Black (American) Girl in the Banlieue: Doing Race and Ethnography as an American in France

Abstract

Based on ethnographic research in the Paris metropolitan region, I discuss how my identity as a Black American ethnographer was implicated in this urban ethnography. Specifically, I discuss the intersections of researcher identity with that of the “researched” and how I was simultaneously framed as an insider and outsider due to different facets of my own identity. I further argue that these insights were data in and of itself as they revealed how race and racism operate in a society that has long disavowed their existence.

Citation

Beaman, J. (2019), "Black (American) Girl in the Banlieue: Doing Race and Ethnography as an American in France", Urban Ethnography (Research in Urban Sociology, Vol. 16), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 159-171. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1047-004220190000016012