As a flood of emotions washed over me, I first drew shallow breaths that later quickened. I fought the urge to cry. Instead, I took deep and intentional breaths in an attempt to center myself. “I’m a researcher, this is my job” was the calming refrain I repeated to my inner self. “Nadia, please get yourself together” was my last internal dialogue before I welcomed a group of 15 Black women candidates and elected officials to participate in a focus group. My coauthor, Danielle Lemi, and I had the fortunate opportunity to partner with the Black Women’s Political Action Committee (PAC), a group whose mission is to increase Black women’s political representation in Texas. To our knowledge, this was the first-ever focus group of its kind. The scholarly significance of this study led me to have an unexpected visceral reaction.
I was overcome with emotions for several reasons. First, I was overjoyed by the larger-than-anticipated group of participants for our study. Danielle and I had worked with the Black Women’s PAC before but we had yet to conduct research with group members. We honestly did not know what to expect. We prepared for an estimated six to eight participants. When more women entered the room and we struggled to make space around the table, gathering additional chairs to squeeze them into the room, Danielle and I quickly realized that our focus group would not be as effective. Focus groups that have 10 or more participants are not ideal for robust conversations. Nevertheless, we welcomed the women because they wanted to be there. They desired to participate in our research study because they felt that their experiences are ignored. These political elites needed an opportunity to speak with their peers about the challenges, opportunities, hopes, and pitfalls as candidates seeking elected office and as Black women governing. Danielle and I were the conduit for this cathartic exchange.
Second, I was painfully aware that Black women’s narratives are not centered in political science research (Brown Reference Brown2014). In the subfield of legislative studies, we most often rely on sophisticated statistical analysis to examine the political behavior of political elites. Rarely are our research participants given the opportunity to narrate their experiences to researchers. As a qualitative researcher and an interpretivist scholar, my scholarship prioritizes the voices of Black women political elites, using their experiences as the starting point for my studies. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to talk with so many Black women and to include their narrative in academic scholarship. For me, this focus group signaled an opportunity to radically transform how Black women political elites are studied in political science.
As a qualitative researcher and an interpretivist scholar, my scholarship prioritizes the voices of Black women political elites, using their experiences as the starting point for my studies.
Third, and for the most part, I was moved by the willingness of the participants to share their experiences with us. These women noted that they wanted scholarship to reflect their understanding of the historical and current political landscape. They also were painfully aware of how their political calculations often were misunderstood and that they were stereotyped by both voters and other political elites. I was in awe of their courage to openly discuss political challenges that often did not paint flattering portrayals of their political party, other Black elites, their opponents, and their constituents and/or voters. The women also shared unique political opportunities and displayed a sense of sisterhood that was refreshingly unexpected.
My heart was full at the onset of the focus group. Although I anticipated the collection of rich and dynamic data, I was pleasantly surprised at the conversations that we facilitated. The focus group caused me to experience a series of unforeseen emotions; however, as a Black woman researching other Black women, I was prepared to do this research.
Researcher reflexivity is undertheorized in legislative studies. The gold standard of qualitative methods in our subfield is perhaps Fenno’s canonical Home Style (Reference Fenno1978). His “soak-and-poke” method is an exemplar in how to learn about legislative behavior outside of formalized structures. Fenno’s Going Home (Reference Fenno2003) fully centers identity politics as he followed four Black Congress members to explore the relational aspects of political representation. Fenno noted that his findings and understanding of Black lawmakers’ behavior are filtered through the lens of his identity as a white (cis)male researcher. Yet, Fenno mentions this and then quickly proceeds without systematically acknowledging how this racial-outsider status informs his data collection, analysis, and—ultimately—the final conclusions that he draws. Fenno’s work was my model and however problematic, his studies were those that I attempted to replicate. I have written elsewhere that it took me some time to grapple with my identity as a researcher who shares the same raced/gendered group status of my participants (Brown Reference Brown2012). This was due in large part to my positivist training and limited exposure to both qualitative research (of any type) and interpretivist methods early in my career.
When I finally realized that I could best present the narratives of Black women through qualitative research (primarily due to their small numbers in state legislatures), I was drawn to texts outside of political science that examined how our identity informs the research process. I looked to work by Smith (Reference Smith1976), Ritchie (Reference Richie1996), Collins (Reference Collins1986), Beoku-Betts (Reference Beoku-Betts1994), and Zinn (Reference Zinn1979). More recent scholarship, including Few, Stephens, and Rouse-Arnett (Reference Few, Stephens and Rouse-Arnett2003), Harris-Perry (Reference Harris-Perry2011), and Jordan-Zachery (Reference Jordan-Zachery2007), oriented my positionality as a Black woman researching Black women. Also helpful was Wendy Smooth’s sage advice (given in passing during the 2010 Annual Meeting of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists, in a sisterly tone) that “You know you can’t publish these women’s names in your dissertation, right?” This alerted me to the type of privileged status that I had in interviewing Black women political elites who likely told me things that they would not have shared with a raced/gendered outsider. As such, I needed to practice a Black feminist ethos of care and refer to them only by pseudonyms in published work.
My past experiences interviewing Black women state legislators coupled with Black feminist scholarship and conducting focus groups with Black women citizens prepared me for our November 2019 data collection with members of the Black Women’s PAC. Danielle (a Mexican American and Filipina) and I agreed that I would ask the questions and serve as the facilitator for the focus group; she would take notes. We were prepared and I was ready. Yet, I did not anticipate that moment. As a scholar of gender and politics and racial and ethnic politics within legislative studies, I was aware of the scholarly underrepresentation of marginalized groups in research. As a Black woman, I focused my career on opening up the discipline to perspective by groups at the margins—most notably, Black women political elites. However, I was not then and probably will not ever be fully disentangled from how my own identity translates into the emotive research experience.
