“Needlessly Contentious and Emotionally Loaded” Why My Tweet about White Privilege in Research Got Almost 15,000 Likes

"White privilege enables White researchers to claim authority on Black issues, while questioning the ability of Black people to conduct objective research," is what I tweeted.

It trended.

Here's here why so many Black scholars can relate.

Just get rid of your anger!

My high school graduation concluded in 1991, late on a hot and humid evening at Istrouma High School in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The neat rows of folding chairs on the gymnasium floor shifted and squeaked as anxious graduates pulled their gowns above their ‘church’ shoes, lifted their rears, and maneuvered to find their loved ones. In this post-desegregation era, most of my classmates were Black, and most of my teachers were White.

As I readjusted my graduation cap atop my high-top fade and scuttled to the tune of pomp and circumstance to look for my family, my English IV teacher intercepted me. She was a middle-age White woman with meticulously cropped, frosted brown hair and southern manners. That evening her smile at me was uncharacteristically big. I smiled back at her awkwardly, but humbly.

She gripped my shoulders, peered into my eyes, and exclaimed, “Iiiii-vor-rieee! I’m sooo proud of youuuu! You could be something great if you just get rid of your anger!”

“Anger?” I thought. “Why does she think I’m angry?”

We had a few tense interactions that year. Early in the school year she called me to her desk in front of the class to inform me that she was rejecting my topic on “The Miseducation of the Negro,” for my oral presentation.

I told her that I “knew people,” and I was prepared to take the situation beyond our class.

She said, “Don’t threaten me, Ivory."

I replied, “I'm not threatening you,” and returned to my desk.

After class she told me she was reversing her decision and would allow me to keep my topic. When I gave my presentation, she did not comment on the content, but seemed to be impressed with my delivery. Later that year, she recommended me to the principal when he was seeking a student to represent the school before the school board. We worked together for weeks—even bonded—as she coached me to a successful school board presentation.

At the end of the school year, she allowed the class to select topics for an end-of-year term paper. I selected “FBI covert activities against Black activism during the Civil Rights and Black Power Eras.” I naively thought we were in a better place, and perhaps, she thought the same. But “better” to me was the freedom to select Black empowerment topics, and “better” to her meant me staying in my place.

She expressed her disappointment and discontent with my topic, but said she was tired of fighting. She told me something to the effect of, “I don’t believe in this topic, and your grade might reflect that.”

With little comment, she gave me the ‘A’ I deserved for the final report, which was very well-researched and thorough. At the end of the school year, I did not really know what to make of our interactions. I argued passionately, orally and in writing, for my beliefs. Little did I know, what I perceived as a courageous display for justice, my teacher perceived as a display of “anger.”

More confusing was the fact that violent behaviors plagued my school. We had two shootings and a stabbing that resulted in a student’s death during my sophomore year. Why was she more concerned about my anger than theirs?

In her eyes, perhaps I represented a bigger threat. I was able to argue intelligently for what I believed in, despite her opposition. Apparently, she saw something in me that scared her, or made her feel threatened. Whatever the case, her words still linger in my consciousness. This was my first lesson on how Black intellectual passion can be recast as anger. And oftentimes, it is this passion that is feared the most, even more than completely displaced Black rage. Recasting Black activism as anger is ubiquitous in academia, where White researchers become experts on Black issues, under a veil of objectivity, and Black scholars are accused of being emotional, opinionated, subjective, and angry.

“Needlessly contentious and emotionally loaded”

Ten years later, during my first year as an assistant professor at Southern University in Baton Rouge, I submitted a manuscript based on my dissertation research on Black men in the criminal justice system to a top-tier peer–reviewed journal. Being a Black man myself, the number, and circumstances, of Black men in prison troubled me. However, I worked to make the manuscript objective.

I was proud of the research and taken aback when the manuscript was rejected. In the feedback an anonymous peer reviewer wrote that the manuscript was “needlessly contentious and emotionally loaded.” I felt a familiar mix of confusion and frustration; like what I felt at my high school graduation.

But unlike high school, I could not argue my case. A nameless and faceless academic gatekeeper had the power to determine if my research was suitable for publication. And the only apparent path forward was to suppress any genuine reaction to the criminal justice system and treat mass incarceration with deliberate indifference. It made me question whether I had a future in academia.

Rejection is central to academia, but this felt like a personal attack. Is there an objective way to accuse someone of being “emotionally loaded?” But I also understood that the peer reviewer was coming from a place of privilege.

We likely had two competing perspectives—one from someone personally affected by mass incarceration, and someone else who probably has never had to worry about being incarcerated because of the color of their skin. Both perspectives can coexist in theory, but in practice, the perspective of the scholar with lived experiences that are closest to the topic is scrutinized more and accepted less. Black scholars must continue fighting for our voices to be heard in academia to persist working on behalf of Black people.

My experiences are not unique. Black scholars have long warned of the marginalization of Black voices in higher education. A recent study found Black and Latino tenure and tenure-track faculty make up only 5% of the professoriate in the United States (Bitar, Montague, & Ilano, 2022). This lack of diversity not only makes it difficult for Black scholars to be heard, but it also perpetuates biased thinking. When decision-makers are largely homogeneous, they are more likely to reinforce existing narratives and power structures instead of challenging them. If we want to see real progress in addressing societal problems like mass incarceration, we need to create space for more diverse perspectives in academia. Otherwise, we simply perpetuate the status quo.

White privilege and B.S. (bad stats) in Research

White privilege enables White researchers to claim authority on Black issues, while questioning the ability of Black people to conduct objective research (Toldson, 2019, p. 63 ).

“BS,” or “bad stats” are data points that are incomplete, poorly contextualized, usually negative and often wrong. One of the most pernicious aspects of systemic racism is the way that it distorts data and statistics. This distortion happens in a number of ways. First, data about Black people are often incomplete or missing altogether. Second, when data are available, they are often poorly contextualized, making them difficult to interpret. Third, the data that are available are often negative, reinforcing stereotypes about Black people. And fourth, some of the data that are available are simply wrong, due to errors in data collection or analysis.

This distortion of data influences researchers' methods. For example, when I participated in a statistical training at the University of Michigan, I was analyzing census data comparing Black and White populations. On one analysis, I did not find a racial disparity between Black and White populations. At that point, a White professor from Georgia State University, another trainee, advised me to run the analysis a different way to “find what you're looking for.”

My response was, “How do you know what I’m looking for?”

This exchange illustrates how implicit bias and White privilege can create assumptions that can alter conclusions. The professor in this example assumed that I was looking for evidence of a racial disparity, because he has normalized this line of inquiry. And because of his own biases and assumptions, he was willing to adapt the methods and treatment of data to fit his own narrative. This kind of distortion is all too common in the academy, and it has profound consequences for Black people who are trying to navigate a system that is already stacked against them.

In a similar instance, I met a young White woman researcher who told me that her major area of research was Black males. In response, I quipped, “My major area of research is White women.”

She started blushing, I smirked, but immediately retorted in earnest, “What would you think if you met a Black man who was researching White women?” She admitted that she would find it peculiar.

To be clear, a Black researcher may study White people for legitimate reasons, such as, for example, to better understand the etiology of racism or the political ideology of White evangelicals. However, the normalization of whiteness in research creates a lopsided power dynamic where White researchers can be seen as legitimate authorities on any subject related to Black people, while even the basis of Black researchers studying White people is questioned. This perception of authority can lead to dangerous outcomes for Black people. For example, White researchers might overlook important nuances in contexts or ignore evidence that counters their assumptions.

Throughout history, White-led research into Black issues has had damaging and oppressive repercussions for the African American community. Case in point, include medical professionals who categorically classified slaves wishing to escape as mentally ill with “drapetomania.” Later, during the era of sharecropping, researchers claimed “cocaine-crazed Negros” were resisting their orders. In the middle of the 20th century, researchers deliberately withheld treatment to African Americans with syphilis without their informed consent during experiments. More recently, researchers invoked false narratives of single Black mothers threatening society, and that children born to crack-addicted mothers would inevitably become delinquents within just one generation - referred by some noteworthy figures at the time as “super predators.”

“Super predator” came from the work of a highly regarded Ivy League professor named, John J. DiIulio Jr who wrote the following for The Weekly Standard in 1995:

They live by the meanest code of the meanest streets, a code that reinforces rather than restrains their violent, hair-trigger mentality. In prison or out, the things that super-predators get by their criminal behavior—sex, drugs, money—are their own immediate rewards. Nothing else matters to them. So for as long as their youthful energies hold out, they will do what comes naturally: murder, rape, rob, assault, burglarize, deal deadly drugs, and get high. (p. 29)

The incendiary nature of Dilulio's portrayal of Black youth, led to children being charged as adults, and other draconian laws. However, his predictions turned out to be very wrong. Despite alarming forecasts of violence in Black communities, crime rates dramatically decreased beginning in the mid-1990s and maintained a steady decline well into the 2000s. While mainstream conversations around Black-perpetrated violence in the 1990s overlook many of its mitigating factors, several key explanations, from the perspective of Black self-determination, can and should be considered.

These include a surge of community awareness (as seen through hip hop songs like “Self-Destruction,”1989 and “We’re All In The Same Gang,” 1990), an influx in civic leadership which created new anti-violence initiatives, gang truces, gun buyback programs, as well as popularized positive media portrayals such as A Different World (1987-1993) or conscious hip hop artists such as Public Enemy and X-Clan. Moreover, patterns among unmarried mothers positively adapting to their circumstances played a role too, as well as ex-convicts from the 1980s returning to communities warning young people against repeating similar mistakes.

Amplifying Black voices in research

Too often, Black scholars are tasked with researching and providing solutions to the “problems” facing the Black community. We are seen as unofficial spokespeople on issues of race, inequality, and discrimination, but our valuable contributions as researchers are often disregarded in favor of westernized objective research. Ironically, this so-called “objective” research uses “educated guesses” to form research hypotheses. It does not matter how educated the guess, it is still absurd to call a guess objective.

To reclaim Black scholarship, we must be willing to be reactionary. We must value subjectivity and invest in people, not problems. The past few years have seen a resurgence in Black radical thought. From the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL, https://m4bl.org) to the ?rise of Afrofuturism, there is a new hunger for scholarship that centers Black experience and history. This scholarship must be reclaiming, reactionary, and subjective if it is to truly value Black life. Only then can we hope to generate compassionate understanding and create research questions that truly reflect the lived experiences of Black people.

To be clear, White scholars have the capacity to conduct research that empowers, rather than disparages, Black people, and Black scholars can conduct research that perpetuates, rather than mitigates, harmful stereotypes about Black people. At its core, this conversation revolves around more than just who should conduct research; it is about access to power, knowledge production, and narrative. The following recommendations present useful guides for researchers who are committed to researching with, and not on or about, Black people:

• Understand and acknowledge positionality, privilege and subjective limitations when writing about “problems” in Black communities.
• Understand and acknowledge the role of White privilege and global White supremacy when framing “problem”s within Black communities.
• State explicitly how Black people would tangibly benefit from your research findings.
• Conduct research on Black ‘humans’ and strive to convey a deeper understanding of the Black experience, rather than studying the Black “population.”
• Refrain from casting a spotlight on Black “problems” without highlighting the important work germinating from within Black communities.
• Refrain from “otherizing” Black people in research by separating Black people with personal or social challenges from the larger experience of Black people collectively resisting patriarchal White supremacy.
• Refrain from normalizing whiteness by using statistical comparisons between Black and White people to illustrate an unqualified benchmark of success or mark of deficiency or using White populations as a norm-reference in statistical comparisons. It is acceptable to use such comparisons to illustrate the impact of racism and oppression.

"Justifiably angry and sufficiently arrogant"

Pablo Picasso is one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. He is known for his revolutionary cubist style, which challenged traditional notions of perspective and form. But before Picasso developed his own distinctive style, he was heavily influenced by the work of another artist: Henri Matisse.

Picasso was intensely envious of Matisse's artistic style, and he would often express his envy to his friends. Attempting to make Picasso feel better about himself, one of his friends showed him a negative review of Matisse's work that had been published in a major newspaper. However, rather than assuaging Picasso’s jealousy, the review only served to fuel it. Picasso is quoted as saying something to the effect of, “I want people like ‘that’ to say things like ‘this’ about me!”

Ultimately, Picasso and Matisse met in person. Matisse gave Picasso an African statue, which he contrasted with classic European art. The features on the statue were contorted and exaggerated, and Matisse told Picasso that while Europeans were only doing what photographers could do better, African artists were creating a new reality; they were painting our dreams. This conversation had a profound impact on Picasso, who went on to develop his own unique style that broke with tradition in favor of experimentation. Thanks to African art, Picasso found the courage to be truly innovative, and the world of art was forever changed as a result.

Just like Picasso and Matisse revolutionized art by drawing inspiration from the African aesthetic, we can revolutionize research by drawing inspiration from Black intelligentsia. Black scholar activists have the potential to create a new narrative—one that is free from oppressive cultural norms and reflects the true complexity of the Black experience.

Picasso’s response to the journalist’s criticism bears another important lesson for Black scholar activists. Take praise and criticism with a grain of salt. Sometimes people will like you for all the wrong reasons and hate you for all the right reasons.

I recently came across a quote from W.E.B. Du Bois (1968) that resonated with me: “One could not be a calm, cool, and detached scientist while Negroes are lynched, murdered, and starved (p. 222).” This quote reminded me of my own experiences as a professor—specifically the feedback I received on a paper I wrote about Black men in the criminal justice system “needlessly contentious and emotionally loaded.”

Nearly 20 years later, I am a different scholar than I was when I first wrote that manuscript. I am more confident in my voice and more comfortable taking risks in my work. Du Bois’s words resonate with me because they remind me of the importance of staying true to myself and my values, even when it means breaking the mold.

A decade after being called “needlessly contentious,” a young Black scholar complimented me by calling me “justifiably angry and sufficiently arrogant.” These words made me reflect on who I was when I received my first rejection, and who I would ultimately become. I am glad I did not let a short-sighted blind reviewer suppress my emotions and cause me to fear confrontation, simply to appease a gatekeeper to an arena that has denigrated me and my people.

Black scholar activists can no longer cower to the Eurocentric narrative or give in to the White-dominated status quo. We must take a lesson from Picasso and Matisse and learn from Du Boisian wisdom to innovate the field of research. Black scholar activists draw strength from our community and channel our frustration in the current norms into positivity that fuels change, through good research.

Let us be justifiably angry, sufficiently arrogant, strategically contentious and loaded with the emotion necessary to bring the urgency and compassion required to use research as a weapon against oppression.

This article is based on Dr. Ivory A. Toldson’s lecture at the 42nd Annual Charles H. Thompson Lecture-Colloquium November3, 2021.

Dr. Ivory A. Toldson is the national director of Education Innovation and Research for the NAACP, professor of counseling psychology at Howard University and editor-in-chief of The Journal of Negro Education. He is the author of Brill Bestseller,?No BS (Bad Stats): Black People Need People Who Believe in Black People Enough Not to Believe Every Bad Thing They Hear about Black People. Dr. Toldson is ranked among the nation’s top education professors as a member of Education Week’s Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings, an annual list recognizes university-based scholars across the nation who are champions in shaping educational practice and policy.?

References

?A different world. (1987-1993). Bill Cosby (creator). Marcey Carsey and Tom Werner (executive producers). Encino: Carsey-Warner Studio Productions in association with Bill Cosby.

Bitar, J, Montague, G, & Ilano, L. (2022). Faculty diversity and student success go hand in hand, so why are university faculties so White? Education Trust. Retrieved from: https://edtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Faculty_Diversity_Report_FINAL-3.pdf

DiIulio Jr., J.J. (1995, November 27). The coming of the super-predators. The Weekly Standard. www.washingtonexaminer.com/weekly-standard/the-coming-of-the-super-predators

Du Bois. W.E.B. (1968). Autobiography of W.E.B DuBois: A soliloquy on viewing my life from the last decade of its first century. International Publishers.

The Stop the Violence Movement. (1989). Self-destruction. John Q Lyric (writer). New York: Power Play Studios, Chung King

Toldson, I. A.(2019). No BS (Bad stats): Black people need people who believe in Black people enough not to believe every bad thing they hear about Black people. Brill-Sense. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004397040_010

West Coast Rap All-Stars. (1990). We’re all in the same gang. Tone L?c (writer),Los Angeles: Warner Brothers.