The demon of hope: Race, disability and the white researcher’s complicity with injustice

Authors

Gene Fellner, CUNY College of Staten IslandFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2019

Abstract

My ethical stance demands that my research mutually benefit all research

participants and that it should serve to reverse systemic policies of anti-blackness that

permeate the educational system in the United States. Through publications and similar

academic activities, however, my research advances my own career, but it is doubtful

that it significantly advances the trajectories of the students with whom I work. Indeed, it

could be argued that this imbalance in benefits advances the very system of white

dominance that I claim to contest. In this arts-based, auto-ethnographic study, I

document how, through the creation of pastel drawings and digital collage making, I

seek to make sense of my compromised role as a white researcher in communities of

color. I focus on my recent research with an 18-year-old African-American woman who was diagnosed with ADHD in the 5th grade.

Comments

Original publication:

The demon of hope: Race, disability and the white researcher’s complicity with injustice, Art|Inquiry International, 4:2, pp. 545-567. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18432/ari29449