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Examining your positionalities.mp4Getting Started
In accordance with the American Public Health Association’s statement, structural racism is a public health issue. As public health researchers and scholars, we must be anti-racist. Being an anti-racist researcher is an on-going process. We must begin with ourselves by exploring our own biases, the intersections of our identities, and positionalities and how it can influence our role as public health researchers and scholars. We offer the following guidelines and resources on getting started with ourselves before moving forward as researchers. We understand that feelings of being uncomfortable may arise as you read through the resources. We encourage you to embrace feelings of discomfort and explore why these feelings arose for you. Growth is an important part of the anti-racist journey.
1. Starting with yourself: Examine the following models and evaluate where you are in the different identity development models. In addition, if you are not Indigenous to Turtle Island (U.S.), how can you address your role as a colonial settler public health researcher to ensure that you are working towards the self-determination of Native Americans.
People of Color Racial Identity Development Model (Helms, 1995)
colonial settler researcher (Held, 2019; Patel, 2019)
2. Evaluating your own implicit biases: Take the Harvard Implicit Bias test to identify biases you are unaware of. Name these biases in relation to racism and other systems of oppression. Then take action on how you can dismantle oppressive ideologies and behaviors in your personal life and while conducting research.
3. Positionalities and reflexivities: Be aware of how the intersection of your identities and positionalities, depending on the setting, can influence how you conduct public health research. By an understanding of your positionalities then you can mitigate reproducing systems of oppression through the constant practice of self-reflexivity.
For guidance on how to think and write about your positionality, see this podcast featuring Tim Janssen, Arryn Guy, and David Zelaya.
4. Intentions for doing research: Before pursuing a research study, we need to ask ourselves as a work in progress anti-racist researchers the following:
Should I be the researcher conducting this study? (Fine et al., 2003) Brown Access here.
What is my agenda for pursuing this study?
Not all knowledge, especially Indigenous knowledge, needs to be collected and synthesized by academia (Tuck & Yang, 2014) Brown Access here.
Who am I conducting this research with and what methodologies am I using that ensures that I am not reproducing and maintaining oppressive forms in research? (Patel 2015; Tuck & Yang, 2012)
How am I going to responsibly disseminate the information? (Refer to CBPR section of the website)
Now that research is done, what is my responsibility as a public health researcher? (Refer to CBPR section of the website)
5. How can you be a better accomplice as a researcher and what you can do instead:
If you don’t belong in the community you are conducting your research in and applying for the grant as the Principal Investigator (PI) or conducting the research as the primary researcher
Who in your network or in the community that is part of the community you are conducting your research in, can you mentor and/or work with in a supportive and collaborative role instead? We need to train and we need more researchers from underrepresented racial and ethnic minority groups.
Use your skills, resources, and networks to uplift and train other underrepresented racial and ethnic minority researchers.
Advocate to include underrepresented racial and ethnic minority voices in the decision-making table. When they’re sitting in these spaces, take their opinions seriously and act upon it.
Allocate funds that underrepresented racial and ethnic minority researchers and community organizations can use to conduct research studies in their communities.
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