After a few years of discussion and planning, Black South West Network and the University of Bristol formed the Research Action Coalition for Race Equality (RACE) in 2021. RACE aims to connect data to community-led approaches, in ways that recognise, value and respond to communities’ lived experiences and diverse forms of knowledge and expertise, through partnership, collaboration and co-production between academics, community groups and policy makers.
Research, data and evidence are critical to the campaign for race equality but those who need information do not always have access to it. There is much evidence on race inequalities, but this does not always reach or connect with those who are campaigning to overcome them. By placing the principles of co-production at our core, we put ideas of empowerment into practice by working with communities and offering greater control over the research process. By doing so, we can enhance the effectiveness of research by making it better informed by communities’ preference and needs. By valuing diverse forms of knowledge, ensuring reflexivity about our practices, and making research and data accessible by using approached preferred by users, we can:
Re-balance power in research
Collaborate to promote anti-racist research & pracitce
Promote genuine partnership and collaboration ensuring the effective engagement of racialised communities in research
While doing so, we hope to reveal the colonial and racist systems that are embedded in academia's roots by including the voices of those that have historically been excluded.
It all started with the RACE Launch where we had a number of talented speakers who initiated the discussion surrounding the significance of research and data in impacting and advocating for racial equality. From the start, there was a clear consensus amongst attendees that racial biases have an implicit but undeniable impact on the way that research is carried out, including selective data use, misrepresentation, testimonial injustices, and the 'clumping together' of diverse communities, which eventually leads to generalisations. Ultimately, a system perpetuating academic fatigue has been established in which researchers simply pump out knowledge and data with no sense of collaboration with the communities during the research process.
So far, our work has uncovered recurring themes of distrust, power dynamics, and a lack of diversity. These issues were not only raised during the launch, but have produced barriers for co-produced research for some time. The Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities (CRED) report is a prominent example. The report’s main goal was to look at race and ethnic disparities in education, employment, crime and policing, and health, all to collect data to understand the impact of racial inequality on these gaps - it was dubbed “the first government-commissioned study on race that seriously engages with the family”. Instead, it selectively used data to construct a distorted picture of research that overlooked the testimonies of marginalised communities. This experience emphasises the need to address colonial and racial biases existing in research and practice.
Our work has two strands, to decolonise knowledge production and to democratise access to data. In beginning to realise the latter strand, we have carried out a number of projects which we hope will increase access to data for the communities with which we work. Local data on racial inequalities is limited, and where there is data, it is dispersed across a variety of platforms and is often difficult to interpret. This led us to create a Data Hub of evidence on local race inequalities in a number of key social policy areas such as health, housing and education. As part of this work, we have also Mapped the region's race equality space to provide a clearer image of the work being undertaken by local organisations.
Part of our work to decolonise knowledge production includes building a charter for co-produced research. By de-centering Western perspectives and following organisations such as the Global Indigenous Data Collection, we as a coalition are breaking away from old practices and advocating for a new Charter which can offer practical guidance for other researchers wanting to do the same. This will be done by carrying out three sessions in July with key stakeholders to explore how we might uncover and address inequalities that arise during knowledge production.
Via the objectives set out by RACE, we aim to approach the project in a way which is itself co-produced with contributors. We want to welcome a diverse group of people to the Visioning Workshop who are authentically invested in the creation of the Charter, who can contribute meaningful perspectives, and who can best proliferate this new type of co-productive framework. This selected group will consist of academics, local organisations, and community leaders. In contrast to research approaches which exploit and disregard, we will place communities in the centre of the process.
Anger against injustice is a crucial aspect of decolonisation, but hope is too. Hope may only be fostered when the communities we are a part of are allowed to thrive and flourish. Thus, cultivating such environments is our key priority. We will listen to them, hear them, and find our solutions, beginning with these visioning workshops.
If you are interested in taking part in the charter work, or any other race projects, please get in touch with: angelique@bswn.org.uk