ABSTRACT
If educational research implicates the study of ideology, then conducting it is the realm of methodology. Research on race is an interpretive endeavor concerning the role of schools in a racialized society; it is inherently hermeneutical. However, as understood here, methodology does not represent a ‘tool kit’ of data-gathering strategies be they qualitative or quantitative. Rather, methodology signifies a set of commitments about the standing of ‘reality’, and in the end, ‘truth’ about the matter of race and racism. Although not known as a race scholar, Gadamer (1975) suggests as much in his study of hermeneutics, captured by his book’s title, Truth and Method. In this influential text, Gadamer lays out a philosophy of methodology and its relationship with truth, thus unveiling the intimate link between them. Before embarking on this discussion, one important issue has to be cleared up: the difference between methodology and methods (Morrow, 1994). It is not uncommon that scholars use the two concepts interchangeably. Or
methodology is associated with conceptual design and methods become the practical implementation of the research. However, there are major theoretical differences between the two concepts. Methodology is a framework for the ideological underpinnings of race research. It is an ontological position on the question of reality, such as whether or not racism is structural in nature or defined as expressions of individual prejudice. In general, the latter is the favored ontology in race studies, relegating the former to the margins. This being the case, mainstream methodological assumptions about race affect knowledge production by setting parameters around legitimate questions that may be posed about it. Furthermore, methodology invokes epistemological assumptions about what constitutes knowledge and how we can apprehend it through research. It implies a relationship between the known and the knower as well who counts as a subject, as opposed to an object, of knowledge. Said’s Orientalism (1979) is a clear example showcasing cultural imperialism as a knowledge relation when he chronicles the Occidentalist methodology of
misrepresenting the Orient through distorted epistemologies. His point, inspired by Foucault’s (1980) power/knowledge nexus, is that controlling knowledge about the Orient is a means of exerting control over its institutions and material relations with Europe. Methodology also implicates phenomenological explanations for empirical data, even more, empirical life, or their meaning and social significance. In the USA, there is little debate regarding the significance of race made evident by the complete racialization of President Obama’s historic rise. But with the rise of colorblindness, the same event becomes an alibi for postracial orientations to the phenomenon of racism. After all, a Black man in the White House must signal the end of race and racism. Colorblind methodology fails to explain the continuing significance of both in the lives of people of color as well as Whites. Last, methodology’s arguably most important function is to justify the purpose and project of social research. In other words, race research comes with a politics of either intervening in racism or becoming spectators of it. On the other hand, methods comprise a set of field strategies. In their simplest form,
methods are techniques for gathering data; they are the practical side of research. Methods are ways of amassing the data required for answering the study’s research agenda. Of course, a researcher’s ideological commitments influence his decisions for choosing methods in the first place since the mode of data collection recalls his methodological position on reality, knowledge, social phenomena and purpose of research. Although there is no clean way ideologically to separate methodology from methods, they are conceptually distinct. In this special themed issue, my main concern in this article is to understand the realm of methodology as it concerns the study of race.
