Prison Is My Family Business: Reflections of an African American Woman with Incarcerated Relatives Doing Research on Incarcerated African American Fathers

Abstract

As an African American female prison researcher with incarcerated relatives, I make no pretence at objectivity when researching the impact of incar- ceration on black families. My standpoint is a reflexive one that attempts to account for the fact that I cannot separate the research from my per- sonal experiences. This position presents a compelling paradox: my personal connection to the research adds a valuable and constructive context as my position creates opportunities, not limitations. It also puts me in a unique outsider within position that Michelle Fine (1998, 135) refers to as ‘working the hyphen’ — ‘probing how we are in relation with the contexts we study and with our informants… revealing far more about ourselves and far more about the structures of Othering’. In addition, sociologist Linda Carty argues that a researcher’s racial and gendered identities should be embraced during the research process, not ignored:

Feminist epistemology grants us the legitimacy to claim all the identities we have been taught to deny as real knowledge, and we have since learned that the impersonal, so-called objective approach is incapable of doing justice to this kind of work.