I was invited to be a panelist at the Rukus Roundtable Talk, regarding data & representation for young women of color.

Date/Time: Tuesday, March 29th, from 7 PM to 8 PM (EST)

• How did you come into your world of research and data collection, and what does research and data collection actually mean to you?

I came into it as a youth organizer (for years since I started Sadie Nash) and various organizations I’ve worked with, including GGE and TORCH (NIRH) where we engage in a lot of research in our work. 

I value qualitative data over quantitative; where I learned to validate my lived experiences as an organizer; where I prioritize talking about history & lived experience, which is the data that is not valued by people in power bc all they care about numbers away the people 

It is necessary to talk about lived experiences for marginalized folks because it validates their struggles and what they go through. It attaches humanity to those experiences, not pushing yourself by the bootstraps mentality. When you don’t give people a space/chance to talk about experiences, their voices/identities/struggles get erased. We are expected to go through constant trauma without agency to change your situation. 

Another big generalization is the greater the number or percentage is more significant. When you quantify data, it strips away humanity by saying that a minority doesn’t matter because their numbers are small. Then people in power can say it “doesn’t matter.” When girls of color (like Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women) or whole populations (like Kashmiri muslims) get disappeared/displaced or are living through unlivable conditions, people will use small numbers or lack of data as a reason to not care.

• Do you think of data as subjective or objective? (Be prepared to expand on your answer!)

I believe that data cannot simply be refined as subjective. Data is not only black and white – it is a wide spectrum. Data does not only consist of numbers, facts, or binaries (right/wrong). Data can also consist of lived experience, and that’s valid data. For example, you cannot measure racism. There’s no way to measure experience purely based on objective fact. It pops up in many forms, it shape-shifts. When you’re investigating a company on their racist practices, based on how they treat their employees, you have to read the complaints to HR or about the company. You can tell how a company is treating their workers not based on their measured output or productivity, but on the experiences of their employees, and especially the ones who have been harmed. In class I read an example of a company in which a black woman overheard an employee using an oppressive and harmful racial slur. The woman brought it to HR and they dismissed it. A lot of stuff can be swept under the rug when it comes to quantitative research only – you can’t rely on 100% accuracy in numbers either. Therefore, I think of data as subjective, meaning that personal feelings and experience are taken into account.

• What is a time that you’ve seen the lack of data, poorly collected data, or misinterpreted data have real life consequences for girls, youth, or minority communities?

I have personally experienced the impacts of poorly collected data when seeking resources and assistance to support my family’s basic needs. The income standards for the federal poverty line was not actually based on collecting data from people, it was solely based on the guidelines of how much food each family member needs (according to the US census, the federal poverty line was “derived from the cost of a minimum food diet multiplied by three to account for other family expenses.”)

Government programs are designed in a way that it’s not designed for someone to make a sustainable living. It is in a lot of ways designed to keep people in poverty, because if you make a little over the line you won’t qualify for SNAP/WIC/other govt assistance and you will still be in struggle. I live in a gentrifying immigrant neighborhood, and the income you need to live in my neighborhood is approximately 40x the rent (approximately 80k). Who in a black and brown immigrant neighborhood is making 80k? That’s why in my neighborhood, and even in my family, people are taking on at least 2 jobs and really struggling because you need income. Our experiences don’t matter to the people who make the rules about receiving government assistance. This impacts young women of color like me and it’s quite traumatizing. Not having access to a proper meal a day, and at the same time being rejected from government assistance, is traumatizing. It’s hard to have hope.

• How have you changed your own data collection and data storytelling to more inclusively represent youth?

Learning about history is a really important part of becoming more inclusive in your activism and organizing. For example, when talking about the Montgomery bus boycotts, Rosa Parks wasn’t the first black woman to refuse giving up her seat on the bus. Claudette Colvin was 15 when she refused to give up her seat on the bus, but she was a dark skinned black girl who was unmarried and pregnant. Her story as a young person resisting racism got undermined and erased.

Participating in a lot of youth-led organizations and discussions about creating change. Organizing within these groups is the present and future – youth do make an impact, doing online or on the ground organizing. Being young, there’s a lot we have to learn but there’s a lot we have to teach as well. We are studying our elders and the frameworks created by those who came before us. We are studying the work of the Black Panther Party, Puerto Rican Liberation Movement, etc. and what tools they used to deal with their situations. Trying to incorporate their strategies while being creative. But a lot of people who are ageist against young folks discount how youth create strategies to deal with our realities and struggles. It’s important to validate the voices of youth and include us in data collection and data storytelling. 

• Even as an advocate for social justice, I hadn’t really thought of data and data collection as a social justice issue? Why do you think that is? How do we change? (short)

Growing up, white scientists and white professors who were highly educated, were the only ones “qualified” to conduct research. You’re supposed to trust people and their data as credible because of their title – which is classist. This is why I thought data/data collection wasn’t related to social justice. We need to see more people doing community based research, research for the people by the people, used by the people to organize for our communities (outside of only academia)

• Makeila and Ruksana: How did being young – specifically young women of color – affect the way that your data was interpreted and if it was taken seriously?
  • Follow up question: has anyone else here experienced your identity affecting the way you were viewed as a researcher?

If young women of color were to present data, they weren’t considered as credible as a white cis male /wealthy person. Society is set up to portray people of color as less qualified or not credible. It’s so hard, because when you’re trying to prove yourself and make a point, such as in STEM fields, a lot of women of color are excluded or stolen. Black and brown people have come up with a lot of innovations, and white people stole and patented their ideas to profit off of them. We get used to our ideas being disregarded or stolen and taken advantage of. 

As a young organizer, in spaces where there are other young organizers like me, I am taken seriously. But in my workplaces, in school, in my daily life, I’m not. People don’t take me seriously because of my identities. Paving the way for more young people of color, queer and trans, low income youth to be in data and research would change how data and research are being conducted and who is being seen. Cis-white men who are “scholars” and hold degrees, data was manipulated and twisted to their advantage. They have exploited communities for their own gain and uplifting dehumanizing claims. Like the Tuskegee trials that were so traumatic and harmful for Black bodies who were experimented on. Many doctors believed that black women cannot feel pain- which is very problematic because their mortality rates are 3-4 times greater than white women during pregnancy, due to their negligence by the medical field and this false stereotype that was created. There were many examples throughout the history of America where BIPOC never consented towards a lot of medical experiences/experiments that they were forced to be subject to. This is why representation is so important. We need to challenge academia’s harmful history and bring agency to our communities to make our own stories and fight for our rights. Someone else cannot write your story – you have to write your own book with your own pen.