; Kernahan 2019) are particularly cognizant of the need to develop “students’ skills for self-reflection and self-awareness” (Ortega et al. 2018, 35; see also Saad 2020), and this learning goal was one of my main objectives for the class.

I found the following teaching strategy particularly useful for facilitating the application of theoretical concepts of inequality, promoting self-reflection, and strengthening empathy, a strategy that can be applied to any learning community – in the US or abroad. Specifically, I worked with my student TA to create a package of ethnographic interviews on Black and POC (people of color) experiences in Qatar, and built this original research into the class’s first major assessment. This teaching strategy is based on my philosophy that knowledge is strengthened through diversity, and that each student is not just an active participant but also a valued contributor to the learning environment. One important way to demonstrate that individual student voices matter is to create a horizontal structure of learning in the classroom, where students share their work with each other (Mitchell 2019). Much pedagogical research shows that student-led learning promotes understanding of and critical engagement with course materials (Kang, Bonk, and Kim 2011; Williams and Lahman 2011). In fact, Ellison and Wu (2008) demonstrate that student engagement with peer-created material was equally or more helpful for understanding course content and concepts as was writing their own material.

I worked with my student TA during the summer of 2020 to conduct ethnographic interviews with community members in the university and in the wider environs of Doha, Qatar. Due to the ongoing pandemic, these interviews were conducted remotely, via phone or computer. I trained my TA in ethnographic, semi-structured interview methods (Bernard 2018), which combine the comfort of a one-on-one conversation with the gentle rigor of a guided list of research topics and suggested questions, and, as such, are particularly useful for creating rapport and obtaining deep research findings. All interviewees were protected with pseudonyms and all identifying details were removed during transcription. The final research document comprised 23 pages, including a short introduction and conclusion by the TA, and 36 interviews with Black people, POC, and Qataris.

These ethnographic interviews were assigned to the students at the end of the first unit (five weeks) of class, after we had learned important theoretical concepts about race and racism, such as the social construction of difference, privilege and intersectionality, and microaggressions, and an overview of how these concepts play out in the socioeconomic history and politics of the US. The students were then asked, in their Unit 1 Essays, to reflect on how these key ideas, terms, and concepts travel across contexts by using the TA’s ethnographic interviews to discuss their own positionality and the inequalities inherent in our community here in Qatar.

The student assessments demonstrated that engagement with the TA’s research solidified their learning and their ability to apply theoretical concepts of inequality in the American context to their communities and experiences in Qatar. Of particular note was the deep learning of the Qatari students in the classroom, who were able to connect concepts, such as White supremacy, to “a Qatari variety of supremacy which rationalizes and reproduces Qatari advantage in the political, social, and cultural institutions of society” over expatriate residents. The ethnographic interviews were directly cited as evidence that helped make these connections. As another Qatari student wrote in her reflection, “It is one thing to comprehend and acknowledge the prevalent racism and its extensive history in the United States but another thing to recognize that such injustice and inequality exists in our community here in Qatar. [The TA’s] ethnographic interviews put the concept of anti-Blackness in the spotlight by showcasing how it’s being carried out in our community here. The most important tool that ethnographic interviews possess is their power in shifting peoples’ perspective by looking into others’ personal and lived experiences.”

I look forward to sharing further insights on the use of ethnographic interviews to facilitate student learning, reflection, and ownership about inequality in their own communities.

Author

• Jocelyn Sage Mitchell, Northwestern University in Qatar