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 Inclusive Research: Engaging People Closest to the Issue Makes for Better Science & Greater Impact; 2023 NIJ Research Conference Plenary

August 29, 2023
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                  NIJ Research Conference
This panel will discuss what inclusive research is, how to conduct it, and what issues and challenges exist about engaging in it. “Inclusive research” has its history as a participatory research method designed to ensure people closest to the issue or problem under study are authentically engaged in the research process rather than simply being “research subjects.” While community-based participatory research has begun to take on greater prominence in the criminal justice realm, such efforts are largely confined to qualitative research inquiries. This panel makes the case that inclusive research can and should apply to a wider array of research questions and methods and that employing it can yield more accurate and policy-relevant evidence. Panelists will also engage in a “myth busting” discussion to address possible challenges to conducting inclusive research and how to overcome them.
  
  
          Transcript
NANCY LA VIGNE: This plenary is on the topic of inclusive research, and this is a topic that I've been thinking about for well before I started in my current role. I think in sharing this introduction to this panel, it might be helpful to just talk a little bit about my own journey. It dates back to when I was in my doctoral program some 30 years ago. And things have changed since then but many things have not.

And suffice it to say that I was trained in a traditional way as a researcher in an environment and a culture where the hierarchy of science was that hard science is on the top and social science is on the bottom. Even within social science, the more quantitative components of social sciences, say economics, would be on top and then on the very bottom would be things like ethnography. It was a culture where researchers who engaged in solely qualitative work were disparaged or even derided. It was an environment where if you were an evaluator, you were trained that you need to keep an arm's length from the program staff and the participants to be "objective."

I had to learn through my own journey as an Applied Researcher, or unlearn, a lot of these ways of thinking and doing. And it wasn't always easy. I made a lot of mistakes along the way. And maybe we'll talk about some of those today. I think I always innately knew that things like mixed methods were better than just the quantitative or the qualitative. One of the things I preach as NIJ Director is this notion of numbers plus narrative. They both have value.

Also, what it means to be authentic when we're engaging with the people who are experiencing whatever the issue or topic is at hand and what it means to be authentically inclusive versus some of the box-checking that happens. Even people with good intent, maybe they haven't given a lot of thought to it but it's kind of like, "Well, my research team is diverse, therefore I am authentic and engaging with this community," which I think is a false assumption that just because a team appears diverse that they have the cultural competency to really engage authentically.

So inclusive research is more than box-checking and it's really about thinking very intentionally about all of the ways that we engage with the people who are closest to the issue or problem at hand, including recognizing that, in a lot of our topics, we're conducting research in communities that have a healthy skepticism towards science because they have been over-researched, because scholars have conducted research *on* them rather than *with* them. And that it's going to take a lot for us to build trust with these communities. And, again, that's the importance of being super intentional about all of this.

I am really delighted that my colleague, Linda Seabrook, is facilitating this conversation. Linda is Senior Counsel over Racial Justice and Equity in the Office of Justice Programs and she's a former prosecutor who has a true passion for ensuring access to justice for victims of color, particularly victims of intimate partner violence. She also worked at DOJ in victims' rights under the Obama administration. And she was the first General Counsel for the national nonprofit Futures Without Violence before returning to her current role. And just on a personal note, Linda and I made fast friends when I first started at NIJ. We had never met each other before and we immediately bonded, and I think it's because of our shared passion for equity and justice.

So, I will turn it over to Linda. And I thank these panelists in advance. I know this is going to be a wonderful conversation. Thank you.

LINDA SEABROOK: Thank you, Nancy. I also want to thank Nancy because this is such a priority to her, improving equity and outcomes in research. And she was gracious enough to give me *her* panel. So, I very much appreciate that. I'm very excited to have this conversation and I wanted to start it off — if we could all just briefly introduce ourselves, it would be wonderful.

CHAS MOORE: I'm Chas Moore. I'm Founding Executive Director of a group in Austin called the Austin Justice Coalition. You know, minus all the 501(c)(3) status paperwork, we’re just a group of people that want to make the world a better place for Black, Brown, and disenfranchised communities. Also, somebody that's been through the legal system myself. And a Capricorn, so listen to me.

HENRIKA MCCOY: Good morning. I'm Henrika McCoy and I'm currently the Ruby Lee Piester Centennial Fellow in Services to Children and Youth at Steve Hicks School of Social Work at the University of Texas at Austin. A very long name but I have to call out all those important people.

I am a researcher. I'm a social worker by training as well as in my heart. And my work has traditionally focused on looking at young Black boys engaged in the juvenile legal system, particularly who have mental health issues, as well as violent experiences of young Black men, 18 to 24. And I ended up here because I'm a Black woman and those are issues that really impact my community, so I felt like I needed to be able to have a voice and really thinking about those issues and what should be different.

RONALD DAY: Good morning, everyone. Thank you for hanging around, especially at a conference where we don't have any food. You know how challenging that is.

So, yes, I'm Ronald Day. I am a Vice President of Programs and Research at The Fortune Society. I oversee our jail-based and community-based services, as well as our research center that we started about two years ago. Fortune has been around since 1967, providing services exclusively to people who have been impacted by the criminal legal system. We have 12 different service areas.

And in addition to services — because we say we can't service our way out of the conundrum that we find ourselves in with mass incarceration — we also have a policy center because we feel that it's our responsibility and our duty to remove a lot of the barriers and discrimination and obstacles that people face in their transition from jails/prisons to the communities, or just having criminal records in general. So, we're a service organization, policy, and advocacy organization, as well as a research organization. And it's challenging to find all of those wrapped up into one organization and doing all of those things well. So, thank you so much.

MEGAN DENVER: Good morning, everyone. My name is Megan Denver. I'm an Assistant Professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Northeastern University. My research focuses on criminal record stigma and criminal background check decisions in the employment context. And as part of this theme of this panel today, I can speak and share a little bit of my research, testing the impact of criminal and offender labels on the public's perception of individuals who are involved in the system and also talk about why language is important.

So, I'm excited to be here. Thank you so much for coming to our session and for the invitation to join the panel.

LINDA SEABROOK: Well, thank you so much to all of you for being here. So as Nancy was saying, she and I bonded very quickly over this issue. And one of the things I was very excited to share with her was that I participated in some participatory research when I was at Futures Without Violence. We were helping the janitor workers in California pass a law, AB 1978, and we were partnering with Cornell Worker Institute. And we conducted a participatory research project where we had the *Promotoras* kind of tell us what were their experiences with sexual violence and harassment in the work that they were doing. They created the survey instrument with us. They were trained to actually deliver the survey and interview their fellow janitors. And what was really kind of special about it is that they got IRB certified by the Cornell University, and that feeling of pride and agency and power that brought up was a really kind of unexpected consequence.

So similarly, Chas, I know that you have had your experience with participatory research, and you came to it just like I did, more of like an advocate. So, can you tell us a little bit about that experience and if you had any similar unexpected outcomes like I did?

CHAS MOORE: Yeah. First, I want to give Nancy a shoutout for the slight disruption this morning by moving the table. I think we need more stuff like that in these particular spaces and I think that gives me a slight permission to be myself. So, I'm going to apologize in advance to Nancy for some of the words I may use.

I remember when we were approached by Urban. I think the only reason we did it is because Sukyi McMahon, who's now with The Square One Project, right? She was the practical part of the decision-making at AJC at the time, because from my perspective, I hated research. I hated researchers. I hated the process in which research conducted itself. Because as a Black person that came from impoverished communities that was dealing with all of the issues of police brutality and violence, I didn't need a [BLEEP] graduate student or some white lady at Purdue to tell me these are the effects of police violence, right? I lived these things.

LINDA SEABROOK: Right.

CHAS MOORE: But also as a organization, I very quickly learned that we could be like most other groups and just complain in the streets about the things we want to see, or we could actually get into the not-so-sexy work — like [BLEEP] that people are not outside protesting about and take research and use that to further our agenda for what we want to see, right?

So, yeah, I hated research. Like I just I thought it was a bad idea. I thought it was dumb, even when they came. But then when they got here and we started to talk to the community and even work with APB to build this survey with the community and with the police department, I thought that was pretty quiet. I had personally never seen it before. And I think as I was talking to people — and, also, people really enjoyed the fact that they got 20 bucks to take a survey. I think that's really important too because a lot of time institutions, universities, we always extract the information from the communities that we're doing the research on to get the money to keep doing the research, the millions, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the community still have nothing, right?

So, the fact that we were able to invest in the community and let them know that we actually value your opinions and input, it was like a 20-minute survey. We would be in people's houses for three hours because they couldn't believe that we actually cared or seemed to care — I care — about the things they had to say.

So, I think this work with Urban Institute when Nancy was there was really something, personally for me, that changed my mind on what research could be. Because prior to that, it was always the same thing. Like, you come in for a very brief time to my community, extract this very intangible knowledge that you can't put a price tag on it — then you put it in your white paper, you get the funding, and we're still in the same scenario. So just actually learning that there are different methods to highlight the information coming from communities and have them actually be more involved or part of the process, it's changed my outlook on research and why I'm here today.

LINDA SEABROOK: Right. Right.

CHAS MOORE: So shoutout to Nancy for not making me dislike a lot of you all.

[laughter]

LINDA SEABROOK: Well, along those lines, right, to Dr. McCoy, so my question to you is why is it important to engage people with lived experience in research?

HENRIKA MCCOY: think it's important because often as academics or researchers, we view ourselves as the experts. And we may be the expert of a methodology but we're not typically the expert of the experience unless it's our own lived experience. My research is focused predominately on young Black boys, young Black men. I'm Black; I'm not male, and so my experiences are very different. I may have my perspective as someone who, of course, has been exposed to Black men my entire life but I am not one. And so, the only way to be able to make sure that their experiences, their narrative, their story, their expertise is told, is for them to lead that work.

So, I have often tried to make sure that — for instance, in the last study that I had — it was an NIJ-funded study — we hired all Black men. And that was really important. I was a Black female leading the study. My co-investigator was a white male. The project manager and project coordinators were white females. But we made a point to ensure that every additional person was a Black male, that they lead the focus groups, they did the interviewing, they did the recruiting, they were going to do the data analysis, etc. Because it was from their viewpoint that they could understand the material, that I could learn from it, that they could share with us how to do the work, but that their experience was the one being told.

And I often think of a story I share quite often that people often say it's so hard to find this population, they don't want to be in research, etc. And when we would have our focus groups, myself and the project coordinator would always be there so I could personally thank them for having come to the group and find out was there something else that they needed that we didn't do so we could do that again. And one of the questions we'd often ask was, "Why did you come?" And one young man said, "Well, I figured if he could stand at the bus stop and ask me to be in the study, that meant he cared. The least I could do was show up and participate."

I just use that story often because the fact that someone showed up. Someone asked and the person who showed up looked like him. And it wasn't that someone showed up and was asking just for him to give. It was someone showing up saying, "Let's talk. Let's relate. Help me understand what I don't already know."

And part of what we made sure to do was to hire people in the neighborhoods where we were doing the work so that they could be embedded in their own communities. I'm from Chicago and so a lot of that work was in Chicago, and it was to be a nationwide study. But you can't go into a neighborhood that you don't know anything about and think that you're really going to understand the nuances of what happens. You might get the larger issues but there are nuances in every community. And only if the people who were in those communities would join the work will you really get what you need but, more importantly, will people be able to share what they really want to share.

LINDA SEABROOK: Exactly.

HENRIKA MCCOY: Researchers have an expertise but it's not the expertise of being a subject matter expert.

LINDA SEABROOK: So just to probe a little further, you're talking about the study that you and I have spoken about.

HENRIKA MCCOY: Right.

LINDA SEABROOK: Okay. Great. I think the audience would be interested in hearing about when you actually pivoted and brought Black women into the research, how that kind of also informed the findings.

HENRIKA MCCOY: So, the study was called SURVIVE. The former name was Understanding the Violent Victimization Experiences of Young Black Men. And we felt it was important to just kind of twist violence to something that showed success, so we called it SURVIVE, which was Suburban, Urban, Rural Violence: Investigating Victim Experiences.

LINDA SEABROOK: Ooh, I like that.

HENRIKA MCCOY: Thank you. And what happened was the first day that the study kind of launched, we made the front page of the *Chicago Defender*.

LINDA SEABROOK: Wow.

HENRIKA MCCOY: And for people that don't know, that is one of the oldest Black newspapers in Chicago. When I was kid, my father walked to the corner every day and got that newspaper, so it was a staple in my house.

And so, for me, that was certainly a source of pride that that was the front cover story. And within an hour, we were getting phone calls from people in the community who wanted to be a part of the study. And calls that we were getting included from women. And, ironically, as a Black woman, we hadn't included Black women in the study. The study was about Black men and we included only Black men. And so, when we continued to get those calls, we reached back out to our NIJ program officer and said, "Is there a way that we can carve out some opportunities for Black women?" And so, we got permission to do that, and we added two key informant meetings with Black women. So, we had 20 Black women participate.

And it ended up being such an eye-opening experience, because although these were not women related to our Black male participants, they were Black women who had relationships with Black men. So, they were moms, sisters, spouses, aunts, grandmothers, etc. And what was fascinating about what we learned is that because violence, for some of our participants, was considered such a normalized experience, they often were not sharing the true trauma that they were experiencing because it was so normalized for them in our larger world. But the Black women were talking about things that they saw that were different, those changes over time. And we wouldn't have received that information if we hadn't gotten their expertise.

And so, it was a reminder to me that not only, of course, do we need the expertise of those who were impacted but that the impact is larger than just the individual. It is a family issue. It's a community issue.

LINDA SEABROOK: It's a community issue.

HENRIKA MCCOY: And in that case, it was Black women, and we needed to hear their voices too so that we could have a better perspective. And that allowed our interviewers too when we shared that information, when they talked to Black men, to have that feedback that they could share with, “Well, what about these experiences,” because we were getting that from another perspective.

LINDA SEABROOK: Wow. Fantastic. So, let's go to Ronald. So, can you give us some core principles? Like we've been talking about participatory research, but even in inclusive research more broadly, what would you say are some core principles that should be adhered to when engaging with communities?

RONALD DAY: Yeah. So, I mean, there's some overlay with what has already been said by our co-panelists, but one of the things I think about as a core principle is to not think exclusively of the participants and the research project as subjects, because that's what Chas was saying, that is the perception that individuals have. And I think as researchers, we need to really step back and say, "What is the perception that we want for people to have of this particular project and of us as researchers?" We should think about those things, you know, say start with the end in mind? It's how do you want to be perceived?

Another thing that was discussed already as a core principle, I think, is what are the incentives that we're offering to the participants as subjects? Some projects don't even allow for you to incentivize the participants, and I think that that's a mistake because we're asking these individuals to give of their time and of their expertise and we need to figure out how to compensate them for that particular time.

LINDA SEABROOK: So why don't they allow incentives? Is it because it might tarnish the research?

RONALD DAY: I mean, some grants don't allow for incentives because they think that it might coerce the individuals to be involved in the study. But if you are going to ask anyone to sit here, and as Chas just said, you talk about the survey taking 20 minutes, but the individual is giving you an hour at times or giving you two hours, you're not really thinking about that. Their time is valuable just like your time is valuable. And if you don't think about that from the onset, then that's not a good practice.

And sometimes if a grant doesn't allow for incentives, then I think we need to think outside the box and figure out how we can get an additional grant that would allow for incentivizing the process —

LINDA SEABROOK: That's a great idea.

RONALD DAY: — because it's just not smart to ask people to engage in these projects and don't compensate them in any way. And everything doesn't have to be financial. It doesn't have to be a monetary incentive. But think about what incentive you can give them, all right? Sometimes grants don't want — they don't want you to give them money, but there might be some tickets or something like that. Somebody might need a spa treatment or —

LINDA SEABROOK: Right. Or dinner.

RONALD DAY: — Dinner and stuff like that. Another thing I'd say to consider is who is involved as the kind of “A team” of the research project. People with lived experience should be a part of the “A team” in my view, and in our view as an organization. They are sometimes kind of like lower down in the project but think about how you can include people with lived experience as a part of the “A team” and don't think that these individuals don't have the specific expertise that you might be looking for and even some of the experience. One of the things that we learned from the National Academies project that I was involved in, The Limits of Recidivism: Evaluating Success for People Released from Prison, one of the things that folks talked about is that they were always thought about as “redemption scripts” and that was basically it. It's like, “But, no, I have other experience, I have other expertise that could be lent to this particular project.” And I think that was an issue. Another thing is that when you involve organizations like The Fortune Society and others in the project, I'd say think about how that particular organization is also perceived in the community because sometimes somebody does a Google search and says, "Oh, okay, there’s this organization that works with people that are unhoused and this organization does that," but what is the reputation of the organization in the community?

LINDA SEABROOK: Right. And are they *in* the community?

RONALD DAY: And are they really in the community? When we did research in Philadelphia recently, we learned that a lot of organizations do not have strong reputations in the community. And don't come to the organization when you're struggling with your project. Go to the organization as you are thinking about applying for the grant. Involve the organization in the project from its inception because the organizations have the people with their lived experience that you are interested in and so they can help shape the different ideas and the strategies associated with the project. Folks have come to us at the eleventh hour because they're struggling to do recruitment for their project.

It's like, "Oh, well, we're trying to find all these people and we know you work with people with lived experience. Can you help us?" And I'm like, "Well, did you think about Fortune when you were planning this project?" Fortune has been around for over 50 years.

I mean, that's what we do: we serve 10,000 people. Half of the people that work with the organization also have lived experience. So, I'm telling folks from no matter where they come from, whether it's an academic institution or think tank or what have you, don't come to us at the eleventh hour because you're not going to get a positive response and that's just how it needs to work. So those are some of the kind of core principles that I think researchers could think about as you are considering pursuing certain grants. And another thing, just quickly, is what Chas said, is we heard consistently, the swooping into the community and not having or leaving something that was a lasting positive impression.

And I think that when you establish relationships with some of the grassroots and community-based organizations, that is going to help out. Some organizations, research institutions might even think about establishing a satellite in somebody's organizations, because, again, when you go, you do the research, and then you're gone, and then people are saying, "Did you leave us any better than when you came?"

Then that's not a good feeling. So, Chas, myself, I served 15 to 45 years in New York State Prison — and because of the role that I have, a lot of people wanna talk to me, but I'm like, "What value are you bringing to the organization and what value are you bringing to our community?"

LINDA SEABROOK: Right. And along those lines, I would imagine that sharing the results of the research with those who have participated in it would be just so critical, right? Yeah.

RONALD DAY: Exactly. Because the dissemination strategy for NASAM was about talking to the research organizations and sharing the findings with them. And that was a good strategy, but one of the things that I said is, "What about the organizations that are doing the work on the ground?” The dissemination plan didn't necessarily include them. “Where is the paper or the product that is geared toward having them understand the value of that particular research and how it impacts them directly?" The social service organizations that are doing the work, they should also be included in the dissemination plan, not just the research institutions.

LINDA SEABROOK: All right. Is it Sunday? Because I feel like we just went to church.

[laughter]

Thank you for all of that. So, I want to go back to my experience because I think it somewhat relates to your work, Megan.

So, when we did this study with these janitor workers — they were called *Promotoras* — is what they called themselves. And they were kind of like inside sexual violence advocates, right? Not from a community-based advocacy center. And we actually had to throw out a couple of questions in our survey because, you know, we had the Promotoras help us write the survey instrument and then, of course, like, translated that to English. And then somebody at Cornell translated it back to Spanish and they used the word Promotora to mean the community-based advocate. So, it really kind of messed up a real core portion of what we wanted to know. But along those lines, what it made me think of is that words matter, right, and being precise really matters. And I think that's a good segue into your work.

MEGAN DENVER: Absolutely. So, I can give a little bit of background context for the study that you're referring to. So many of us probably constantly use or hear or think about "crime-first language:" offender, felon, convict. It could have an ex-, like an “E-X dash” in front of it. All of those would be considered crime-first kind of terms. We — I mean, kind of society, journalists, academics — we all interchangeably use these words.

And not just in criminology — it's not specific to our discipline, but across a variety of disciplines — for decades, people have been talking about “person-first” or “person-centered” language. And the idea there is person with a “blank:” felony conviction, criminal record, addiction, physical disability.  You actually used person-first language earlier when you were describing a person who's unhoused, I think.

And so, there's been this kind of shift. And an example in criminology would be — I think it was last year, *Criminology*, the journal, which is the flagship of the American Society of Criminology, the flagship journal — they made a person-first language policy.

But what motivated the study that you're referring to was back in 2016 when the U.S. Department of Justice announced a new person-first language policy. This is something that I had been thinking about for years and it was in the back of my head because my then at the time boss and supervisor, Nancy La Vigne, when I was working at the Urban Institute, first kind of questioned me about person-first language. When we were working on a reentry project — it was an NIJ-funded study — and when I presented the initial draft, which is a very long report at the time, a question that came up was like — I think it was probably “ex-offender” because it was a reentry study — “Why is ‘ex-offender’ all over this document?” And I don't know what I said, but I probably said something like, "That's the way we always do it,” or “Everybody knows that," which is like notoriously the worst justification for anything. So, it was a moment, right? And I kind of had that reflection of, "Okay, like, why do we use this, and what does it mean to use this language, and does that have any negative repercussions?"

And we didn't really know the answer, I don't think, empirically. We had ideas of why it could be bad and dehumanizing language, demeaning language, how it could maybe impact people's self-perceptions or identities. But it was just in the back of my head, like, "Yeah, I wonder what this means to use this language?"

So, fast-forward to 2016 when this DOJ policy was announced, it kind of clicked and I was like, "Oh, this is the perfect time to test this, right?" It just kind of came together. So, with my colleagues Justin Pickett and Shawn Bushway, we launched a nationally representative survey of the public and we randomized the language that we used. So, we randomized crime-first, we used “criminal” and “offender,” and person-first, so “person with a conviction.” And we did this for three different crime types: property, drug, and violent. And we asked the perceived recidivism risk for these groups.

So, interestingly, for the drug and property offenses, the crime type didn't seem to influence the perceived recidivism risk; it was about the same. But importantly for violent crimes, it was very different. And it was meaningfully, statistically significantly different, which is interesting. And this finding has been replicated in other studies, especially when we look at sex crimes, violent crimes, kind of the most stigmatized offenses. The language matters, especially for that group, and the language you use can influence the public's perceptions of these individuals. From kind of an interdisciplinary perspective, if we think of empirical work or theoretical work, one reason this might be is because it might shift the perception of static traits. So, it's not that a person has a conviction or committed a crime but that that's who they are.

It's like part of who their identity is, right? And if someone's identity is perceived as static, that's incredibly dangerous, and that could have real repercussions for thinking about opportunities that are kind of blocked or opened for people when they're reintegrating into society and so on. So that's, in a nutshell, kind of what the study did and why language can be really important, especially for the most stigmatized populations.

LINDA SEABROOK: Yeah. Absolutely. And you almost see like a power shift in the language too, right?

MEGAN DENVER: Yeah.

LINDA SEABROOK: Yeah. That's very interesting. So, this is a question for anyone. My friend, Dr. Angela Moore from NIJ, we always say to each other when talking about research, “Nothing about us without us.” So, this is for anyone who wants to jump in, what does that mean to you when we talk about research on criminal justice issues?

MEGAN DENVER: Oh, I can tell a story about that study.

LINDA SEABROOK: Sure.

MEGAN DENVER: So, if you look back in the literature review and the background context, we did not actually cite what's known as “Convict Criminology.” This is an area in criminology where it's people who have lived experiences do research in this topic area. And I was kind of gently called out on this in a paper that was very recently. We were kind of called out for not citing this research, which is a very fair point. So even when this research is in the vein of being inclusive research, there are other ways that it could've been more inclusive.

Going back and looking through the Convict Criminology literature — and that's a label that that group self-describes as — they have mixed perceptions about what the right terminology is. I think that's incredibly important. Some people embrace the Convict Criminology language and say, you know, "It's empowering. We can own this language." Other people detest it. They don't like it at all. They think that it's very detrimental, it can be harmful. And then there are people who are completely apathetic. And there's a range of perceptions and opinions about that, which I think is useful for us to know.

So going forward, I've started to build in that literature more in my research and kind of reading and incorporating and citing these other perspectives. So that's my sort of learning moment. As I think Nancy mentioned before, we keep growing, keep learning. Thinking about incentives, how do we disseminate the research after? How do we keep the connections built? So that's something that I think I continuously work on.

LINDA SEABROOK: And have the community be part of the plan from inception.

MEGAN DENVER: Exactly. From the beginning.

LINDA SEABROOK: Right. Right.

MEGAN DENVER: Yeah. With Ronald's foundation, for example.

LINDA SEABROOK: Ronald?

RONALD DAY: I would add, we have a responsibility to empower people as much as possible and to elevate the voices, to lift up the voices of the folks with the lived experience. And “Nothing about us without us” is really saying that we not just want, but deserve, a seat at the table., Because there have been so many policies that have been implemented without even questioning, without even involving people who have the most experience and who have the most impact of the decisions that are going to be made. So, they're the ones that are going to be impacted the most by whatever policies you actually implement. We were involved in doing a lot of research around like Ban the Box, removing the question about criminal history from applications and — not just job applications but educational institutions, housing applications, etc. And folks are saying the people who have the expertise, we need to hear from them.

So, whether it's policymakers, city councils, or mayors, what have you, they're now — much more so than they ever have been — saying, "Where are the people who have the most experience, that are directly impacted by this particular issue? Where are they? We want to have them as a part of this." And then we need to also make sure that they're working in the institutions and working in the offices where these policies are actually being thought about and ultimately going to be implemented.

LINDA SEABROOK: I feel like it like almost legitimizes, right, the whole thing. Yeah.

RONALD DAY: Yeah. For sure.

LINDA SEABROOK: Okay. So, I have another one. And we've touched on this in different ways. I think Black communities in particular may have a distrust of research, you talked about that and being "studied," right? And that has a big historical legacy, from the father of gynecology who used to do experiments on enslaved women to the Tuskegee syphilis experiment to Henrietta Lacks. We can go on and on. But for those of you who have worked on inclusive research in and with Black communities in particular, have you encountered any resistance to participation? And if so, how did you build trust? And I feel like you're about to say something, Chas.

CHAS MOORE: I'm not. I'm just laughing. I'm trying to say this the right way, but, again, probably just [BLEEP] I think Black people — and this is part of my problem with research as we know it, even though it's changed slightly and it's changing — is that everything is not qualitative nor quantitative. Sometimes people just feel, right? Like the Black women in my life, like my grandma probably couldn't give me the Webster definition of intuition, but when my grandma knows or feels something ain't right...

LINDA SEABROOK: You better listen.

CHAS MOORE: She know when the rain coming and all that type of stuff. I think because Black people are aware of the things you just mentioned Henrietta Lacks, Tuskegee, like there is a lot of mistrust. But when people like me come into the community and the thing I'm asking them to trust in is temporarily there because they trust me, right?

LINDA SEABROOK: That's right.

CHAS MOORE: Like Ron said, there's a lot of organizations. I hate the word “community,” primarily because of research and institutions of higher learning and the police, right? Because we say, "Oh, we're doing community work," when in actuality you talk to like three people.

Some of you in this room are guilty, right? "Oh, I'm doing community work." You talk to like the Chas in your community, right? I'm an abolitionist, right? I do not believe in the concept of police. I don't think we need them. Although I know it's going to take a very long time to get there. However, when you start talking to the 55-year-old Ms. Johnsons and there are people that participate in non-legal things. In my community, they was like, "No, we need the police." I was like, "Man, that's crazy to me that you would say that.”

When you go in and you spend that time with people, that's how you build trust. But a lot of times, like these researchers, they're coming in —I can show you an email right now, right? I'm working on my finals paper. I need to talk to somebody in the community. “I don't know you but I'm going to do it anyway because you're a student.”

But that's how research shows up nine times out of 10. We got a grant to do how policing affects lower socioeconomic communities, so we're going to be here for like three weeks and then you're out. So, like really building that trust or, at least, finding the right people. I think like Ron and, even what you're doing with hiring people in the community that's not afraid to go to the bus stops, right? I think that's important because a lot of time, again, researchers, they want to go to the church, not knowing that today in 2023, there's a large demographic of people that's not at the church, right?

LINDA SEABROOK: Yeah.

CHAS MOORE: We have this romanticized, historical context of what the Black church is, but I can tell you today, kids 18 to probably 25, they're not at church. If they are, they're watching, like, Transformation Church clips on Instagram. A lot of the people — like even in Austin, right? If you wanted to go find Black people, you'd probably hear about the Eastside, and you romanticize what East Austin used to be. East Austin ain't what it used to be, right? Like they literally have white women walking their dogs on 12th Street when 20 years ago that was not a thing, right? So, if you want to look for Black people now, you have to go to Pflugerville, Hutto, you know, like Elgin.

But, again, researchers, if you're not a part of the community, if you don't live there, you don't know that. I think this is my thing with this and then I'll shut up because I feel myself going on a Chas tangent. I think researchers and organizers, advocates, whatever you want to call people on the ground, they have to understand that this — like we need each other, right? I need you to verify or validate to people that do not listen to people that look or dress or talk like me. I need you to do all the number-crunching, do all the white paper and black paper stuff you do, so the policymakers can then listen to me because otherwise, that doesn't happen.

However, you need me to get access to the people that don't trust you in your suits and your boots when you show up to the neighborhood, right? Because you look like, for all intents and purposes, the same people that are responsible for gentrification, that are responsible for replacing the mom-and-pop shops. We have to understand that relationship. I need you so you can get the data information you need, and I also need you to validate and further the policy quests or the agenda that we have as well. And I think a lot of times, we don't really understand that dynamic. Again, shoutout to Nancy for making me a believer in the importance of data and research when done correctly — but I think a lot of times that people in these two fields or these two work areas don't understand that, if we work together, I think we can build and create the society that we want a little bit faster.

HENRIKA MCCOY: Well, that's hard to follow but I'm going to add something. I also think it's important too, though, that, when you seek to find people to hire so that you have an inclusive team — I'm going to use the phrase that Black people use, that “All skinfolk ain't kinfolk,” right? So just because they look Black doesn't mean that they can do the work that you want them to do, and they understand the communities they're going into.

HENRIKA MCCOY: So, it's more than just you diversified your team because you hired this Black person to be on the team, right? It's someone who needs to understand, relate, engage, understand their limitations, their skills, etc. And I see that that often is problematic. That people think they've diversified when really, they just added another person that didn't really understand what they were doing. And to know that even if someone is Black and they're a researcher doesn't mean that they are completely bought into the system either.

There’s research I’m skeptical about. I’ve received requests to do things and I’m like, “I’m not doing that,” you know? So, you still have to understand that, regardless of someone's educational experience and background, that it's larger than that.

As Black people in this country, we have been systematically degraded, etc., etc., I mean, there are a million words I could use. And so, you have to understand and respect that when you're seeking to do the work.

I teach research at all the institutions I've been at, and every year, I show “Deadly Deception” to my students. I'm probably traumatized because I've seen the movie so many times. So, people who don't know, it's a documentary about the Tuskegee syphilis experiment. And at the very end of the film, they're doing like a focus group with women, or with people, about this experiment. And there's a woman who says, "You all have to understand. If Black people don't want to do research, you have to understand why. There's a history there."

Some people, first of all, don't know about it. I'm always amazed, particularly for researchers that don't know what happened, but then also think that people don't know. Now, people may not know, Black communities may not know the very specifics, but they know enough. And if they don't know that, they know something else.

Read *Medical Apartheid* for people who haven't that's an entryway for you to understand all the things that have happened and continued to happen in terms of how Black people have been systematically engaged in research against their will for many reasons. But those are the things you have to understand. And you have to understand that just having someone on your team doesn't mean you get to walk through the door and do the work that you want to do. That there's work you have to do on your part and an understanding that you have to have. And so, for kind of everything Chas just said, all of that goes with it.

LINDA SEABROOK: What's some of that work? If you're a researcher and you're out in community, how do you even start that approach?

HENRIKA MCCOY: Well, the first thing is to understand: who is the person you're hiring. What is their background? How do they describe themselves? I mean, I'm very clear. I'm a Black female. I grew up in Black neighborhoods, but I've spent a lot of time in a lot of other spaces. All my education's been private education, etc. I'm different than some people in other ways but the same in other ways.

But the number of times I've had to face a stereotype of the assumption of I grew up in a home that was poor, that didn't have two parents, that — etc. And there's nothing wrong with that but that's not my experience.

But the assumption would be that those are the things that shape who I am. And so, when people hire researchers, they often are hiring what they see before them and not the person that's actually there.

LINDA SEABROOK: Wow.

HENRIKA MCCOY: So, if you really want to do the work, understand who you're hiring and what they have to offer.

I might not be the best person to send into certain areas, but I might be because I'm a social worker and I really believe I am a good social worker. At heart, I am a social worker. I may be a researcher but I'm a social worker. And I'm a Black woman who got into this field because of the change that I wanted to see in my community. But that may not be the next person that you hire who may not feel that way about doing the work.

So the first thing to do is know who you're hiring, what is their story, and finding out the story not because you want to exploit but because you really want to understand so that you can do good work and make sure that the work that you're doing is allowing the voices of the people that you're interested in to have an opportunity to be shared. You know, as Chas said, it's about his voice, their voices, our voices being shared, what we want to share, not what you think is important.

CHAS MOORE: But also, too just understanding that because of some of the stuff you mentioned — Tuskegee, again, Henrietta Lacks — that some stuff Black people, communities of color are just not going to do, right?

Like I think COVID is a prime example of that. We saw local governments; big government spend so much money in advertising and trying to convince Black people to get their COVID shot. I did a COVID commercial in Austin. Black people was like, "Bro, we love you. No," right? Beyonce could come and do concerts in cities. People was like "Nah," you know?

So, I think we also have to understand because of the way research has been conducted in the past, that instead of like just trying to make it look like cool or trying to reach demographics through sending the right people in or sending someone that's appealing to that demographic end, it's going to take a very long time to get Black and Brown people to trust in a field that once was so harmful to us, right?

And I think COVID wasted so much money trying to convince Black people to get that shot. And I understand that, because it was something that was serious and it still is serious, but I also understood the why people were not. I understood that. And I think that's something that people in research need to really just grasp too. Like no matter who you send, no matter the messenger, this may not just be the time.

LINDA SEABROOK: Yeah. And I think it's the difference between on and with, right?

CHAS MOORE: Yeah. Yeah.

RONALD DAY: And I would add too about the resistance, that coming into the community is really about being genuine and being authentic, right? Because you have to let people know about the project, the goals, and also the limitations because, again, some people have some expectations.

LINDA SEABROOK: Such a good point.

RONALD DAY: It might be unreasonable expectations about what is going to come of this. And you talk about sharing research like findings. Sometimes that isn't even a part of the dissemination strategy, making sure you go back to the community.

One thing I'll say is there are plenty of white people who do research, and other non-Black people, in and on Black communities, but there are plenty of those same researchers who care about issues like mass incarceration and the collateral consequences associated with that. But there are other researchers — because of the reentry buzz — are really like pursuing grants just because the money is there.

.

RONALD DAY: And we just need to be honest that some of the researchers don't really care about this issue. And the Black community is very perceptive about the distinction.

LINDA SEABROOK: Right. Because we're skeptical.

RONALD DAY: And you just have to be real about that. If you don't really care about this issue, then why are you doing research?

Why are you pursuing this? So that was it.

LINDA SEABROOK: I think that comes off, right?

RONALD DAY: It comes off very clearly.

HENRIKA MCCOY: It's the intuition that Chas brought up.

LINDA SEABROOK: That's exactly right.

RONALD DAY: Exactly.

LINDA SEABROOK: Always listen to grandmama.

MEGAN DENVER: Ronald highlighted something that I was going to mention too, which is setting expectations. So, when I've gotten pushback or just questions like, "What are you going to do with this?” Like, “Are you going to disappear? People come dip in, and they dip out." And, first, I acknowledge, like, "Yes, I'm sorry that that happens.” I think as a community, we're trying to do better. Like as a research community. Or, at least, a lot of us are. And then being honest about what you can and can't do. Like I would say like, "Hey, this is an exploratory component that will inform this study but it's not, in itself, going to, like, rock the world, right?"

And the person was like, "Okay. I appreciate that. “Happy to help." And I was like, "Oh, okay."

I think that can be really important. And then being sure. As researchers, we're very busy. We kind of go to the next project; life moves fast. I always try to pause, and I say, "Okay, we just sent the manuscript under review. Now, we got to remember to email all those participants. We have to remember to email those community organizations." And my colleagues were like, "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah." And I'm like, "No, no, no. Today. Like we send it out today. We send it to them today.” That gives them time to comment if we got anything wrong. They can get back to us before it ever gets even close to publication — publication process is so long. Having that as kind of like a, “Okay, we do this,” and then we remind ourselves to loop back.

LINDA SEABROOK: That's fantastic. All right. So, I know that the audience might be eager to jump in here. And we have — Nancy.

NANCY LA VIGNE: Excellent panel. Thank you so much.

My question is for Chas: it's a two-part. The first is I had no idea you hated me when we first meet. How did you fake that so well? But, seriously, I was hoping you could talk a little bit about how the data that our partnership produced was used as leverage to really represent the community that was the source of the information in the context of the city council, etc., because I think it's a powerful story.

CHAS MOORE: Yeah. Great question. And I didn't hate you personally.

CHAS MOORE: I don't know his official title. So, this is Officer Vallejo, and he's a big researcher at the police department in Austin. Probably not my biggest fan but we have a mutual respect for one another. And when we conducted this survey, it was built with APD and communities that were most affected by police presence.

So, we went to like Colony Park, some neighborhoods on the Eastside where Black people still managed to live at the time, and we got this data, and we actually used that data to — I'm trying to say this in a way to where I'm not picking on Chris too much. We had an issue with our police union contract to where — Real quick story, right? Police union contracts are where all the stuff that people want to see change in policing, it's where they hide it, right, for the most part.

So, we were starting a battle with the police contract process, and we actually used that data to present to city council to explain why we needed to see these changes in the police union contracts. So, it was a real-life example for me, and a relatively quick one, in how data was used to further advocate the changes in police reform that we saw.

LINDA SEABROOK: And it worked, right?

CHAS MOORE: Yeah. And it worked. I got to say this, Officer Vallejo, because, I mean, it's just true. We actually wound up kicking the police union's “bleep” in Austin. I say that jokingly but also — or, at least from my perspective, I think Austin Police Department is probably one of the hardest-working police departments because they have to deal with people like me. And they actually have taken those changes and I think they've taken them to the next level, and they try, although they don't always succeed — to beat us to the curve on the terms of progressive policing because of some of the data that we've been able to build over the years.

I think from that, some of the data that we pulled from Campaign Zero, the research they did around police contracts. MEASURE Austin is a group that I know he personally works with a lot. So even though I give them a really hard time, I do want to say Austin Police Department has been at the table almost always begrudgingly, because I'm on the other side of that table, but we have always used data to help, you know —

LINDA SEABROOK: Drive action?

CHAS MOORE: — drive action and progressive policy. That's my little kudos to APD since they've followed me all the way to DC today.

FERNANDA: So, my name is Fernanda. I work in San Antonio, Texas. I work in the Eastside Promise Zone, so everything that Chas was saying, I can totally relate to that. Working with the community, coming from a similar community. They'll laugh in your face if you try to ask them a question that you would normally ask here or talk about the theory or talk about their lives, this is something that they're living through, they have lived through. So just wanted to say thank you for that.

Walking into these rooms, there's a culture shock for me, because as a Mexican-American woman — I was born in Mexico; I'm an immigrant. The largest minority population in the U.S. is Latino, Hispanic, and I don't see many people who look like me sitting in this room. So, yes, representation is extremely important. So, thank for bringing that to the table.

Okay, I'm getting off my soapbox. Just a question for Ms. McCoy. Do you feel like these conversations of problematic ideas and practices have gotten easier in your line of work?

HENRIKA MCCOY: Let me clarify. Easier for me or easier for who has to listen to me?

FERNANDA: I think I know the answer to that one — but just for you, to bring up the topic.

HENRIKA MCCOY: I will say yes but I will say there's context there. So, the context for me probably is that COVID happened. So, my project kind of ended not long before COVID started, and what ended up happening for me was that someone asked me to write an editorial about the project and my experiences. I just shared this story last night with someone. And what happened was that as I was thinking about doing it, the murder of George Floyd happened.

LINDA SEABROOK: Wow.

HENRIKA MCCOY: And so, I was sitting in my house every day assaulted by those images on TV and I found that I couldn't do this work in terms of writing an editorial and having thoughts like that.

So, what happened was instead of writing an editorial about Black men and violence, I wrote about Black people in America and Black Lives Matter and what it was like to be a Black academic. For many of us, the work that we do is reflective in some way of our own life experiences. It may not be direct. It may be indirect. It may be someone we knew.

And so, I kind of had a change. I had a branching off of a new piece of writing than what I used to do. And I think that has made these kinds of conversations easier, because I found a platform during COVID that I don't know if it would've opened up without COVID. Because everyone else was being assaulted on TV by the same images and — sure, some people have managed to find a way to look away and to pretend like it's not reality, but many more people were exposed that maybe had not allowed themselves to be exposed before, at least, believe it was true.

I wrote an op-ed called “The Life of an Academic: Tired and Terrorized.” I wrote an article “Black Lives Matter: The Parallelism of the 20th and 21st Century,” right? All these things that I was thinking but would've probably never written before. But because we were all experiencing the same thing, I had a new trajectory. I collaborated with someone in op-ed about COVID and those who are incarcerated. I wrote some articles about universities and higher education institutions and how there is this movement towards diversity but what does that really mean? Are we really talking the walk?

I took on another position at the same time as an associate dean. Because of those two years being locked in my house, having to be surrounded by things that were pretty traumatizing on a regular basis, I had to get that out. And getting it out then opened up a new door to make it easier for me. So, unfortunately, for us, for COVID, but fortunately for me for this, I think that made it easier. I don't know if I would have gotten to this point that quickly without that happening. So, I hope that answered your question.

And let me just add too: and the support of people to do that. So, I had a really supportive dean. I've had supportive friends. Dr. La Vigne has been supportive in terms of hearing my story and thinking that it's important to share. And strangers. I had people emailing out of nowhere, "Oh, this was great. This is how I felt too. I thought it was just me." And I was just sharing what I was thinking. So, I think because of the support, I would have talked about inclusive research because that's what I think is important. But I think the larger context of it, maybe I wouldn't have considered to be as important as I do now.

LINDA SEABROOK: So, I want to actually follow up on what you just said. But first I didn't get the name of the young woman who spoke, but I'm so glad you're in the room and I'm so glad you're here.

So, I know we have one more question, but you made me think about like trauma, right? Like generational trauma —

HENRIKA MCCOY: Right.

LINDA SEABROOK: — that we all experience. How does that play into like research on these issues?

HENRIKA MCCOY: A lot of my work is related to trauma. My initial passion and still important to me are young Black men in the legal system who got there because of mental health issues, not because, let's be honest, they committed some serious crime. They often had untreated mental health issues that precipitate involvement and contact with police in over-policed areas. But often those mental health issues are related to trauma.

I have been a long believer — and many people will disagree with this. I think all Black people are depressed. How can we not be depressed? I mean, that's my perception, right? You live in this world and look at what happens, how can there not be some level — and I don't mean clinical depression, right? But when you look at the world and look at the access and lack of access and opportunities, how can there not be some constant foreboding that happens no matter how successful you are?

I think that that is a result of intergenerational trauma, historical trauma, community trauma, all the trauma that we experienced. The trauma of walking through the grocery store. I just moved to Austin recently. I'm from Chicago. I love Chicago. Chicago is traumatizing for some people. Austin is traumatizing. There are no people that look like me. There's Chas here.

CHAS MOORE: That's about it.

HENRIKA MCCOY: So that is traumatizing for someone like me. I love where I live but it's conservative. I am traumatized by the neighbor who walks in front of me, literally, as I'm putting out the trash and doesn't speak and I have to say, "Hello."

LINDA SEABROOK: Right. "Good morning."

HENRIKA MCCOY: I'm traumatized thinking, so is he in the KKK that marched a few months before I got here, etc., etc. We are all traumatized. And so, we pretend like historical and community trauma doesn't exist, but it does.

And if we don't see how that impacts our day-to-day experiences, then we're missing a significant point in terms of who's in research, who's not in research, who's engaging in research, who won't participate in research, and what we find in research.

LINDA SEABROOK: Exactly.

HENRIKA MCCOY: I have long written, “Don't use race as a control variable,” because when you do, you immediately wipe out everything that's important. And so, for all you researchers that do that, don't do that. Race is important. It's not just a social construction. It is a reality. And so, part of that reality is trauma.

LINDA SEABROOK: Wow. Okay. Oh, we're at time. Okay. I'm so sorry. Well, this has been so fantastic. I thank each and every one of you.

HENRIKA MCCOY: Thank you.

LINDA SEABROOK: Thank you.

RONALD DAY: Thank you.
    
  
Disclaimer:
              Opinions or points of view expressed in these recordings represent those of the speakers and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. Any commercial products and manufacturers discussed in these recordings are presented for informational purposes only and do not constitute product approval or endorsement by the U.S. Department of Justice.
  
Date Published: August 29, 2023
    
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