Hello

My Story

I was born and raised in Liverpool New York, a suburb just outside of Syracuse, alongside my two sisters and brother. When I began my research career in college, I did not want to study race. As someone who grew up in predominantly white spaces, and often minimized my Blackness to fit into those spaces, I had constructed several identities for myself that I enacted differently in different social circles according to what I thought each circle would value. Consequently, when I entered graduate school, I was resistant to build my academic career within race studies. Perhaps this was my resistance to turning the microscope back on myself and having to look in the mirror at my own racialized discomforts, perhaps this was a resistance to fulfilling the future role of the only Blackademic in the department that just happens to also be the only one that studies race, perhaps this was just typical graduate school jitters and the growing pains of not knowing who I was or what I wanted out of this journey. In my current research projects, I explore these same identity negotiations that I myself experience, and I do so through a critical lens. My hope in this research is to help individuals like me to make sense of their identity tensions, understand how their identity journey connects to others,’ and connect the dots between the context around them and their sense of self. In doing so, I hope to use my research to enact social change so that marginalized ethnic-racial populations may rejoice in their uniqueness. As I have undergone my scholarly identity development, I have crafted the following statement:

In my research and in my life I encourage others to rejoice in their own uniqueness so that we all may grow in our appreciation for the plurality of the human condition. I do this by conducting social scientific and critical research that aims to understand my participants’ unique lives. This goal, in combination with my own racialized experience, has led to my focus on studying race and racism(s) through a lens of communication, including the expression of ethnic-racial identity, the socialization and development of ethnic-racial identity, interpersonal interactions surrounding race and identity, and the reproduction of race and racism(s) through proximal and distal discourses. In particular, I use qualitative and mixed methods approaches to study several facets of (multi)ethnic-racial identity, which often references the interracial family. The combinations of several methods, theories, and paradigmatic viewpoints have allowed me to deeply attend to the circumstances of others within my scholarly writings so that those unique experiences may be shared, acknowledged, and even become companions for others that resonate with their content.

Along with other scholars and advocates of color whose research and teaching are steeped in racial inequality and struggle, I use my very body and identity as a bridge of understanding for those that participate in and consume my research products. I do this heart and soul work because I want to know others, and in turn, be known by others, through the rippling waves of honoring stories, subjective truths, and the power of sharing and receiving subjectivities. My research trajectory has been as much a journey of self-discovery as it has been a career path. I see all facets of my life - my multiracial identity, my womanhood, my scholarly identity, my teaching and mentorship, my creativity, my activism, and everything else - as inseparable. So, I hope this story helps you understand my scholarship a bit more.