APPENDIX B

Reflections

My Positionality in the Field

As a researcher conducting fieldwork in New York City, I situated myself as a returning New Yorker to volunteer and research the unfortunate devastation that Superstorm Sandy had visited on fellow New Yorkers. My identity as a student was at the forefront of my interactions because introducing myself as such was part of my research consent process. I was warmly received by disaster survivors and disaster responders—community leaders, disaster field site managers, staff, and volunteers who were part of the disaster response efforts. Only four disaster survivors I approached for an interview refused. Most people I approached wanted to help me accomplish my research because of my student status. Some were impressed, or pleasantly surprised that I was going to earn a PhD. Interviews would end with comments like “I hope this helps you get your degree!” I told participants that primary motivation for pursuing this project was that learning of their experiences would help me convey to organizations responding to disasters how to better respond to future disasters. This continues to be my hope.

My positionality was often situational as I straddled the lines of race, class, gender, and citizenship. Mostly, I wanted to relate and be relatable to those with whom I would speak. I am a Black woman. I am an immigrant. I am a mother. I am also aware that certain aspects of my identity gained more salience in some interactions and contexts than other aspects of my identity. In Brooklyn, I fit right into Canarsie’s Caribbean immigrant community, while in the Westville area in The Rockaways, in Queens, my Blackness stood out in stark contrast to the Whiteness of the survivors. To immigrants in both contexts, whether Black, Latinx, or White, I emphasized my St. Lucian background; I am from a small island in the Caribbean. In speaking to economically-privileged survivors, my affiliation with a private, “elite” university conjured familiarity in people with whom I spoke. In speaking with women who have children, my own motherhood conveyed unspoken angst that most mothers feel for their children’s well-being. These points of mutual identification, or recognition, provided room in conversations for small talk and more openness.

Treatment of Racial Prejudice as Data

Despite these flexible positionalities, I could not negotiate my way out of my phenotype and the various shades of meanings projected onto my body by those who saw me and talked with me. Several studies have pointed to the importance of matching the race of researchers to that of respondents in order to elicit valid responses and produce valid analyses on race (Weinreb 2006; Stanfield 1993). Therefore, I did not solicit responses on an individual’s racial attitudes. Requests to explicitly express racial sentiments through language were both unsolicited and unexpected.

Since this project partly relied on observations related to ascribed race, my minoritized racial status in White spaces necessarily meant that language or actions revealing racial prejudice could only be a conservative measure of interpersonal racism. Therefore, my discussions of actions that implicitly suggest racial prejudice are few and are relegated to inadvertent slips by interviewees. Alternatively, the bulk of my analysis centers on structural conceptualizations of ecologies of organizations and social networks and the structured relational experiences for racially minoritized and White disaster survivors and responders who participated in my research.

There were a few moments that revealed interpersonal prejudices. These were usually indirect accounts of disaster survivors speaking about someone else. Only one White male interviewee said, “Roy, he’s my friend, but he is a racist. He hates Black people.” Some of my race data was based on how participants interacted with me. For example, after a lengthy and quite pleasant interview with Peter, he smiled at me, nodding his head with accomplishment, saying, “See, see, I talk to Black people. I bet you thought I wasn’t going to talk to you.” As a Black woman living in the United States, I am aware of how cross-race interactions can work to reinforce ascriptions of subordinate and superordinate racial positions. Admittedly, despite this awareness, I refuse to cease being utterly perplexed by these situations. My internal monologue said, “Did he really just say that to me?” Then I at once reminded myself that my role there was that of a researcher. I courteously replied, “No not at all, the thought never even crossed my mind. Thanks for talking with me.”

This experience made me more cognizant of the fact that my Blackness contextualized my interactions with participants, regardless of the genuine pleasantness of the conversations. For the rest of the day, I scrutinized all of my interactions. Did I fall into the color blindness trap? Did I really think that these Westvillers were blind to my race? Even as I was empathizing and sympathizing with them, were they simultaneously “othering” me? I decided to table these questions because I would never know whether, where, and when this actually occurred. This is why there is a notable absence of discussions of “racial prejudice.” However, this silence speaks to the fact of my racial minoritization and the related fact that I could not be a suitable instrument for capturing this kind of data and not evidence of its absence in reality.

Researching in Abject Circumstances

Researchers trying to understand the plight of human beings living in abject circumstances have to be mindful that they may inadvertently further contribute to their trauma. I kept this awareness at the forefront of my mind at all times. If anyone hesitated to talk, even for a second, I instantly stopped describing my research. However, I would still feel conflicted that people’s cheerful and welcoming gestures to speak with me may have been because they were lonely and would talk to anyone regardless of the purpose. These disaster survivors had lost everything, and here I was, asking them about their experiences because I really wanted to know on a personal level. However, the fact that this exchange would also result in a dissertation, articles, or a book made me feel like I was also benefiting from their misfortune. These feelings came and went. Other times, I felt fulfilled realizing that many of these disaster survivors would not have anyone with whom to process these feelings of helplessness, isolation, indignation, and despair at that moment when they needed it the most. I began to realize that I had more access to some survivors’ perspectives and connected with them more closely than disaster responders at the FEMA-and NGO-managed response centers.

Researcher Interventions

As a field researcher, I was always aware of the fact that my very presence altered the dynamics of behavior in the field. Ethnographers are aware that we cocreate the reality that we are studying, but I still wished to minimize my influence on the setting and trajectory of events so that I preserved the opportunity to better understand the processes beyond outcomes. This was something I struggled with in the field. I began conducting my research in the early aftermath of the disaster. People’s lives were in shambles. The inequalities across neighborhoods were becoming more evident in terms of survivors’ awareness of the availability of resources that others had known about for weeks or even months.

I would soon realize that my back-and-forth movements across contexts and my gaining multiple viewpoints on the disaster made me an expert on the availability of disaster resources. Put simply, I had information that disaster survivors needed but did not know how to access or, worse yet, did even know that they needed to access. It was often heartbreaking to speak to disaster survivors from a high-poverty area or economically deprived survivors living in an economically privileged area, and while talking with them, I realized that they had no clue about certain services or assistance or had no local knowledge that others from more affluent areas had known of, applied for, and even received several weeks earlier. Understanding the processes that created and maintained such disparate speed in the diffusion of information across urban areas that housed different classes of disaster survivors became important to my continued inquiries.

After interviews, I often found myself providing helpful information to disaster survivors through the “cross-pollination” of what I learned from my visits to other disaster response centers, my conversations with disaster survivors and responders, and observations and meetings held in other neighborhoods. When I intervened, this led to a deeper understanding of nuances in experiences that I may have otherwise missed. I sought to benefit disaster survivors collectively, in real time, by sharing preliminary insights with responders. My approach to conversational interviewing also provoked field managers to think more deeply about issues of equity that were invisible to them before our conversation. My hope was that their actions could improve the lives of disaster survivors interfacing with these centers in real time. I amplified community voices by organizing a panel where founders of various local community-based organizations shared community perspectives and needs with an academic audience. However, more often than not, I found myself leaving the field frustrated that the problems that disaster survivors were experiencing were far too large and systemic for me to have any real impact other than through publishing and presenting my research, quite different from the public sociology I envisioned.