The positionality framework allows us to make decisions based on a better understanding of systemic structures that block our ability to see the normalized discrimination that communities and individuals continue to endure. Because hidden biases perpetuate behaviors that continue to silence and oppress communities and individuals, it is essential to build awareness of how systems have placed us in positions where we ourselves are accomplices to these harms.
Positionality refers to how differences in social position and power shape identities and access in society. Positionality also describes how your identity influences and potentially biases your understanding of your outlook on the world.
Pascua Yaqui/Chicana scholar M. Duarte (2017, p. 135) describes positionality as a methodology that “requires researchers (people) to identify their own degrees of privilege through factors of race, class, educational attainment, income, ability, gender, and citizenship, among others” for the purpose of analyzing and acting from one’s social position “in an unjust world.”
Positionality as the word implies is about individual positions in society and is used as a tool to recognize the power dynamics that play out in various circumstances.
The concept of positionality helps to explore individual biases so as to actively NOT continue perpetuating them. When working to address racial equity and actively perpetuating anti-racism, access issues and systemic inequities, positionality is important as a conceptual framework from which to operate. When we recognize our position, privilege, etc, and how they are related to access, we can actively make better decisions that address access issues, as well as practice better understanding our own individual biases.
Hidden biases default to become our operational system. Understanding the context from which we are operating is important as we try to enact more equity into our lives and the systems we affect.
Biases are often referred to as hidden, because they are deeply embedded in cultural education, media, schools, social education and global contexts and have become normalized.
What this framework assists in understanding is:
Intersectionality: Hidden biases have many layers, crossing over into various social constructs.The concept of intersectionality digs deeper into the layers involved in discrimination. Intersectionality refers to particular forms of intersecting oppressions, for example, intersections of race and gender, or of sexuality and nation. Intersectional paradigms remind us that oppression cannot be reduced to one fundamental type, and that oppressions work together in producing injustice. Intersectionality is an analytical framework for understanding how aspects of a person's social and political identities combine to create different modes of discrimination and privilege. The term was conceptualized and coined by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw in 1989.
These biases perpetuate behaviors that continue to silence and oppress communities and individuals and block our ability to see the normalized discrimination that many communities continue to endure.
Here is a short example of hidden biases perpetuating access issues.
There was snow on the stairs of a University building. The staff were shoveling the stairs for students and a student in a wheelchair asked them to do the ramp so that she could get in as well. The response was to finish the stairs first so that most students could get in, and then do the ramp, because she was a minority she could wait. She replied that if they did the ramp first all of the students could get in.
In this example, the perspective that able-bodied majorities were more important than differently abled minorities is exactly the pattern that continues to be perpetuated, despite the fact that diversifying access actually benefits everyone.
Using positionality to create access and interrupt hidden biases that continue to be a large part of common perspective is part of equity in practice.
How can we equalize historically-based lack of access through understanding, practicing and applying positionality?
Awareness is the first step- For one, we see that our perceived value is systemically based, and that gauging the value of others has been normalized for centuries even though it is a social construct. How to use your positionality and access to re-dress inequity?
Awareness also brings to light hidden biases based on social constructs which create systems that are inequitable. From here, ask the question of how to address the importance of diversifying perspectives and access within our work based on the positionality framework.
On Equity: An interview with Naisha Khan "Historically, large systemic changes have resulted from sustained and active participation from only 3.5 percent of the population. That means we do not need too many of us actively involved, which is great news for the passive supporters of this movement—”
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