“Look! A Black Ethnographer!”: Fanon, Performance, and Critical Ethnography

Henson, Bryce

doi:10.1177/1532708619838582

Cited by 7 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…Throughout the data collection process, particular consideration was given to the tensions between being a Black male and an ethnographer researching Black people (Henson, 2020). Given that the research project examined how Black bodies were visually rendered, I needed to confront my visibility within the research setting.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Seen and Unseen: Narratives of In/Visibility of Black Youth Who Attend a Predominantly Latinx High School

Jenkins

2023

Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education

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Background/Context: Scholars have identified how antiblackness operates as a specific organizational culture across the educational enterprise by examining Black students in various schooling contexts. However, there remains limited empirical research exploring Black students’ unique experiences in predominantly Latinx educational settings. The presence of Black bodies in institutions like schools from which they have been historically or conceptually excluded, marginalized, or “othered” presents an intriguing context to investigate the intersection of race, place, and the politics of visibility. Research Design: Drawing from an extensive ethnographic project on antiblackness in borderland contexts, this article interrogates Black students’ narratives of in/visibility—stories detailing moments when they felt seen and unseen. I used purposive sampling and recruited 20 Black students to participate in focus groups and individual interviews. Focus groups and interviews were semi-structured, using open-ended questions but centered on circumstances related to in/visibility. I also conducted observations in classrooms, hallways, the cafeteria, and other locations across the school campus. Data Collection and Analysis: Data analysis for this study included coding and recoding transcripts and field notes, and writing analytic memos. The analytic memos served as a site of conversation about the data where I could think deeply about the experiences that my participants shared. Coding and writing analytic memos were concurrent data analytic activities. During analysis, I paid close attention to how students described moments of invisibility, visibility, and hypervisibility. I conducted thematic coding and analysis of the data, which generated key themes. Finally, I reorganized emerging themes several times in relation to the extant literature and theoretical framework. Findings: Building on prior research on antiblackness in education, I use the notions of seen and unseen to describe Black students’ experiences with antiblack structures, practices, and encounters with their non-Black peers and adults. Black youth narratives reveal that their Blackness is simultaneously rendered hypervisible and invisible through the everydayness of antiblackness. The data also reveal that their racialized experiences with in/visibility were concurrently spatial and had implications for how Black students navigated the physical geographies of schools. I found that unseeing is an active process of not acknowledging the bias accompanying explicit practices that enable different people to exist differently in the same space. To unsee is a rejection of the specificity of Black that encodes how Black students navigate spaces where they are not the somatic norm. Further, this posture impacts Black bodies by making them feel simultaneously like outsiders and insiders. As a result, some bodies are deemed as having the right to belong, while others are marked as trespassers. Conclusions and Recommendations Racial moments have material, emotional, and educational consequences for Black students. Being “different” from the somatic norm renders Black bodies simultaneously highly visible and invisible. Research tends to collapse Black and Latinx students into a broader category of “students of color” without disaggregating the distinctive ways in which racialized school systems impact these groups differently. Further, the data presented here demonstrate how antiblack racism shapes the experiences of Black students and draws attention to the urgency of dismantling the people of color colorblindness in research analysis.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Seen and Unseen: Narratives of In/Visibility of Black Youth Who Attend a Predominantly Latinx High School

Jenkins

2023

Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education

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“…Moreover, these women accepted and embraced ageing and, in hindsight, saw that through their lived experiences, what truly mattered was living a healthy, balanced life My second research question brought forth adaptation and resistance strategies of four Caribbean/West Indian women that affirmed western views of ageing could be interrogated, disrupted, challenged, and changed. Through the re-storying of these women's lived experiences, they asserted that older women could be emancipated from the confines of dominant western narratives and constructs of ageing, and beauty ideals (Henson, 2020;McKenzie-Mohr & LaFrance, 2017). Moreover, they have provided the steps taken to attain liberation.…”

Section: Research Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The cosmetic industry and the western construction of ageing: Impact on older Caribbean/West Indian women and their adaptation and resistance strategies

Duncan

2024

Preprint

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<p>This major research paper (MRP) explores Caribbean/West Indian women’s perspectives on the impact of the western construction of ageing and the cosmetic industry and their adaptation and resistance strategies. The research questions asked what the impact of the western construction of ageing and the cosmetic industry on older women is and how have older Caribbean/West Indian women from Canada and the Caribbean responded to this impact. The theoretical framework used to analyze participants’ narratives is critical race feminism (CRF). This qualitative study uses critical ethnography as its approach to inquiry and semi-structured interviews as its data collection method. The themes that arose from these interviews were (a) western culture and ageing; (b) alternate views of ageing; (c) maintaining a healthy balance, and (d) resilience. The findings revealed that participants strongly disagreed with the western view of ageing. Instead, they saw ageing as a natural process that should be embraced.</p>

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“…We are given the opportunity to listen to, reflect on and contextualize Black people's feelings when confronted with racial violence perpetrated by white people who understand their discriminatory actions as “normal” albeit in a racist society. As an ethnographic activist Johnson captured human subjectivity and the people's “own story” through “the life‐history,” brought together through what we now call reflexive ethnography (2019; Hunter 2018).…”

Section: Charles Spurgeon Johnson: “A Gifted Interpreter”mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Gregory Thomas (1999) suggest that Frazier is writing the Black Bourgeoisie as a “participant observer.” The challenge Fraizer faced as a Black ethnographer is realized by Fanon in Black Skins , White Masks , through the statement: “Look, a negro!” (1952/1968:77). For Henson, Fanon saw himself as “an object of fear, derision and terror” (2019:329). Methodologically, the Black ethnographer is thus unable to present themselves as a white ethnographer (Zuberi and Bonilla‐Silva 2008).…”

Section: E Franklin Frazier: “Earthy Brusqueness!”mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Johnson and Frazier's academic careers reflected their opportunities and struggles as Black scholars within a university system where white hegemony invited them in but kept them at the margin (Clair Drake 1978). During the early twentieth century through their encounters with white teachers and the white discipline of sociology at the University of Chicago, Bryce Henson argues: “critical Black ethnographers do not enter and perform the category of ethnographer the same way that the Western white male anthropologist has historically been able to do” (2019:331).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Black Ethnographic Activists: Exploring Robert Park, Scientific Racism, The Chicago School, and FBI Files Through the Black Sociological Experience of Charles S. Johnson and E. Franklin Frazier

Blackman

2023

Symbolic Interaction

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Charles S. Johnson and E. Franklin Frazier were successful Black sociologists from the 1920s to 1960s, working in an age of scientific racism and eugenics, who battled racial oppression, racist discrimination, and surveillance under the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Both struggled within and against the assimilationist paradigm, yet their ethnographic and critical insights speak out today with continuing relevance in the fight against practical and institutional racial injustice. This study selectively examines Johnson and Frazier's academic careers as forgotten ethnographer activists who have been largely excluded from the dominant narrative of the Chicago School of Sociology. This article argues Robert Park offered opportunities to these Black scholars although the white university system exclusively directed their work towards race studies. Furthermore, the white discipline of sociology failed to recognize Johnson and Frazier's critical ethnographic studies as part of interactionism.

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“Look! A Black Ethnographer!”: Fanon, Performance, and Critical Ethnography

Cited by 7 publications

References 36 publications

Seen and Unseen: Narratives of In/Visibility of Black Youth Who Attend a Predominantly Latinx High School

Seen and Unseen: Narratives of In/Visibility of Black Youth Who Attend a Predominantly Latinx High School

The cosmetic industry and the western construction of ageing: Impact on older Caribbean/West Indian women and their adaptation and resistance strategies

Black Ethnographic Activists: Exploring Robert Park, Scientific Racism, The Chicago School, and FBI Files Through the Black Sociological Experience of Charles S. Johnson and E. Franklin Frazier

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