opportunities). For example, arguments about the possibility of neutrality and
objectivity in social research are well rehearsed, and not only in relation to antiracist
scholarship, where deeply conservative and regressive perspectives frequently
masquerade as a concern for “objectivity” and “standards of evidence”.4
William Tate concludes his review of the “defining elements” of CRT by noting
that the approach “challenges ahistoricism and insists on a contextual/historical
examination of the law and a recognition of the experiential knowledge of people of
color” (Tate, 1997, p. 235). This relates to what Delgado terms the “call to context”:
an insistance on the importance of context and the detail of the lived experience of
minoritized peoples as a defence against the colour-blind and sanitized analyses
generated via universalistic discourses. The concern with the perspectives and
experiences of minoritized groups arises from several different perspectives and offers
numerous ways ahead. In relation to the legal roots of CRT, the call to context is
essential to understand the full background to any major dispute or issue (Delgado &
Stefancic, 2000). Even something as seemingly simple and obvious as a speeding
violation might be rethought if the contextual information revealed that the speeding
vehicle was an ambulance. Sociologically, of course, ethnographic and other forms of
qualitative research take for granted the need to understand the viewpoints and
experiences of multiple actors as an essential step in making sense of the social world.
Not because of any sentimental attachment to the “under-dog” position (as Howard
Becker, 1967, is frequently assumed to have argued) but as a recognition that people
in different social locations have different perspectives and understandings:
... every analysis of a hierarchical situation must contain explicitly or implicitly some
proposition, some empirical proposition about how the subordinates view things . they,
after all, know more about certain things than the people above them . I systematically
question as a routine matter whether the people who run any organization know anything
about it. I don’t say they don’t, I just say it’s a question . it’s not that you do that for
political motives you do it for scientific ones. But it has political consequence and the
political consequence is almost invariably in the direction of anti-establishment. (Becker,
1980, pp. 15-17) 5
In addition, antiracism (in Britain and elsewhere) has long emphasized the need to
build upon and respect the viewpoints and experiences of minoritized groups (see
Brandt, 1986). This approach not only adds essential data and perspective, it can offer
a fundamental challenge to the “common sense” assumptions through which so much
racism operates and the mechanisms by which it is legitimized. Several scholars have
written, for example, of the heated, and sometimes emotional, exchanges that occur
when the silence about white racism is challenged in university classrooms (see
Dlamini, 2002; Leonardo, 2002; Rich & Cargile, 2004). The exchanges by no means
guarantee an equitable outcome, but they can dramatically highlight the ways in
which notions of “validity” and “objectivity” operate in racialised ways. They also
draw attention to the human scale of issues that are too often reduced to an apparently
technical level in academic discussion. In a recent class, for example, I was exploring
institutional racism and criticisms of “whiteness” with a large and diverse group of
adult learners, most of them experienced school-teachers. After a long exchange with
a white teacher, who vehemently disagreed with my interpretation of some
particularly damning statistics on race inequity, a Black woman intervened to draw
attention to the consequences of her white peers’ apparently technical argument:
I’m really sick and tired of sitting in class and listening to people tell me that it’s not
about race. My children get it. I get it every day—at school, here, in the supermarket,
everywhere. How dare you sit there and tell me that I’m wrong and that you don’t believe
the statistics. Don’t you believe me?
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