Ethnographic Study of Racism Among Black and White Students

Running head: ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDY
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Ethnographic study of the level of racism among black and white students
Student’s Name
University

ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDY
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Ethnographic study of the level of racism among black and white students
Shaffir, Dietz, & Stebbins (1994), suggest that field research is an ongoing dynamic and
interactive process that is done through identifying dimensions of the experience. This means
that the challenge that the practitioner faces gaining entry to a particular setting through getting
familiarity. This means that the to access field research, cultural and ascriptive differences
between the researcher and the population define or constrain the research, in ethnography, the
researcher has to be careful with factors that influence the research like race and ethnicity,
gatekeepers, research bargains, research settings, learning the ropes research roles, closeness or
distance and even the way the researcher maintains the relationships. Race and ethnicity can
constrain access which calls for the need of the researcher to have cultural competence on the
nature of the people being studied.
Shaffir, Dietz, & Stebbins (1994) further adds that gatekeepers influence access to
research settings which can limit the nature of the information that the researcher collects.
Further, the research needs to have better research bargains to easily gain access to the subjects.
lastly, the researcher needs to learn how to apply learning ropes in analyzing different research
settings and outcomes. this means that the role of the researcher is to utilize learning ropes
through balancing between the need to acquire information while at the same time remaining
negative. Thus the researcher has to ignore involvement in the activities of the participants but
only observe to gather insights.
Proposal
Non-participant observation is a research method that seeks to understand or study the
subjects through watching the them in their settings with their permission but not participating

ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDY
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actively in the situation (Mannik & McGarry, 2017). This means that the researcher needs to
observe the subjects in similar situations for multiple to be able to effectively draw a conclusion.
This study will apply the grounded theory of research which uses processual ethnography. Here
the researcher gives priority to the studied phenomenon rather than the process (Najafi, Roudsari,
Ebrahimipour, & Bahri, 2016). Thus the researcher studies what is happening in the settings and
make conceptions on the actions of the participants. this theory is relevant to the research topic
since by concentrating on a basic social process like the level of racism between black and white
students within social settings, the researcher can have a more complete picture of the whole
approach.
Racism is a sociological concept that explains how people are socially defined based on
their skin color. This is seen in individual racism and institutional racism. In most cases, racism
is used to show the level of superiority of one race over another thus making it difficult for
different people to interact together (Salter, Adams, & Perez 2018). On the other hand, Bowser
(2017) suggests that institutional racism entails discrimination based on the background of the
individual to create indicators that define and shape the way such people interact. This means
that in college life where racism exists, students may tend to operate along the racial lines by
drawing racial barriers that define the way they relate to people who do not belong to their racial
color. thus this ethnographic study will focus on understanding how racism is characterized in
students of different skin color and whether the interactions are limited by racial definitions or
not. I have chosen racism since this behavior is easy to understand once racial indicators have
been defined.
This study will be carried out in the campus square for three consecutive days and the
focus will be on the relationship between students of different races and their level of interaction.