The non-issue of non-race

"It's sad but true, everyone's a little bit racist - alright? Alright!"
Gary Coleman ~ Avenue Q

For the past few years, Steve and I have been working on and off on a fascinating research project involving focus groups, content analysis, and all sorts of all other techniques that make my little researcher's heart beat faster. Even after Steve left to become Dr. Steve, he and I kept on working on the project, and have since produced two conference papers (one of which I presented on at the last conference in New Orleans), and a manuscript we've submitted for publication (the one that got the r & r). The entire research and writing process has been fun, educational, and all that good Lifetime special stuff. However, ever since we've been publicizing our work outside of the south, we've gotten some, well, strange feedback.

In order to understand what I'm about to start harping on (and harp is what I will do), you should know that our study was carried out at my university. Which happens to be an HBCU. Subsequently, all of our respondents were African American. For the record, no other study in this specific field has ever included an all-Black sample. In fact, the vast majority of similar studies sampled scores and scores of white midwestern kids, and happily generalized their findings to "youth in general".

So what kind of feedback have we been getting? Well, several people have commented on how awesome it is to finally see a study that focuses on African American media users, and left it at that. Fine. They're happy, we're happy, everybody happy. But then we started to get written feedback from reviewers. And it did little to make me happy. In fact, every time I think about it, I want to bang my head against a wall and see if it's too early for a drink.

The feedback we've received can generally be grouped into three categories:

1. "What's really interesting about your study is that it focuses on African Americans."
2. "I'm concerned about the external validity of your study. With your sample make up, you really cannot make statements about "youth in general""
3. "Since your sample is made up of all African Americans, you should try to make statements comparing them to white users"

Let's start with the first category. Although it seems like a lovely compliment, it's really not, as it suggests that our -one- redeeming factor is that we focus on African American students. Not the fact that we started dissecting an important concept, or uncovered various interesting discrepancies. Instead of looking at our theoretical contributions, our one redeeming feature is that we focused on students at an HBCU, who all happen to be Black. It's as though the reviewers are telling us how "speshul" we are by virtue of the skin color of our respondents, not by our detailed analysis or interesting findings. There's little warm and fuzzy about that.

And regarding the second category, where do I start? I won't brandish the "r" word around, but really, people, really? Our study has little external validity because we use only Black respondents? (just for the record - we don't generalize our findings, so they can't accuse of that, thankfully, I suppose) But let's consider the fact that numerous similar studies, which all rely on WASP Midwestern students for their results, happily generalize all over the map, while when we, with our definitely non-white sample, dare to make minor, tentative statements about a "possible clue" to overall behavior, our external validity is at risk? Since when do white youngsters in the midwest represent all American youth? And since when do the responses provided Black participants in the south reveal nothing about that same youth? if our 18-24 year old respondents are not part of this "general youth", what are they? Geriatrics? Children? Aliens?
Oh wait, I'm sorry, I forgot! *facepalm*.  White culture and white younsters are culture and youth. And when you utilize only white respondents, race is a non-issue. But if you use anything else, it's "ethnic" and marginal. Obviously, that's it. I am so sorry.

Oh, yeah, and there was a third category too. Well, all I can say to that is, uhm, remember research methods 101? You can't make statements about a specific group unless you compare them to another group. And guess what, that is something we did not do in our study. So yeah, nice try, but once again, just because our study featured an African American sample does not mean that that should be the focal point of our findings.

I'm sorry this blog isn't funnier, or happier, or includes more references to rainbows, unicorns, and mermaids, but this kind of stuff really does make me wonder about the world as a whole. Because if academics, who are supposed to be tolerant, hippy-dippy, all-embracing, and as far away from prejudice as possible, are unable to realize what they're actually saying, what does that bode for the rest of mankind?