A racially inclusive future for research: how can we make it a reality?

Credit: Thomas de Luze | Unsplash

2020 will be defined not just by a global pandemic, but also by the power and passion of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and its impact on public and corporate consciousness.

The movement speaks of entrenched inequalities experienced by people of colour in every step of their lives. It speaks of the frustration felt by generation after generation who have experienced lost opportunity and unhappiness due to systemic racism, outright discrimination, abuse and micro-aggressions. The BLM movement draws a line in the sand and calls on every one of us to speak up and play our part in building a racially inclusive future.

This is no new problem, and these are not new conversations for us at Community Research. Our by-line is ‘Bringing the voices of communities into the heart of organisations’. By this, we do not mean just white communities, or those who make up the majority. We have a duty to make sure our clients hear from a diversity of communities, to represent different views and experiences, including from people who are from marginalised and under-represented groups.

The BLM movement has reinvigorated these discussions at Community Research. We have decided that – rather than being an unwritten part of our code – we need to play a more active role in promoting and creating racially inclusive research and insight.

Last week we spoke to Theo Francis, one of the founders of Colours of Research (CORe) to expand our thinking on how we can do this. CORe is an initiative set up earlier this year by people in the research industry from diverse ethnic backgrounds. They describe themselves as ‘a colourful, global community, driven to bring about more diversity in a monochromatic research industry’. Within no time at all, they have set up a huge range of practical initiatives to make research more diverse and inclusive, including a mentorship programme, education resources, masterclasses, and allyship opportunities. We urge you to check out their website and LinkedIn feed to find out what you can do to play a part.

At Community Research, we are pulling together an explicit set of commitments to make our own research more racially inclusive, from the inception of research briefs right through to talking about the findings. These will include general commitments, such as continually educating ourselves about our own biases, privilege and blind spots. The commitments will also relate to each stage of the research process, from responding to client briefs (where, for example, we aim to challenge and support clients to consider how the needs and experiences of minority ethnic groups are relevant to their brief, and how we can hear from people in those groups), to conducting the research and analysis (e.g. considering if we are the right people to construct and ask questions and interpret the responses), to presenting the findings (e.g. considering how we represent the perspectives of people from under-represented groups accurately, in their own words, and using appropriate and respectful language).

We want this to be a living document, with input and lessons from people from diverse and under-represented groups. We look forward to sharing it with you, and aim to publish a first draft by the New Year.

In the meantime, we welcome conversations about how we can make our work and your research more racially inclusive. We recognise we won’t always be the best people to talk about this, and we will always endeavour to refer you on to someone who is better qualified through their ethnicity, culture or experience where that is the case. However, we want to make changes, and we want to help others to make changes, so please drop us a line to share your thoughts and start a discussion.