When a Textbook Blows Your Mind, You Might Be Privileged

In reading Esposito and Evans-Winters (2021) for class, I am not sure what I expected - but already it has blown my mind. 

Maybe it is the fact that I have not read enough books by women of color writing in their field. I have read several books by People of Color that have focused on an audience of practicing teachers; this was different. While I am more familiar with considering and working to understand the diverse perspectives that exist in our schoolhouse, I am not as read in academic scholarship from people of color - let alone women of color. If I take stock of all the textbooks I have ever read, maybe one or two have ever been written by Black women. This is a problem, but it does help to frame a lack of perspective for white people. However to stop there is obviously too simple. White people are the folx that are gatekeeping, policing, and controlling what books get published in the first place - to turn around and then claim that they lack perspective because of the deficit in available publications is disgusting, but typical.

But back to the textbook in question, because of being white and male, I had never considered how research is first and foremost a tool of the colonizer. Esposito and Evans-Winters (2021) describe how Ethnography (and thus qualitative research) has roots deep in white researchers and their quest to explore the Other. Terms like subject and study have historical backgrounds in colonizing and slavery. White people have to work to understand why the typical (not decolonized) qualitative textbook is not only insufficient but is also harmful to People of Color.

The authors describe a vignette from Rosa, a novice researcher and person of color: 

Rosa found herself alienated in research courses because she was hyperaware that traditional research practices did not fully consider her position as a marginalized person in society. The texts she was assigned to read were written mostly by white men (and some white women) and explored how to “capture” reality. The word capture has a differential meaning for many Black, Indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC) whose ancestors were captured and either annihilated or enslaved. Rosa longed for a research approach that spoke to the ways in which research had been and continues to be weaponized against her and her community.

I have never considered Rosa's perspective. This is connected to the second time my mind was blown (all of this is just chapter 1 by the way) when Esposito and Evans-Winters (2021) described why post-modernism was problematic. The ability to believe multiple truth is a position of privilege. They write, "What this means is that while we understand that there are multiple truths, we also know the insidious ways in which one truth gets valued over another" (p. 28). I have spent my life with the freedom to choose how I see the world, and where I stand. My axiom of "where you stand determines what you see" that I just flout about requires one to have the ability to move freely. With master narratives, a concept also discussed in this chapter, marginalized groups are told what the truth is by our white-dominated society. This is then reinforced through all dominant aspects, systems, and power structures.

Going forward, and seeking to decolonize research, I need to be aware of my own privilege as I enter this space. I need to see my whiteness and my maleness and how much room I take up. I need to remind myself daily that my norm is not the norm for everyone.

Esposito, J., & Evans-Winters, V. E. (2021). Introduction to intersectional qualitative research (First Edition. ed.). SAGE Publications, Inc.