LEKINDRACY GROUP,LLC

5.13.2020

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A statement on Anti-Blackness from the QRE Squad:

In recent weeks, the United States has been rocked by the publicity surrounding the murders of African American citizens. While we know we are not valued in this society generally, it is detrimental to our physical, mental, and spiritual health, to WATCH our people have their lives snuffed out. Globally, repressive regimes are taking the lives of people every day. We are tired of watching death and destruction of human bodies. Since all of the members of administration are Black and people of color, we are especially tired of watching those who look like us lying on the ground at the feet of a recklessly wanton system. We have witnessed the lynching of Ahmaud Arbery and the murder of both Breonna Taylor and George Floyd at the hands of those who are charged to uphold the law but instead have used the law to punish us for existing. These senseless deaths are a snapshot of the countless African American lives taken through the nation's racist institutions, culture, and policies. This nation, founded on the enslavement of Africans, the exploitation of Indigenous People, and a continued hatred of the non-white since its inception, is reaping the fruits of its inequitable labor.

A nation crippled by the irony of its founding documents and its practice of hate, oppression, exploitation, and murder, should reckon with its policy of injustice. While we are addressing our uniquely American experience, we are also holding space for the global disrespect of human life that shows up in totalitarianisms. When we talk about our lives, we acknowledge the interconnected system of global injustice.

As persons of the United States join together in action against the oppression of its people, the Qualitative Research in Education group founders, stand with them/you in solidarity. We, as scholars, specifically qualitative scholars, must raise the voice of the oppressed and marginalized. To guide us, we look to our mission and vision statements (see below):

Mission
Through mentoring, actively teaching, learning, and exploring new methodologies in qualitative inquiry, we will foster a community of sharing and supportive networking for scholars who choose to look beyond trends, academic silos, and competitive rather than collective intellectual pursuits. We hope to engage an expanded actor-oriented and power-sensitive conceptualization of qualitative inquiries.

Vision
Qualitative Research in Education seeks to become a premier resource for educators who value qualitative inquiry that elucidates the experiences of the global community.
We acknowledge our duty to engage in critical, anti-oppressive, intellectual, and scholastic activism. As a group, we should continuously prioritize addressing anti-Blackness and oppression, dismantling it in every way possible, and understand that the dehumanization of Black people in any form is unacceptable for us as a community. To do this work, even the most justice-oriented one amongst us has to question how their privilege and anti-Blackness show up in their teaching, writing, and mentoring and create more spaces to decenter whiteness-oriented thinking and practices. As a diverse community of scholars, we recognize and affirm the absolute intolerance of oppression, hatred, racism, bigotry, and any thought process that strips an individual or group of their humanity.

We are armed with great intellectual power. Time to suit up!

To this end, we begin our call to arms evoking the wisdom of the ancestors of the African American community:
We look to Malcolm X in his sentiment, “I believe that there will ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those that do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the systems of exploitation.” We stand by the resistance.

Evoking the great Langston Hughes, “I’m so tired of waiting aren’t you, for the world to become good and beautiful and kind?” We wait no longer.

Internalizing the wisdom of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.” We walk with you in the light.

We evoke the tenacity of Huey P. Newton, “Black men and women who refuse to live under oppression are dangerous to white society because they become symbols of hope to their brothers and sisters, inspiring them to follow their example.” We follow in your example.

Under the leadership of President Barack Obama, “Change will not come if we wait for some other person, of if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” We join you.

We have crafted a sample list of resources to guide your academic endeavors. This list is a small sample to help guide you in your exploration of anti-oppressive practices within the academic community and in your research. The labor required to make change is the responsibility of each and every one of us. Do your own research before asking questions. This is not a situation where you can passively learn what it means to make a difference in the world. Join us in uplifting the voices of those deemed unwelcome or irrelevant in the academy and in the world. In the coming days we will provide a way to help our community deal with some of the overwhelming sense of chaos in the midst of this struggle but meanwhile the comments for this post are disabled because this is not a negotiation or debate. We will NOT ACCEPT OPPRESSION as our normal or any form of new normal in the future.

 

Decolonizing Methodologies:

 

Research and Indigenous peoples. Linda Tuhiwai Smith
Methodology of the Oppressed. Chela Sandoval
Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope. bell hooks
Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. bell hooks
On Intellectual Activism. Patricia Hill Collins
Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Paulo Freire
How to be an Antiracist. Ibram X. Kendi