Listen to thisI am a scholar of many things and generally reject the labelling of my scholarship and containing it within one thing. I am also a practitioner of many things and prefer to see my practice as generative, critical, and firmly embedded in the quest for human dignity. Over the years, I have witnessed, sometimes painfully and sometimes with joy, attempts undertaken by non-Black thinkers, activists, and practitioners to center issues of Blackness and anti-Black racism in relation to some aspect of research or advocacy in youth work, child and youth care, social work, or disability studies or even entirely different fields, such as economics or migration studies (one might argue that these are all elements of the same field, but that is another story – see my first sentence). And whenever this happens, I secretly wish for a conversation with the author or the practitioner to engage on how one might consider centering, or even just exploring, Blackness and anti-Black racism in the development of one’s research or project. Below, I imagine just such a conversation and how I might enter and then conduct such a conversation, and ultimately the thoughts I would share for consideration.
If I had such a conversation, I would not superimpose ideas onto the existing research work or advocacy project my friend or colleague wishes to do. I would say to my friend or colleague that as the author, creator, advocate, or practitioner …
… you already have expertise in these frameworks and methodologies. Instead of having you learn something new right now, I invite you instead to consider extending your existing knowledge, putting these frameworks in conversation with race scholars, or, at minimum, explicitly making the through-lines, linking or identifying dispirit genealogies, canonic discontinuities or naming the absences of race/analysis. Why? Because 1) the absence of race (in whatever you are discussing or exploring or doing) is always and still race/d work; it’s the work of whiteness and white supremacy, and 2) the logic and technologies that produce whatever topic, constellation of circumstances, or relational enigma you might be exploring is based in capitalism, which is inherently raced. Race is a commodity, and it will be that as it manifests in your research or practice by extension and in its application. Your research or advocacy project produces and maintains racial categories, tools, data, subjectivities, and realities. All of this is to say your research or advocacy project can and will inform studies of race, racism and responses to racism, particularly if you intentionally choose to do the analysis of whatever it is you are exploring from this perspective. As a starting point, speak about how race is always at play. Even when the assumed ‘raced other’ isn’t front and centre in your research or advocacy project.
That said, however, if you plan to focus your research or advocacy project on how an aspect of social and political life or system that is targeting universal interventions impacts Black people or Black youth or is reflective of anti-Black racism, you will need to illustrate why we think Black people are outliers and or would be impacted unduly. Singling out Black people, or specifically Black youth, as likely disproportionate victims of whatever it is you are talking about is itself a questionable practice if a research or advocacy project provides no methodological basis for drawing such a conclusion. To this end, we must substantiate our assumptions throughout the research design or in the ways in which we gather knowledge and understanding about the subject matter. If we are exploring these issues in the context of research, for example, we can gear our methodology, method, data collection and analysis tools specifically toward ensuring our starting point isn’t reproductive of the very thing we are critiquing. Let’s consider some options on how to do this. Here is perhaps the most efficient way to get there: how about explicitly asking what the experiences of Black people, or Black Youth, or Black families, in relation to your project’s focus, are.
At this point in the conversation, I would pause and make sure that my friend or colleague is still with me. I am aware that no one likes to be lectured, and at any rate, I would want to ensure that my comments are helpful. Having practiced in many different youth work, community, and institutional settings, and having struggled with making meaning of my experiences, I can relate to the turmoil we sometimes experience as we try to get deeper into grappling with the injustice or oppression we encounter. And I am, of course, pleased that my friend or colleague is taking up the very complex issue of writing or speaking about Blackness or anti-Black racism. When the moment seems right, I would continue like this.
There are multiple pathways you might consider to deepen your project. For any of these, start by providing clarity about why you are taking up an issue or a process in youth work (or any social, political, cultural, or economic context) through the lens of Blackness and anti-Black racism. Make the distinction early on that while whatever practices (or policies or circumstances) impact the working class, or the poor, or young people in state care, or any broader group, variables such as race or Blackness further compound the experience at this intersection. For example, you could say that “because Black Youth are the most vulnerable to facing anti-Black racism in their attempt to secure housing, they will bear the brunt of the shift toward landlord right to refusal policies and are, therefore, the focus population of this research. With the de-regulation of anti-discrimination laws based on race and the accompanying criminalization of DEI frameworks in public sectors (which include child welfare), Black Youth face the potential for further discrimination in the housing marketplace”.
I note in many proposed projects that researchers or authors speak to equity, diversity, and inclusion goals and commitments, but then do not specify what their intention is around their equity, diversity and inclusion goals, yet they suggest, for example, that they will engage in targeted recruitment to meet their EDI goals and establish parameters in advance. It would be helpful to be specific in this context and follow up with actions that confirm this commitment. As a potential resolution to my wondering about those commitments, one might ensure a diverse sample size for the research project by using the proportion of unhoused youth transitioning out of child welfare organizations in Canada as a baseline for the research study. Thus, if 40% of youth transitioning out of care in child welfare in Canada are unhoused, but 70% of that 40% are Black Youth, we aim to conduct a survey that recruits 70% Black Youth participants. Note that researchers often feel that the only way to meet the equity objectives brought forward by funding agencies is to include a racialized scholar on the team or research those populations and communities. There are multiple ways to think about how one meets the goals of equity, diversity, and inclusion. One element of this is to ensure that we hear from the people who inspired us to think about them and do so meaningfully.
Another excellent way to speak to EDI is to explicitly state that interviews, surveys and other approaches to knowledge creation will unfold in youth-friendly language and will account for languages other than English where relevant. If the project includes young people at the intersection of race and disability, then it is important to ensure critical access practices such as online interviews and disseminating knowledge using expansive access principles. This would mean, for example, creating infographics, transcripts, ASL, podcasts, vlogs etc. to further cement commitments to EDI. In Canada, indicating that interviews will be conducted in French and English and that knowledge will be disseminated in both official languages can also address the shifting dynamics of marginalization by contributing to the limited Canadian scholarship in French on broader issues of child welfare and child and youth services generally and, more acutely, the experiences of racialized people documented in the French language. Specifically, Franco-Ontarian youth and families are essentially absent within empirical research, literature., etc.; worse off are the racialized French speakers within this cohort, especially Black people.
In many ways, proposals or commitments to engage with issues of race and racism often come across as if those making these commitments are uncomfortable saying race and racism and speaking directly and concretely to equity measures.
As the conversation with my friend or colleagues continues, I become a little weary of discussing this topic. On the one hand, I am pleased to be engaged in the conversation. It is an important one. On the other hand, it is a conversation that never really gets to the heart of the matter. I struggle with conveying this to my friend and colleague. But here it is:
Racism is inevitable. Subjective beings create the structure, institutions and processes of racism based on pre-existing epistemologies, ontologies, etc., that privilege, prioritize and are centred on whiteness at the exclusion and/or expense of race and other considerations. While I appreciate your efforts to challenge the embeddedness of racism in whatever adverse circumstances Black Youth might be experiencing in relation to transitioning out of care (or in relation to incarceration, expulsion from school, exclusion from health care, etc.), neither seeking to overturn these injustices nor simply naming them serves much purpose. While re-calibrating the racial injustice is ideal, it's unrealistic (you would be re-calibrating people!). The validity and utility of racial injustice predate existing resolutions of social justice and equity, making them irresistible to many, rightly or wrongly. From my vantage point, trying to do undo this would not be a recommendation I would make; it’s an exercise in hopefulness. I might instead consider the intervention of well-intended projects as 1) reducing the harm in the young person’s understanding of and engagement with these policies or circumstances, 2) exploring the inherent racist and dangerous logic and potential outcomes of these policies and practices, and 3) teaching the public about these harms. With these goals, we can then 4) create policy and legislative intervention that 5) gives young people the legal or legislative (civil or otherwise) right to redress if they witness these things happening to them.
I offer this conversation in the spirit of authentic and meaningful engagement with the good intentions of many friends and colleagues seeking to weigh in through research or advocacy on issues of Blackness and anti-Black racism. They are doing so as allies (a term and a concept that is at times contested – but that is another conversation). Black people know that we are exhausted. We are well aware of the labour associated with mitigating factors related to racism because this is our daily lives. Therefore, while understanding the things that racialized people will have to enact to cope with or respond to the impact of particular barriers, specific exclusions, and concrete violence(s) is essential and crucial, a well-intended social work or youth work researcher or practitioner or advocate can contribute by thinking about and offering tangible (and ideally, resourced) strategies to alleviate those concerns alongside understanding what they are.
