Core Issues in Comprehensive Community-Building Initiatives ...

of the academic world, or by time, training, and skill from
fully exploring issues of power and race in community
initiatives. And last is the question of whether the research
The researcher’s job [has] the power to
define the community for others outside
the community who may have considerable
influence over resources and decisions
affecting that neighborhood.
profession itself has the luxury of questioning the intent
and utility of current trends in CCIs, and, whether, in short,
this research is making a real contribution to the understanding
of how to improve conditions for children, families,
and communities. Each of these is discussed below.
The researcher as “friendly alien”
The researcher’s job is to observe, analyze, and report,
and embedded in that job, participants told us, is the power
to define the community for others outside the community
who may have considerable influence over resources
and decisions affecting that neighborhood. That power,
whether discussed as the power of the written word, the
power to affect funding, the power of deciding which goal
is most important, or the power to determine which data
are important to the story, sets researchers apart from those
individuals under study and establishes a nervousness and,
often, suspicion about evaluation at the community level
that is difficult to overcome.
Furthermore, the role of research and, therefore,
researchers in poor urban communities has a checkered history
in the United States. Particularly in communities of
color, high-profile research abuses such as the Tuskegee
experiments, as well as the innumerable surveys and experimental
interventions of the Great Society and afterward, left
a residue of cynicism and distrust toward research in many
communities. This legacy, no matter how remote the actions
from any specific community, helps form the atmosphere
into which today’s community researchers step.
As one of the participants put it, “researchers are
aliens when we go to these communities, and the best we
can hope for is to be a friendly alien.” And while the source
of that particular comment was white, this characterization
of the researcher met with general agreement in the focus
group; the comment was not meant to suggest that only
white researchers are aliens in communities of color.
Moreover, the focus group agreed that the role, not the
individual, created the barriers.
Whether or not they think of it in terms of having
power, researchers are generally aware of their “otherness”
and the issues that residents of initiative communities
might have with the idea of research and with individual
researchers. As one researcher put it:
There’s a need to understand whether someone’s
with you or against you. And there’s a history
of disadvantage that causes [CCI communities]
to use that filter, to figure out if this is someone
who can work with us or someone with another
agenda who could be exploitive. And that’s
something people try to figure out with the evaluation
team. Is this team with us or on the outside?
Quite apart from what the evaluators represent
in terms of race, or gender, it’s “are they
‘us’ enough for us to work together?”
With this awareness, most researchers go to some
length to establish their credibility with community members.
For some, establishing credibility means signaling
that they are open to having work challenged by community
members: “We signal that we’re open to hearing and
seeing things differently,” said one participant. For others,
credibility or acceptance in the community is essential to
getting good data. “We want to make sure we get good
information. We want to get a bit of honesty because if you
don’t have the kind of trust in sources of information, certain
ways of knowing would be closed and you’re likely
to feel less confident that you fully understand, and that
Power, Race, and Community Research 3