TY - JOUR
T1 - Reflections of a white healthcare professional researching ethnicized and racialized minorities: Autoethnographically explored emotions revealing implicit advantages and consequences
AU - Halberg, Nina
PY - 2024/7
Y1 - 2024/7
N2 - Health research is often embedded in biomedicine in which the goal is to remove all bias. However, this is problematic in research on social issues such as social and health inequities. Therefore, there is growing criticism of health researchers' positions as neutral and invisible. I explore research-based advantages and consequences following my positionings within whiteness, nursing and healthcare professionality. Drawing on two ethnographic studies conducted in Denmark, one among black Nigerian women working in the streets of Copenhagen, the other following patients, defined in Danish healthcare as 'ethnic minorities', in two hospitals in the greater Copenhagen area, I take the point of departure from autoethnographic emotions of 'doing good', 'discomfort' and 'denial'. As I analyse these emotions as a production in the contexts, I show the advantages and consequences of leaving my marked body unmarked. With an intersectional lens, I discuss how health researchers' risk (re)producing social inequalities in health based on for example, avoiding topics of skin colour and experiences of discrimination. Ultimately, what legitimized my access to the people in the field paradoxically also risked delegitimizing their experiences of racialized and ethnicized inequalities. This is not only consequential for the interlocutors but also for the knowledge production, since we as health researchers' risk implicitly avoiding important knowledge if we do not see our own research positionings as a racialized, ethnicized and culturalized matter. Therefore, the need for educational curriculum on racialization and anti-discrimination is imperative within the health professions and as health researchers regardless of profession or research area.
AB - Health research is often embedded in biomedicine in which the goal is to remove all bias. However, this is problematic in research on social issues such as social and health inequities. Therefore, there is growing criticism of health researchers' positions as neutral and invisible. I explore research-based advantages and consequences following my positionings within whiteness, nursing and healthcare professionality. Drawing on two ethnographic studies conducted in Denmark, one among black Nigerian women working in the streets of Copenhagen, the other following patients, defined in Danish healthcare as 'ethnic minorities', in two hospitals in the greater Copenhagen area, I take the point of departure from autoethnographic emotions of 'doing good', 'discomfort' and 'denial'. As I analyse these emotions as a production in the contexts, I show the advantages and consequences of leaving my marked body unmarked. With an intersectional lens, I discuss how health researchers' risk (re)producing social inequalities in health based on for example, avoiding topics of skin colour and experiences of discrimination. Ultimately, what legitimized my access to the people in the field paradoxically also risked delegitimizing their experiences of racialized and ethnicized inequalities. This is not only consequential for the interlocutors but also for the knowledge production, since we as health researchers' risk implicitly avoiding important knowledge if we do not see our own research positionings as a racialized, ethnicized and culturalized matter. Therefore, the need for educational curriculum on racialization and anti-discrimination is imperative within the health professions and as health researchers regardless of profession or research area.
KW - Anthropology, Cultural
KW - Biomedical Research
KW - Denmark
KW - Emotions
KW - Ethnic and Racial Minorities
KW - Female
KW - Health Personnel/psychology
KW - Humans
KW - Nigeria/ethnology
KW - Racism
KW - White People
KW - critical health research
KW - research position
KW - health inequities
KW - autoethnography
KW - critical whiteness studies
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85164159671&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/13634593231185261
DO - 10.1177/13634593231185261
M3 - Journal article
C2 - 37391906
SN - 1363-4593
VL - 28
SP - 542
EP - 558
JO - Health (United Kingdom)
JF - Health (United Kingdom)
IS - 4
ER -