This past semester, my research team and I began one of the most important studies I have conducted to date. This study—school psychologists’ experiences with and preparation for serving Black students who have been exposed to police violence in their communities—falls under the umbrella of social justice research. Social justice is concerned with fair and just relations between an individual and society. More specifically, Linnemeyer, Nilsson, Marszalek and Khan (2018) defined social justice as “basic valuing of fair and equitable distribution of resources, rights, and treatment for marginalized individuals and groups of people who do not possess equal power in society” (p. 99). Therefore, one aspect of social justice research is investigating issues relevant to the treatment of marginalized individuals. Police killing of Black people, particularly Black men, is one of the most pressing social justice issues in the US. The civil uprising and protests around the murder of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 represent a monumental moment in the fight for racial justice and the public challenging of state sanctioned violence against Black people in the US.
Having grown up in a family that fought hard for the civil rights of Black people in America, I have always been keen to issues of racial (in)justice. However, I believe my love for children and desire to make the world a better place for them fueled my intense pain when just a few years before Mike Brown was killed, Trayvon Martin, a 17 year old, Black teenager, was killed while walking home from the store by a white neighborhood vigilante. It was clear to me that, simply being Black, puts the lives of children at-risk in this country. As a mother of two Black children—one male and one female—I became paralyzed by the reality that my own children were not safe in this country. As a scholar and researcher, I felt a call to do work that matters for Black children. After the events in Ferguson, Missouri I knew that my work had to speak to racial injustices that impact Black children, but my field was not addressing.
My team and I spent two years reading about police violence against Black people, Black Lives Matter Movement, and how racial injustice has manifested in this country to prepare for conceptualizing our current study. I strive for a racially diverse research team, so our meetings to discuss what we were learning were all at once lively, sad, contemplative, eye-opening and, sometimes, hopeful. I struggled with how to teach one white male on my team to honor the space in which he held—that is to listen more than talk, knowing that the research topic was a painful one for many of his Black co-researchers and other people of color on the team. That was a challenge for me as the team leader because I aim for all of my students’ voices to be elevated through the research process, but I also understood the importance of white researchers learning how to hold space when doing this type of research. Because I care deeply for each of my research team students, this was emotional work. I entered meetings often anxious about the potential dynamics, and left often drained from managing.
Another emotional aspect of this work was conducting and listening to the interviews with school psychologists who work in schools where they have served Black children exposed to police violence. There is no detachment from their words—which were often painful to hear. I do not think the emotionality of the work hit me until the end of the semester, after most of the interviews were completed. Listening to story after story of the work school psychologists do to support Black students, the challenges they faced trying to do this work, the things they wish they knew, and/or the supports they wished they had—it was all emotional work for my team and I to sit with, process, and consider what they were saying within the context of the learning we engaged to conceptualize the study. I also had to do the emotional work of checking in on my young researchers because they, too, were experiencing painful truths about this country and our profession.
Often, researchers like to assert that research is neutral. It is not; not quantitative nor qualitative research. Both are biased from the beginning—starting with the topic selected to research to the research questions posed. This work, this study is emotional. I am a mother of two Black children—one female and one male. How could this work be neutral to me? How could I, as a former practicing school psychologist in North Philadelphia and a current professor who tries to teach future school psychologists about social justice issues, listen and not feel deeply moved by what my participants were sharing? This work is deeply emotional.
A few days ago, a white colleague expressed how important they think my work is, asking if I would be interested in engaging in a similar study about police violence in relation to another population of children. I knew immediately that the answer was no. I explained to my colleague the emotional burden the work has taken on me and that I appreciated the offer, but graciously declined. I got off the phone and cried. This work is emotional work.
Reference
Linnemeyer, R. M., Nilsson, J. E., Marszalek, J. M., & Khan, M. (2018). Social justice advocacy among doctoral students in professional psychology programs. Counselling Psychology Quarterly, 31, 98-116. doi: 10.1080/09515070.2016.1274961Milner, R. H. (2015). Race(ing) to class: Confronting poverty and race in schools and classrooms. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.