Season 2, Episode 3 with Carolette Norwood and Thembi Carr - Black Feminist Participatory Research Reproductive Justice

Participatory Action Research - Feminist Trailblazers and Good Troublemakers

Season 2 Episode 3 Host Patricia Maguire with Guests Dr. Carolette Norwood and Dr. Thembi Carr (Recorded Oct 9, 2023; Streamed 10/31/2023)

[00:00:00] Patricia Maguire: Welcome to the Participatory Action Research, Feminist Trailblazers and Good Troublemakers Podcast. I'm your host, Patricia Maguire. Through conversations with feminist trailblazers such as today's guests, we aim to promote an action research that's deeply informed by intersectional feminisms and connected to PAR's radical roots.

[00:00:32] Patricia Maguire: Otherwise, what's the point of a supposed transformational approach to knowledge creation? Today, I'm talking with Dr. Carolette Norwood and Dr. Thembi Carr. We're going to dive into their work putting Black feminism into practice using community based participatory research in a reproductive justice or injustice project with Black women in Cincinnati. Their project addresses the persistent sexual and health disparities within and between diverse Cincinnati communities. Dr. Norwood, welcome to PARFEM Trailblazers. 

[00:01:08]: Carolette Norwood: Thank you. I'm happy to be here. 

[00:01:10] Patricia Maguire: Great. And Dr. Carr, welcome. It's a joy to have you here. 

[00:01:14]Thembi Carr: Thanks. Thank you so much. 

[00:01:16] Patricia Maguire: I'm going to start with some brief introductions to our guest's accomplishments. Listeners, you'll find more extensive background information on parfemtrailblazers.net. Dr. Carolette Norwood is Professor and Department Head of Sociology and Criminology at Howard University. She's a Black feminist sociologist whose research explores the implications of violence -  be it structural, spatial, or interpersonal. So the implications of violence at the intersections of race, gender, class, sexuality, and space on reproductive and sexual health injustices for Black women. She was previously an associate professor in the Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Cincinnati. Dr. Norwood's research on Black women's economic mobility and reproductive justice injustice in Cincinnati informs her first book, which is under contract with Columbia University Press. And the book is tentatively titled, Jim Crow Geographies: Mapping the Intersections of Poverty, Gender, Race, and Sexuality in Urbane Space.

[00:02:32] Patricia Maguire: Dr. Thembi Carr is a scholarly activist researcher whose focus is on multicultural education, specifically dismantling structural and overt methods of subjugation within school systems. In addition to continuing her work within schools, she has been using her skills to examine the access, or lack of access, that Black women have to reproductive health care within the Cincinnati, Ohio area, and the overturning of the Roe v. Wade legislation. And she also wants us to know she's mother to a wonderful son. Now I first met Dr. Carr around 2006 at the Action Research Center at the University of Cincinnati. So, it's a pleasure to have a chance to talk with you again after all these years. One of Dr. Carr's skills is utilizing counter storytelling to provide alternative understandings of lived experience.

[00:03:29] Patricia Maguire: So here we go. I'm not sure if it's possible or if it's even useful to tease this apart, but I want to start with what brought each of you to participatory action research, and then we'll move into, I think, quite organically, how you connected Black feminism and PAR. So, Dr. Norwood, tell us about your journey to participatory action research. How did you come to this approach to knowledge creation? 

[00:03:56] Carolette Norwood: I was approached by, um, Dr. Danielle Bessett who was one of the PIs on this fairly large grant, actually it's pretty large, five million dollars, uh, to study abortion access in Ohio. There were several scholars, PhDs, and graduate students that helped co-create, uh, what is now known as Ohio Policy Evaluation Network (OPEN). Of course, this was primarily led by Danielle and Allison Norris. But they wanted a study focused in Cincinnati. And I had, you know, just concluded a study on Black women. It was an ethnographic study on Black women sexual health and had been, you know, publishing and doing a few talks on it and they approached me about the possibility of leading this study, which was going to be community-based participatory. So OPEN had, you know, several different research methods, different, that, you know, uh, scholars were employing. This one was designated as community-based participatory research. It interests me naturally because of my own interest in qualitative work, which centers the voices and the lived experiences of the persons that you're, that you're researching.

[00:05:21] Carolette Norwood: And so, I was happy to take this on. I also worked with Dr. Farrah Jacquez, who is a known expert in the field. She was a mentor to help me learn this method. Did a lot of reading up on it before taking it, you know, integrating, creating a research design or co-creating a research design, because I did do that in collaboration with what's called a CAB, Community Based Advisory Boards. Yeah, so that's how I came into it. For me, it was a natural fit and a natural leap from what I was already doing. It was always an aspiration. So these aspirational goals of working more collaboratively with community persons, this method helped me to realize something that I hadn't yet achieved. 

[00:06:06] Patricia Maguire: Dr. Carr, how about you? I know you did your doctoral work at University of Cincinnati that has a pretty robust action research center. So tell us about how you came to participatory action research. 

[00:06:20] Thembi Carr: Sure. So thank you for talking about my master's work because I forgot all about that. Um, but that's where it started from. So, I looked at counter storytelling, which at the time, and now when I look back on it, those stories were to dismantle oppressive stories that were being told, and they were really acts of resistance. Those stories really gave a voice to marginalized people, and I didn't really realize it at the time. I would say really that's where it started at, but at that time nobody told me that that's what I was doing. It was just, okay, you're doing this work, you know, you're reading up on this, okay. That's fine. Moving forward with my doctoral work, that's where it really started to be defining as participatory action research. And I think that that's when the participatory action research center was being built at that time.

[00:07:22] Thembi Carr: Like it started, the foundation was being built. And so with my project, I took students of color, particularly Black students, and had them go out and take pictures of their experiences as Black students on a predominantly white campus. And then bring those back and we had focus groups to talk about what is your experience here? You know? And they all had to lay out their pictures and each of them had to talk about, okay, what do you see here? What are the themes here? And we have really great conversations. Even at the time, I still didn't know that that was participatory action research. It was just a method that I used in terms of qualitative data, uh, because I knew I was not doing quantitative data.

[00:08:14] Thembi Carr: No, math was not my strong suit at all. So, it was something that was really interesting. It was different. It was creative and it was just fun. Oh, and I have to mention my advisor, Mary Brydon-Miller at the time. It was just, like I said, as I was moving forward, then I started realizing and people started telling me, oh, this is what you're doing. And it was, oh, okay. And so that's really how I came to it. Um, it was by the end of when I graduated that people were saying, oh, this is what you're doing. This is what you're doing I had no idea, really. I had no idea at all that it started from my master's work all the way until I graduated, but it wasn't until like I said when I graduated that it was being defined as participatory action research. It was just, I liked talking to people about their stories and how that affected them and what can we do to change this and how can we put these systems into place just by your experiences. Yeah, that's really how I got into this work.

[00:09:23] Patricia Maguire: Well, one of the things that each of you have mentioned was wanting to pay more attention to, focus on the voices of the community or the voices of the students. And essentially, Thembi, you mentioned it, of seeing research as a possible act of resistance, which I think is, is a powerful framing of the creation of knowledge. I want to talk a little bit more and move into how each of you then came to connect community-based PAR to reproductive justice that essentially focused on the experiences of Black women as creators of knowledge, if you will. And I think it's important to mention for listeners that the concept of reproductive justice was developed in 1994 by twelve African American women who were questioning the mainstream, i.e. the white feminist mainstream battle for reproductive choice, and kind of questioning, well, how could you have choice without social justice? You can't have choice if you don't even have access to reproductive services. So, perhaps the two of you could talk more about your journey of bringing together participatory or community-based action research, Black feminism, and reproductive justice. How you were able to bring those pieces together. 

[00:10:50] Thembi Carr: In my notes, I said, I think this is the only way to study Black women's issues. Quantitatively, I think that when we looking at numbers to compare, and I'm going to say this specifically Black women and white women's issues, we don't see the story behind Black women. It's only this stark comparison, this, this contrast. So, when these numbers are given to policymakers and lobbyists, you only see the good versus the bad. You don't see anything else. And so, when that particular, I don't want to say story, but I'm going to use the word comparison again. So when that comparison is made, there is this consistency of women of color are always in this negative light, always. And thus when we talk about funding, where does this funding go? And where are these women at? It is always bad. It is always, um, they are poor, they don't have this, they don't have that, they don't have this. So, I think the question was combining it, is that the only way that we can see the issues being highlighted is through these stories and to get the experiences. I think that's, that's the best way. 

[00:12:12] Patricia Maguire: The other thing I think that each of you have mentioned, or at least implied, is that it's also a way to affirm and recognize Black women, not only their stories and what's beneath the numbers, but also by involving them in community-based research, you affirm them as knowledge producers.

[00:12:35] Thembi Carr: Absolutely. So, one of the things I had said, and this is probably going to go into your next question, is that I live in the community where a lot of our research was done at. And so, I see myself in the research. So, as one of the coders, I connected with our participants. We live in a food desert. So, I have a car where I can drive to go to the grocery store, but I understand that the women around me, some of them don't have that luxury. Or don't have that privilege. You know, there are only gas stations’ corner stores in the area. I love my neighborhood and so I fight for my neighborhood, you know? And so, listening to these stories, I can relate to it because I live here and so it is really important to me that these stories come out so that we do, so that we can make a change for these women, because honestly, I'm one of them. I'm one of them in this community. And a lot of the issues that have occurred to these women have also happened to me. 

[00:13:53] Patricia Maguire: Now, Carolette had started to talk a little bit about that one of the things, the first things that you all did with this Participatory Research Reproductive Justice Project was to build a community advisory board with members who are committed to feminist and anti racist work and that you really wanted to bridge between the Academy or the Ivory Tower and the community. So, tell us some about what were some of the challenges and successes that you had building this community advisory board for the Reproductive Justice Project. 

[00:14:33] Carolette Norwood: Right. So the important thing was, again, that there be, you know, a shared kind of understanding or commitment to kind of feminist values, uh, in doing this work. The other important thing to me, and I, I think I can say this is probably true for everybody on the CAB, was that we had diversity, uh, present in various forms. Representing different neighborhoods, representing different experiences, and so, yeah, we, we managed to achieve that in a way that even exceeded perhaps my, my own expectations or what I thought was possible. And so, and because of that diversity, it made us a stronger group. We had, you know, persons who were from the neighborhoods,, people working in nonprofits, people working in the arts, people working around economic mobility. Yeah. Uh, it would. Thembe at the time was working on a podcast. I don't know if you remember that.

[00:15:36] Carolette Norwood: We had people who were also working in their professional field as nurses. There was a nurse on the board that did work around reproductive health issues. And we had a person working in one of the local non profits that addressed infant mortality. So we had people with all kinds of expertise who had, uh, some who were born and raised in Cincinnati, some who had moved there but had lived there for an extended period of time. It was, a good collection of folks. We got along so well. I have to think that first meeting, uh, where we put together a list of rules that we would all, uh, we all contributed, uh, what we thought would make good group rules for, uh, grounding the work that we were going to do and how we were going to relate to each other. And some of those were, you know, uh, to listen actively. Right? To not interrupt, to keep, you know, side conversations down to a minimum. I mean, those are natural things that happens when you're in groups. Uh, you may be sitting next to someone, but it could also be, uh, interrupted. Uh, to speak, uh, from our own experiences rather than generalizing was another, and I think you said this one, Thembi, I don't know if you remember this, but lean into discomfort rather than trying to avoid it. Those were some of the ground rules that we kind of created from the beginning. So there was this shared expectation about how we were going to relate to each other. Uh, but being mindful of, you know, the strengths of diversity and purposely leading with that, I think made for a really, you know, advisory board. 

[00:17:21] Thembi Carr: Side note, I'm getting ready to publish a book from those podcasts. I'm getting ready to publish those stories. 

[00:17:27] Carolette Norwood: Oh, nice. Nice. 

[00:17:30] Thembi Carr: Editing it right now as we speak.

[00:17:32] Patricia Maguire: What was the podcast? 

[00:17:34] Thembi Carr: So the podcast is called The Purring Kitty Cat, and it is a collection of short erotic stories. And I write under a pseudonym, but I'm getting ready to publish, um, publish it as a collection of short stories. 

[00:17:50] Carolette Norwood: Nice! (clapping).

[00:17:54] Patricia Maguire: I want to go back, Carolette, to, you use the expression that we, um, I think that all of you were grounded in quote, feminist values, or you were looking for community advisory board members. What are some of the feminist values, like, expand those out; what, um, what do you mean by feminist values? 

[00:18:15] Carolette Norwood: Values that, again, uh, center, the lived experiences, women, fems, and dems. Uh, that's an expression I, I learned recently, that I, I think beautifully capture because I used to say, you know, uh, women inclusively defined, but women, fems, and dems. Ones that are about inclusivity and democratization, ones that recognize the organic knowledge that exists, uh, within marginalized populations. But a feminism that not only seeks to dismantle sexist oppression, but recognizes that oppressions are intersected along with race and sexuality and social class. And so persons who came in, uh, to the CAB would ideally have some understanding of that. It wasn't a litmus test per se, but it was so that there was some sort of starting point of understanding because of the communities that we were going into, uh, and that we will be researching. Kind of knowledge, either grounded in experience or grounded in... you know, readings are, I think, essential for us to, to move forward together as a group. So for, you know, for some people, feminism is something they learn in academic books. Uh, for others, it's something they learn through lived experiences and interactions and epiphanies and understanding through a set of experiences. And sometimes it's, it's both of those things. And so, persons who were a part of, you know, the CAB would have some grounding, and that understanding, I think, was essential. 

[00:20:04] Patricia Maguire: As you move from the CAB, which was, I think, your sort of, um, organizing committee, if you will, or your, you know, group that worked together to get this started and, and then actually actualized the project, tell us about how you learn more with and from the women in the community about, I guess, their access or lack of access to reproductive services.

[00:20:31] Carolette Norwood: So, you know, this study was exploratory. Uh, we didn't know what we were looking for. We just wanted really to understand some of the challenges that people were having or not having. We, we didn't know, right? We, we can assume that there were challenges based on, uh, some of the preliminary statistics around maternal health and infant mortality in Cincinnati, but also some of the anecdotal stories that we've known from persons in the community related to the kind of medical racism that they encounter when seeking care. So, we knew that there were challenges, but who knows? There were, there may be other stories that we didn't know. And so we created, co-created interview guide that would allow for those stories, whatever they are, to, uh, come to surface.

[00:21:26] Carolette Norwood: And so that interview guide was organized around girlhood, childhood, womanhood, adulthood, motherhood, parenthood, and then experiences around abortion and, uh, overall health. And so, so the guide covered the life course of the individual and allowed a space for whatever that experience was to, uh, come to surface. I think we did a great job, but that interview guide really was so well done. We encountered what, you know, uh, researchers call saturation fairly soon. I would say probably around, uh, the 12th, 13th interview, but we continued on to 24. And we realize, okay, we got it. We know what's happening in these data. We stop there. 

[00:22:24] Patricia Maguire: Thembi do you have anything to add on to that? 

[00:22:29] Thembi Carr: I actually, you know, I was on the CAB and then I moved forward. Carolette asked me to be one of the coders. I saw myself in the participants that you interviewed. And so, it gave me insight and perspective to those stories that were being told. I live in this community. I live in the community where our participants were. I live in a food desert where these women live at. I am, uh, privileged enough to have a car where I can drive out of this food desert and go get us something to eat. I was very much understanding of these situations. I was very appreciative to be asked to be a coder on this study to understand what was going on and how do we bring about change. That these things were highlighted because while some people know about these issues, it is, everybody needs to know about these issues and how we can bring about change. I think that qualitative data is the only way because we need to hear these stories and that there is always a comparison between Black women and White women, especially when you use quantitative data because you don't hear the stories.

[00:23:49] Thembi Carr: And, you know, we always, from our research, Carolette, we always see the good versus the bad, and that has come out in our research. And so, I think that we need to eliminate, well, from this research that Carolette and I have done, is that we need to start seeing that it's not necessarily good from the bad. It is the access, or lack thereof. And how do we start allowing these women to get access? That's pretty much it. I mean, how do we get these women to start having access instead of, you know, we have lobbyists and lawmakers just painting this picture of, well, they just don't have it and these women do have it, and that's it.

[00:24:38] Patricia Maguire: So as an exploratory study, using various methods and community-based action research, the end goal, of course, is to impact action to, you know, impact policy, but also access and to understand the sort of the whole wealth of experience here of what's going on. So what are some of the things that with the women that you worked with, the women that you interviewed and talked with, what are some of the things you learned from them, or learned with them? 

[00:25:10] Carolette Norwood: I learned that it was quite complicated. Right? So, you know, there were stories where women had breach access to abortion, for example. And then I remember this one interview where this woman had what I call a beautiful abortion story. She had graduated from a historically Black college, one of the elite ones. And had moved to Hawaii after getting her bachelor's degree. Settled, met this young man who was in the I think the Marines, one of the military branches, and they had this fantastic love affair and but it resulted in a pregnancy that neither one of them were interested in advancing and she was able to schedule appointment with her gynecologist who scheduled an outpatient procedure at a hospital and she was able to get her, her abortion and, uh, walk out of that hospital with her dignity, uh, intact. And what I mean by that, is that she didn't have to face, uh, a mean, hostile crowd of persons walking into the clinic. She said she could have gone in to, you know, to have a, you know, a broken leg repair or whatever, just some, any kind of procedure. But no one knew why she had been checked in for this outpatient procedure.

[00:26:35] Carolette Norwood: Moreover, it was covered by her insurance. And I thought, wow, that can happen, you know, uh, compared to some of the other stories of persons who just really had a horrific experience that couldn't get the abortion services that they wanted or needed. I just finished writing, uh, a case study, uh, for Health Matrix, the Journal of Law and Medicine, which featured one of the first interviews that I did in the study of a woman named Aliyah*, who was just a perfect case study for understanding the challenges of reproductive justice for Black women. She had several, uh, miscarriages, and trouble actually, infertility issues, getting pregnant when she wanted to. Even pursued in vitro before finally getting pregnant with her daughter. Shortly after her daughter was born her partner, the love of her life, was violently killed on the streets of Cincinnati and she happened to be in the car when it happened and witnessed it the the baby was also present. And then probably about maybe six months to a year, I can't recall, into mourning his loss, she went to a house party with a cousin who invited her out and was dancing with someone who offered her a drink and she said no, no, um, maybe because she was breastfeeding, I don't know, but she took orange juice. Uh, and she said the next thing she remembered was waking up on the side of the road badly battered and wearing only a shirt. Called the police, did plan B, um, but discovered 12 weeks later that she was pregnant. She tried to raise the money to get an abortion and she could not do it.

*All names and identities are pseudonyms.

[00:28:36] Carolette Norwood: So there were, you know, different kinds of cases that were emerging and again, the interview guide allowed for these different experiences to kind of show up. There was medical mistrust in these data, uh, the medical racism, uh, this same person, Aliyah, talked extensively about the insensitivities that she experienced while trying to get care. One of the nurses telling her, oh, you should be over it by now. Why are you still bemoaning this miscarriage, you know? So, there were a lot of things that, uh, emerged. Some of the complicated things are around poverty and a daycare mistrust. I don't know if you remember that, Thembi, but there were a number of women who had mistrust of daycares. There was the, uh, issue around child support and uh, whether or not to pursue it from the fathers. Many women didn't want to do that, didn't want to create another burden for the fathers of their children. In part because they didn't want to interrupt the bond between the child and the father, assuming that the mother might be mislabeled as "the gold digging mother," right, if she pursued child support.

[00:29:56] Carolette Norwood: That's, there, there were a number of things that came out of those data that were more complicated than I had realized, uh, and more complicated than just on the surface. I don't think could not be properly understood outside of a lens that, a Black feminist interpretive lens that really kind of contextualized those histories, but also the ways that Black women are oppressed. You know, how people didn't respond to those oppressions, um, and trying to just make life work for them and their families. 

[00:30:35] Thembi Carr: I agree with Carolette on every participant, everything that she said. Naomi* was the one for me who was the exception to the rule. Naomi was a participant who, she came from, if I remember correctly, she came from an affluent family. I think she was lighter skinned, she was fair skinned. 

[00:30:55] Carolette Norwood: No, no, she was very dark. She was very dark skinned and, and from California. But she had lived in Cincinnati for about seven years. 

[00:31:04] Thembi Carr: Okay, okay. And she, um, she got married young, but I remember that she married a Caucasian man. And she talked about how, uh, when she went to the store, people looked at her with her children, like, was she the nanny? Because her children were like fair. And she made sure that she wore her wedding ring, so people would know that she was married. I had to take a breath to read that, and that is where I actually could not finish her summary. To this day, I still cannot process that. I have, I have to be very transparent. I wrote on my paper, Carolette, as you were talking, um, privilege. And I'm going to put "privilege" in quotes that continues to place negative values on us. So I'll give you the example of her being married. Not that being married is a privilege. However, we'll say that two incomes in the household, again, marriage is not necessarily classified as a privilege. However, when she talked about wearing her wedding ring at the grocery store, so people wouldn't identify her as being a single mother. It took me aback. It really truly did. And so fast forward in her story, she talked about using her privilege to help other, this is my language, less and unfortunate Black women than herself.

[00:32:39] Thembi Carr: And so again, for me, this was the flip side of the entire project, because a lot of our participants’ stories were the same. As Carolette said, we got to number 13 and we had a lot of the themes, a lot of the stories that women were saying were the same. For me, except for her. Her story was very, very different. And for me, very, um, negative towards other Black women. Because she started off with this lens, for me, she actually ended with this lens of, I am outside of this total picture of Black women. While I identify as Black, I am outside of these women who have these other stories, as Carolette was speaking of. I am totally outside of that picture. So, what I learned was that we still have other women in our community who do not identify with a lot of these struggles that we had. 

[00:33:40] Carolette Norwood: She had a different Black experience. She didn't have a common Black experience. And this is why we take class into account because your experiences, just like sexuality and other identities, give you access to either certain privileges or not. But I will say that Naomi spent a lot of time talking about coming into a certain consciousness because she had had this life that she didn't realize was privileged until she came and lived in Cincinnati. So how you grow up is normal for you. When she talks about seeing, you know, some of the circumstances that she witnessed living in, uh, what is called OTR, Over To Rhine, which was transitioning at the time that she moved in, and she was a part of that gentry class, right? But yeah, just kind of witnessing the displacement of African Americans and seeing some of the local struggles that were happening in Cincinnati was eye opening for her.

[00:34:50] Carolette Norwood: So, but this is exactly why we continue to collect more data. We wanted to make sure that we had these diversities present because there isn't a singular Black experience. We don't live as a monolith, we're not a homogenous group of people. And so Naomi's story demonstrates, you know, a slight divergence to some of the other narratives that we were hearing. But she wasn't the only privileged person, and when I say privileged, because we were differently privileged, materially privileged, I will say, person in the data. And so, I'm happy you brought that up, Thembi, because it does, again, demonstrate those diversities that are present in these data. 

[00:35:38] Thembi Carr: We talked about her at length. We talked about her for a long time because I was, I struggled with her. I did. I struggled with her. And I think my struggle was that I couldn't connect with her at all. I just could not connect with her. But I appreciate you saying it was her experience because we all have different experiences. And you said it way better than I did, so thank you. 

[00:36:02] Carolette Norwood: But thank you also for bringing up the wedding ring because that is very symbolic, right? I can't recall what the statistics are off the top of my head. But marriage rate for Black women has consistently declined over the last, you know, 50, 60, 70 years. The fact that she was married and the fact that she felt like in some ways that that wedding ring symbolized a certain respectability was telling right because it then speaks to the kind of ideological violence that Black women tend to be ensconced in. And, uh, by ideological violence, I'm talking about the controlling tropes that Pat Hill Collins writes so concisely about, right?

[00:36:53] Carolette Norwood: Where the stigmatized mothering of Black women, that was one of the things that, in fact, the paper that we're working on now, Thembi and I, one of, that's one of the themes that, uh, comes up is the devaluation of Black girlhood, womanhood, and motherhood. Just the devaluation of... it's anti Black racism, in short, but that's, you know, stigmatized mothering, one of those things. So whether it is by the men in her life, if she pursues, uh, child support being mislabeled as a gold digging mother or by a bad mother because she's, you know, single or poor or whatever the case might be. That is one of the stigmas we have to navigate through. And for her, uh, living in OTR, being a dark skinned Black woman walking around with light skinned kids, maybe for her, you know, she understood how that might be read by others. And that wedding ring being symbolic of, again, of her respectability, that she wasn't that woman, but she's this woman, so to speak. 

[00:38:03] Patricia Maguire: And I think the connection that you're making between race and class is really playing out in the contemporary, I don't know if epidemic is too strong of a word, but there's a lot of focus right now on what's happening for Black women in maternal healthcare. You know, the experience that they're having. And I think the surprise, if you will, that regardless of class, Black women are being discriminated against in the maternal health care system. I mean, you have Black women doctors who, when they go in for care, are having discriminatory experiences. And so I think you're, you know, you're bringing together there that connection. of race and class and education, class being, doesn't give you any immunity against racism. 

[00:38:58] Thembi Carr: Correct. 

[00:38:58] Carolette Norwood: Right. That's exactly it. And that's what Dána-Ain Davis does so well in her book, Reproductive Injustice. In fact, as we were finalizing the interview guide, another friend put me in contact with Dána. I, I'm always appreciative of the mentoring that she, she left, cautioning us to not just focus on low-income neighborhoods, but to expand out. Uh, and so, in fact, when we originally started, that was, you know, we were looking at specific neighborhoods and then we decided to open, uh, the study across different neighborhoods so that we could capture more diversities, uh, in the Black lived experiences of women, fems, and dems. Uh, and I'm, I'm always grateful for that advice from, uh, Dr. Davis. 

[00:39:47] Patricia Maguire: And I think now the Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act, the collection of acts and, and legislation and that calls for community-based research. It calls for a certain amount of the research money that's going into Black maternal health that it has to be with community-based organizations, which speaks to, you know, the CAB and the project you were doing of trying to connect with local women in a variety of settings.

[00:40:17] Carolette Norwood: Yeah. And that community approach is so important for the reasons Thembi talked about why qualitative approaches work well here. And I trained as a quantitative researcher in my sociology program in Nebraska. My area was demography, which is a very quantitative field. And so, you know, took all these advanced statistics courses. And I, I did that work, um, when I first started. One of the problems is that oftentimes, and it's not that I, you know, totally discard quantitative work, I think it has this is strength. But one of the weaknesses is that starting point, uh, sometimes is rooted in a review of literature and theory about how certain variables are supposed to work or how they're supposed to be related to each other. And, you know, you generate a hypothesis and you collect the data to see whether or not there's an actual relationship. 

But there is a certain assumption on the part of the researcher as being the expert. Right? Whereas with qualitative work, and particularly with this, uh, work, community-based participatory work, the expert is the, the research participant. They're the expert on their lives. And recognizing that there's an expression, uh, being like a white sheet of paper. As the researcher, you're like that white sheet of paper. And they're writing. They're providing the information. They are the... expert, uh, and, and I'm the learner, right, as the researcher, and so it's a very humbling starting point, uh, which is a very different place when you come in as a, a quantitative, uh, researcher, and this is not an indictment on all quantitative researchers, but I'm just saying, from a, a feminist research method perspective, the way you see and understand, uh, the persons that you are researching is very different. Uh, one is, more, uh, approach the participants, uh, in a way just to extract the data. And the other is to learn, right? To listen and learn about how people understand their experiences and how they give, how they interpreted it as opposed to fitting into some sort of prefabricated concepts or constructs.

[00:42:43] Patricia Maguire: One of the things that, that feminist and participatory research has helped us see is that we need both kinds of data to understand people's experience. And yet, even with quantitative data, it doesn't jump off the page and tell you what the numbers mean. Researchers tell you what the numbers mean. And so, they interpret it to us, which comes back, I think, Thembi, to your issue earlier of your own tensions you experienced as you brought yourself to the research. You had views about class and privilege within the Black community. And so it kind of counters, I don't know, maybe we could talk about this a little bit, this notion of the researcher as a blank sheet of paper, which maybe the researcher isn't perhaps a blank sheet of paper. You bring yourself, your, your values. You know, you've spoken quite forcefully about this previously. 

[00:43:40] Thembi Carr: Absolutely. I don't, I don't necessarily believe that you come as a blank sheet of paper. We are taught to be objective in our research. We are taught to be the 30,000 foot viewer observing. However, and Carolette, you remember when I gave that presentation to OPEN and everybody was crying and all that? You are, you are not objective. Everybody brings themselves to their research. You bring your assumptions and your bias and you bring it to your own question. You have a thought, that's why you're asking the question. You have a thought process or an idea about where this is going. Hence your methodology. Hence your conclusion. 

[00:44:33] Thembi Carr: In my work, I actually did a reflexology about okay, this is the question that I started off with, and this is now what I think in terms of going through this process. I'm not going to sit here and say, and this is just me being transparent, um, and saying that, oh, this is the outcome, I'm going to end it here. Again, that's a very objective look at the work that you're doing. I, I don't believe that. And I think in participatory action research, this is just me. I think we have to take off those blinders in saying that we're still objective because we're not. We, we are situated in that work ourselves. I'm going to throw Carolette in there as well. Um, Maybe I shouldn't, but I am. You know, again, Carolette said that we are not a monolithic. We're not. However, Carolette has some experiences just as her participants do. And we've talked about this at length in terms of, you know, uh, Carolette is from the South. Um, that's where she grew up at, which is a totally different experience from me growing up here in Ohio. However, we have some of the same cultural backgrounds, you know, which transcends a lot of the Black community. There's a lot of things that we all have as a monolith. You know, and so when we do this work, it resonates with a lot of us. I believe that it is difficult for us to say, I'm just looking at this objectively. You cannot look at this work objectively. You can't. Um, I think you made a good point in saying that, you know, qualitative data does have some place in this work. I think it supports this work. Absolutely. But when we are talking about women's stories, that should be at the forefront. That should definitely be at the forefront. And as a researcher who does qualitative data, we have to support that. 

[00:46:45] Carolette Norwood: Thank you for that, Thembi. I should say, when I use the analogy of a white sheet of paper, it wasn't to suggest that, that the, me or you or us as researchers come in with, or attempting to come in from an objective place or a value neutral place. It just meant that it gave a space for the, uh, participant to write their story without my assumptions about who they were. But no, I, I, and I agree whole, wholeheartedly that we have own personal biases, which is one of the reasons why, you know, feminists, when they're writing up their reports or their studies, talk about, you know, do a personal reflective part, exercise, reflect on how they relate to both the, the research, uh, and the participants. And you did that, uh, in this moment when you were talking about where are we from. Uh, me being from the deep South, South Louisiana, and you being from Ohio and how that can, you know, help shape how we understand the data that we're, that we are processing or trying to make sense of, but also the literature that we read, right? So, the interpretive lens that we're using to understand these lived experiences, which is again why, you know, if I'm studying the lived experiences of Black women, I will turn to Black feminist literature to help me make sense of that. These are scholars who dedicate, you know, their careers to, to studying black women's lived experiences. Why would I turn to a White feminist canon or why would I turn any other place, quite honestly, to understand these, these experiences.

[00:48:34] Patricia Maguire: One of the things that has been important to me and putting together this podcast is that I termed it participatory research - feminist trailblazers, not feminist participatory action research, because I think all participatory action research has to be informed by intersectional feminists, you know, that's part of my contention, or feminisms, that all, all researchers are raced, classed, casted, you know, that we have a variety of identities and those have to be acknowledged. And so I'm concerned that there not be participatory action research and then over here somewhere on the sidelines feminist participatory research or Black feminist participatory research. And then I think that Black feminist participatory research has something to share with all action research, and maybe that's something that we could look at a little bit that it is, I don't think, but, you know, maybe you can set me straight on this, that it isn't only and just for research done with the Black community, but the, the values, the lens, the ethos of Black feminisms has lessons for all action research. 

[00:49:49] Carolette Norwood: Right, but, and it's for the reason you specify, right? So, one of the major interventions, it's not the only, but one of the major interventions of Black feminism period is an intersectional lens that, that was introduced into feminism by, and based on Black women's lived experiences, uh, which was the decenter White, White women and White feminism by taking into account both race, class, but also gender and, what some people, they used to call third world feminism, uh, some people still use that term, others, you know, try to avoid that term. But women in the global South, I think is probably a more appropriate, at least for some, a more appropriate language. And so again, taking into account all those intersections, space and place in terms of place, global South has a, you know, another kind of dimension to understanding how feminisms are plural and diverse, yeah, intersectional. 

[00:50:58] Thembi Carr: I agree with Carolette wholeheartedly. I really think we understand and know that Black women have been juxtaposed to White women's issues. And so, this allows us to center specifically center Black women's issues, whether it is class, sexuality, and I mean sexuality across the spectrum, uh, reproductive issues, whatever that may be, and in addition to how do we bring about change for, I'm going to use the word oppression, of those issues. So Carolette had asked me to write a part of the introduction to this question, which is how post Roe has exacerbated already existing experiences of Black women in regards to reproductive lives. And so we had a conversation before this question about, we all understand the overturning of Roe versus Wade occurred.

[00:51:55] Thembi Carr: And so what I noticed was that, you know, everybody was upset, people were crying, the world ended, you know, acid rain fell down and here we go. What I noticed though, that there were very few Black women who were upset, very few Black women. I know my circle was, it went the next day, there was nothing going on. And here was my reason why. Our lives don't stop just because Roe versus Wade was overturned. This is not affecting us. For a variety of reasons that we just discussed right here. Abortion has and from our data, we have seen that we really have not been able to get abortions. We haven't been able to drive to go and get them. We haven't had the money to get them. We haven't been supported to get them. So, this overturning of this legislation hasn't stopped anything for the majority of Black women. And so, this is something that Carolette and I discussed to say, okay, how do we center Black women in this issue? And so, I'm really interested, I am really interested in helping Carolette on this to find out what's next. And again, how do we change this for Black women? Because Black women do need access to reproductive health, abortion being one of them, as we discussed. But again, why were Black women not as moved as white women? That's it. 

[00:53:41] Patricia Maguire: Let's start to wrap this up. Although, my goodness, there's so many themes we could keep going on, but let's start to wrap this up a bit. Carolette, you're in a university setting as a department head, which is training people to be researchers, knowledge producers, to perhaps train, hopefully train people in community-based action research. And, and Thembi, you're in a setting where you're continuing to work in community-based sites of doing participatory research. So what do either of you have to say as advice, encouragement, to people who want to try action research, community-based research. A lot of our listeners are in settings where there's really not a lot of support for that, whether it's an academic setting or a community-based setting. So, what do you want to say to people who are, they want to do community-based action research or they want to do participatory research? What, what are some, I guess words of wisdom or advice you have for them. 

[00:54:49] Carolette Norwood: I think it is what we should be striving for as researchers. So I'm, you know, I have spent most of my career in, in the academy, so oftentimes feel cut off from community, and so as a result, I hear a lot of lip service among people in the academy about wanting to have these kinds of opportunities to engage, uh, with people in the community. But I worry about the sincerity of certain efforts and who, who is being privileged as a result, or who, who has the, you know, who's, who's gaining from that relationship. I think there's a potential where there's mutual gain, but sometimes it, again, I worry about the sincerity and the authenticity. 

[00:55:45] Carolette Norwood: And I think there are a number of challenges that are also present with sustaining those relationships and really kind of realizing the goal of community-based participatory research, one of which is to democratize knowledge and findings and, you know, sharing what you learn in the field and how to do that in a way that things can be improved, uh, the thing that you're, you're researching.

[00:56:19] Carolette Norwood: And I have to say that I, as a scholar, as a researcher, a little bit jaded about the extent to which change might happen, especially as it relates to reproductive health. Just, you know, observing over, you know, more than a century as what is talked about in that paper, you know, the disparities in infant mortality, just for example, 100 years ago was three time black babies, babies born to black women were three times as likely to die in their first year of life and 100 years later, um, that disparity has not changed. And so that makes me worry about the sincerity to fix those problems. 

[00:57:02] Patricia Maguire: Thembi? 

[00:57:05] Thembi Carr: So, I agree with Carolette in regards to the jaded part, and I actually had not thought about that, with researchers who do this work in their sincerity. Because you're listening to people tell their story. That is often very difficult to do. I, I'm very transparent about this. I have epilepsy and having to retell that story over and over and over and over again, when all you want the doctor to do is read your chart, it's in the chart. And so it's like the same thing to me when Carolette had just said that, like, that is... it can be traumatizing to someone when you're telling that story to someone that you don't know, and especially if this person gives the energy off as if I'm just using this, as you're not important to me, I'm just using this story to move on to the next big thing. I'm just using this to get my degree or whatnot. So thank you Carolette for saying that, that that is really, really important and I had not thought about that. Because I come to the, me personally, I come to this work appreciating these people's stories, respecting these people's stories, really gatekeeping them and protecting them. 

[00:58:25] Thembi Carr: But the advice that I would give, on the other hand, is that this work is really, really important. So, Carolette made a really good point in saying that, you know, a lot of people give lip service to this work. Again, as I said, I didn't know I was doing this work when I started graduate school. And to be very honest with you, doing this work kind of blocked some movement in my career because I was not a quantitative researcher as compared to my other colleagues. I'm okay with that because I love the work that I'm doing, especially with Carolette. I love her. This is what I want to do. 

[00:59:07] Thembi Carr: If someone chooses to do this work, again, please be genuine about it. Because it is difficult and people will give you lip service about the work that you are doing and the methods that you choose, understanding that there are a variety of participatory action research focus methods, like I did the photos and I use Miriam Raider-Roth's photovoice book. I can't remember what it's called. I think it's A Methodology of Portraiture. So that's number one. Number two is that you will run into obstacles again, like we just said, people giving you lip service, but you have to stand firm that this is the work you want to do. Do not waiver. Because people will tell you that this isn't right, this is wrong, you might want to go this way, you might want to go that way, all because of what they believe how you, you are coming to your research. If this is what you want to do, stand firm on your work. Do not let anyone deter you from what you want to do. Period. 

[01:00:11] Patricia Maguire: All right, Dr. Carr, I think you've had the last word. 

[01:00:15] Thembi Carr: All right, all right. 

[01:00:17] Patricia Maguire: Okay, I'd like to wrap this up. I want to thank both Dr. Norwood and Dr. Carr. Thank you for talking with me and each other today and sharing this slice of your work. I want to thank our listeners. You can help expand our audience by sharing the episode link with your colleagues and networks. And a transcript of today's podcast and additional information about Dr. Norwood and Dr. Carr, their work, is going to be posted on our website. parfemtrailblazers.net

Well, that's it folks for Episode 3, Season 2 of Participatory Action Research, Feminist Trailblazers and Good Troublemakers. And as civil rights icon John Lewis urges us, go make some good trouble of your own.