Being Black in Sociology

December 4, 2020 5:29 PM

Urban ethnographers do more harm than good in speaking for Black communities. They see only suffering, not diversity or joy. [...] Too many sociologists treat their carefully crafted representations of reality as fact, rather than fact-like.

Dr. Robyn Autry on Sociology's Race Problem.
posted by Rumple (3 comments total)

At this point, I’m waiting for the ethnographic studies that stalk those doing the policing and evicting, at home and at work, for years on end...

That's a good point. You don't get much insight into the dynamics of a system if you don't examine the actions of the people creating and maintaining the system. But those people do their best to shield themselves from examination. The academic studies only come out if they're, like, defeated in a war before they can destroy their archives or something like that.

I wonder how quickly privacy rights would be raised if someone started a sociological study as invasive into police lives as typical urban ethnography is. Reminds me of how the police like to argue that garbage is public and they don't need a warrant to go through yours, but don't like it at all when you go through theirs. Privacy as a form of privilege.
posted by clawsoon at 6:57 PM on December 4, 2020 [19 favorites]

This is great, thank you for posting it.
posted by sepviva at 6:55 AM on December 5, 2020 [2 favorites]

The historian Saidiya Hartman goes a step further in Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments (2019), describing social scientists prowling through the inner city as near-vampires who ‘feed on the lifeblood of the ghetto, long for it and loathe it’.

I've used nearly the same words in an argument with an anthropologist once. And in the long run, I lost the argument and my job.

This has become a bigger issue during the last decade (or so), as sociologists and anthropologists have found ways to monetize their skills as advisors in political and planning processes.

Hopefully, more people of color will enter those fields, and eventually change the methods and theories. Just a couple of weeks ago, I was contacted by two students whose main professor thought it would be nice for them to get a critical counterpoint to the mainstream theory they are getting fed on "ghetto" life at the university. One of them was born in a so-called ghetto, and it was great to hear their perspective and critique. Our conversation ended up being more about politics and economics than about the antropological aspects, because people are poor for reasons. They gave me hope.
posted by mumimor at 7:41 AM on December 5, 2020 [11 favorites]