Eve Tuck Reflection

 Suspending Damage by Eve Tuck

This letter by Eve Tuck was very informative but almost disappointing at the same time. The same issues brought up in the letter: climate change, rewarding deficit language and damage research, including/ lack there of, BIPOC at our tables and providing a space to actually hear their voices are all prevalent today, same as they were over a decade ago.

After our amazing discussion in class, I have one additional reflection and thought that has stuck with me. Leslie asked us the question, "can quantitative data be desire-based research?" while analyzing the 2 pages of a STEM report I provided the class. While we mostly agreed the report was desire-based, I realized I only provided a two page section with quantitative data. At the time, I thought no, and explained my reasoning that numbers cannot explain multiple stories or view points. After some thought though, I am reconsidering this. 

The two pages I provided of the STEM report consist of quantitative data and researcher knowledge in order to explain the results and reflect on the future goals of this particular STEM initiative. You can argue this means the two pages consisted of a combination of quantitative and qualitative data. I also think about A Girl Like Me video, it too consisted of quantitative research (while shown through video interviews, it also explained the results of the study they conducted). And the qualitative research shown through interviews with young black girls/women about their bodies, culture and experiences with society's expectation. 

Eve Tuck considers the video to be desire-based research. What shocked me was that I focused so much on associating desire-based research with positive and asset language, I forgot to really consider what truth-telling means. A Girl Like Me is truth telling, there aren't stories of positive and negative experiences of what it is like to be a black girl in America and the body standards imposed on them. Rather, what makes this video desire-based is its combination of studying black children and young black women. Not either or, but both.

I think desire-based research CAN be shown in quantitative data, A Girl Like Me didn't have to be a video but could have been a written report about the number of black children studied and young black women where the same questions were asked but the results were shown as numbers. I believe the author, Eve Tuck even mentioned that the Clark Doll test done in the 1940's had results most people are not privy to. While it was used in Brown v. Board of Education with a highlight of 3-5 year old black children preferring the white doll, what was not used was the earlier findings of the study where "white children aged three to five preferred black dolls... the trend reversed itself among black youth at 7, who preferred black dolls." The author goes on to explain other ways this study could have been used to acknowledge the complexity of self-worth and self-hatred. Instead, only select information was used from the study in order to promote damage. Was it worth it - yes, desegrated our schools! but lets understand the complexity of youth development and the affects racism has on our development in society. That would be desire-based research.