When the Topic Is Racism: Research and Advocacy with A Community Coalition

[His article provides an account of the process of a community-initiated research project on racism.1 The account includes the immediate after M math of the study's public release, which is effectively promoting social change in this community. The case study addresses a number of issues from the perspective of a research consultant active in social justice initiatives. These is? sues include practical issues in the research process regarding research questions and methods, the intersection of theory with practical knowledge, research as disguised activism, research criticized as divisive to the community, and research as knowledge production. Conventional research epistemologies that assume research to be "value free" have been increasingly problematized in recent decades. Still, research is generally assumed to have a limited relationship to advocacy. Advocates of socially engaged research take a number of positions contrary to the assumption of value-free research. Generally, these positions acknowledge "value-committed" research and seek to undermine the practice of researcher-as-expert distant from the circumstances being studied. There are good arguments for valuing the knowledge-in-practice of community activists (Kirby and McKenna, 1989). Furthermore, their active engagement is often crucial in ensuring that the results of the study are utilized for more than collecting dust on shelves across the community. Nevertheless, applied social research is often undermined by valuations of the credibility of such research, limited conceptions of what the scholarly creation of new knowledge is, acceptable venues for the publication of findings, and weak value apportioned to community "service." The following account addresses a number of issues. The intent is to demonstrate that such research is important, that scholars would benefit from such involvement, and that there may be an important niche in social justice and community issues for researchers from outside the academy.