The problem of race positionality and research funding

Should the positionality of a white European researcher be raised in an application they are making for research funds? I suspect this is now a routine way of judging the merits of funding applications when they are to do with research on non-Western countries or people of a non-Western background. Similar positionality arguments can be raised in other contexts too — gender, for example — but, restricting myself to the British situation, I focus on the use of race-related positionality. Such demands raise practical, intellectual and legal problems.

Questioning positionality tends to be justified on grounds of the power or privilege the white European researcher will bring into their potential encounter with non-Western people. This power or privilege is somehow supposed to act as an impediment to research. It is never clarified in what exact sense that is meant to occur, which is a function of the essential lack of scientific grounding of the positionality criticism. The positionality question is framed by the postulation of an oppression ladder, a sort of “caste system”, prescribing an albeit vaguely conceptualised group-based status hierarchy of oppression. Lest it be said that this caste system lacks sophistication, its defenders do account for multiple identities within it, captured by the term “intersectionality”. The positionality question belongs to the anti-intellectual trend of identity politics, differently termed as critical social justice, identity synthesis, or just wokeness. 

The positionality question falls foul of the ad hominem fallacy. It is based on the presumed identity status or group membership of an applicant and works to discredit or undermine his funding application because of it. It hasn’t anything to do with factors that are specific to an individual. Abbot et al have made a thorough criticism of using group-based identity factors to decide on academic matters, including the use of positionality statements. Although these 29 writers discuss the STEM fields, and while other teams of scholars have raised similar objections, I believe equal considerations should apply in other areas of research. When based on race, the positionality question throws into doubt an applicant’s competence as a researcher, not on the intellectual strength of a research proposal, but rather by reference to his racial background and the consequences for his eligibility that are assumed to flow from that. The poor, anti-intellectual formulation of the positionality question contributes to its opacity for a researcher who needs to reply to it when raised by a reviewer or panel scrutinising an application for research funding. 

In one sense, it is impossible for the researcher to answer, since the presupposition in the question is that the power or privilege to which the researcher is assigned in that caste system does act as some sort of impediment. It is not formulated as an argument but a mere claim. Not all funding applications allow for an applicant to respond. Where such responses are built into the application process, however, one way to respond would be to accept the question as posed, with its premise, and to reply in such a way that confirms it. The pressure to conform may be classed as a form of compelled speech and, especially if the applicant does not sincerely believe in his positionality statement, it can encourage performative dishonesty, which corrupts the research funding process. Given that there are no clear criteria as to what constitutes an adequate answer, one need only play along, be seen as bending one’s knee by adding to the word salad. Another path, perhaps a variant of the first, is to try and negate the impression of power or privilege by saying maybe one’s working class or immigrant background makes the researcher ineligible for the power or privilege tag because he too has the kind of intersectionality which allows him a place lower down the scale of power or privilege. Positioning oneself somewhere else in the caste system keeps one in the game but lends confirmation to the story of the caste system.  

A much harder route to take would be to question the very premise or framing of the positionality question. Here, one would have to go through the trouble of saying that this Western caste system is a construct that bears no correspondence to social reality. In other words, like the emperor’s new clothes, the caste system doesn’t exist, and any positioning based on it is uninformative if not hollow. One might go further and argue that ideas of power and privilege are vague or poorly conceptualised making it impossible to answer the point. While applicants are not likely to be given the required space to offer any detailed elaboration of the point, such a reply could raise the question whether it was too tetchy and failed to engage properly with the issue, leading to the potential down-marking of the application. Worse, as John McWhorter observes in relation to the claims in Robin DiAngelo’s book White Fragility, if you say you’re not a racist, it proves that you are one! 

That is, if the process allows any applicant response, which it might not, in which case the charge, and any grading influenced by it, could stand unchallenged. Aware that they have to navigate a difficult field, funding panels might yet decide to ignore the positionality point altogether — although the possibility is always open that, like the reviewer who initially raises the point, some panel members have also bought into the caste system story and think that it is quite legitimate to score applications accordingly. Worse, they may have enough influence over a panel to sway its decision. The positionality point could play a decisive role if enough panel members don’t raise principled objections. Similar patterns are already evident with choice jargon from the wokeness menu, such as “decoloniality”, “the global majority” and “minoritized” or “racialized”, being passed over as though they contribute to genuine intellectual inquiry. 

It isn’t merely intellectual problems and fallacies that the positionality question introduces. It also works to disadvantage an applicant from the get-go. The higher up one stands in the caste system, the more likely it is for one’s positionality to be brought up. And the further an applicant works one’s way down the power-privilege gradient, the less the possibility of the question being posed. This inevitably makes white applicants more subject to scrutiny, but white people in the academic scrutiny process also do not seem likely to raise objections. It is as though many white academics have accepted that they are in fact an impediment to the research process by virtue of their race. Both their assent and silence basically work to confirm what the caste system hypothesis says about them. Sadly, many non-white academics also confirm the same hypothesis. 

Disadvantaging an applicant because of his racial background is a very real prospect

Although it might be difficult to imagine a non-white person having to answer the point, I can see positionality being raised in some limited contexts against other groups presumed to be privileged. One’s positionality in the Indian caste system could be raised to throw doubt on an applicant’s competence. These issues certainly come up among activists and in the literature, and it may not be difficult to imagine their coming up in funding applications also. A few years ago, the Western left’s favourite muse on India, Arundhati Roy wrote the introduction to a new edition of The Annihilation of Caste by B.R. Ambedkar, himself a major god in the pantheon of caste activism as well as caste studies. Roy’s role became mired in controversy when some caste activists objected to her introducing the new edition because they reckoned that her caste credentials, and thus her positionality, were not low enough. Research projects also seriously countenance caste positionality. It seems unlikely that caste positionality claims would be thrown out by funding panels, since one would expect members to think that the Indian or Hindu caste system at least has some air of reality to it, even if their Western one is a sort of make-believe entity. There are good arguments to suggest that the Indian caste system is as non-existent as its Western counterpart, and was in fact made up somewhat earlier by the West, but let’s bypass that here. 

Disadvantaging an applicant because of his racial background is a very real prospect. Funding panels are routinely reminded of their ethical EDI obligations, the need to bear in mind their unconscious biases, as well as the “protected characteristics”, a term used in the Equality Act 2010, they are legally obligated to pay heed to. Funding bodies also nod to their belief in the caste system when paying homage to the BLM. Black lives matter because the officially sanctioned caste system story places black people at the bottom of its oppression index. The different sets of obligations funding bodies are legally bound by, or have bound themselves to, are not necessarily consistent with one another. There is a conflict between the way in which EDI policies are being interpreted and what the law requires. 

To start with, as the BLM example above suggests, EDI policies tend to align more closely to the caste system oppression index than they do with strictly legal obligations or breaching them. They go beyond sanctioning the performative signalling of allyship with the groups presumed to be disfavoured in that index in a merely dormant or symbolic way. At least that is how they are interpreted by EDI proponents at universities who act as though the caste oppression index is real. Universities have found themselves losing legal challenges after gender critical academics have been discriminated against or victimised by hostile colleagues. Such occurrences helped push the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 over the line and may have played a role in preventing the current government from reversing it altogether. One cannot expect that one piece of legislation to solve all the problems in the higher education environment though. As Doug Stokes has documented, the mantras of race and decolonisation have been inserted at every level of higher education without due scrutiny or accountability.  

If an applicant’s race is raised in such a way as to undermine a researcher, it seems that he is exposed to a disadvantage, which amounts to direct discrimination

Funding bodies have greater obligations under the Equality Act 2010, given their status as public bodies. This means that they must pay attention to the section 149 duty. Among other things, this duty obliges public bodies to have due regard to the need to eliminate discrimination, etc., advance equality of opportunity, and foster good relations between people having different protected characteristics. It is arguable that the practice around positionality breaches these norms. The obligation not to discriminate as well as the public sector duty applies as much to white people as anybody else. But funding panels are hardly conscious or made aware of the legal implications of positionality questions. 

If an applicant’s race is raised in such a way as to undermine a researcher, it seems that he is exposed to a disadvantage, which amounts to direct discrimination. Positionality questions do precisely that. Section 12(1) of the Equality Act is unambiguous. Its definition of direct discrimination reads: “A person (A) discriminates against another (B) if, because of a protected characteristic, A treats B less favourably than A treats or would treat others.” Naturally, not all funding panels would be negatively disposed to an applicant either because of the positionality questions placing him in an awkward situation or because of any answers he might have given. Some funding panels and bodies might try to brush the positionality question under the carpet, but would that be a satisfactory response? Even if it is treated with silence, the positionality question’s presence could have still played a role in the overall process and resulted in less favourable treatment. At least it raises a presumption of discrimination which the funding body would have to rebut. That presumption becomes all the more significant since a refusal to engage with a reviewer’s comment can be penalized by a panel. 

Non-white applicants are hardly likely to face the same scrutiny of their positionality during funding bids as white applicants. I cannot imagine that as a non-white researcher anybody would have argued that my positionality would impede my ability to research the situation of British immigrants in Turkey, for which I won two small grants. It is possible though that in the Indian caste type scenario things might turn out differently. It could be suggested that, as a Brahmin, an applicant is less competent as a researcher on account of his caste privilege, thereby subjecting them to less favourable treatment. That would no doubt be an instance of caste-based discrimination. I don’t address the problem of having academics on funding panels who have made statements such as “Brahmins are the whites of India … Brahmin lives don’t matter”. That raises a host of other questions such as whether a funding process could be seen as tainted by unfairness. 

I do not make the claim that encounters between researchers of a Western background and their non-Western research contexts are devoid of cultural significance. In fact, they can be deeply cultural. Researchers can be expected to bring with them assumptions that are part of their socialisation in Western contexts and that can also have a bearing on how they deal with research. The aspiration should be that researchers bring questions and methods that are scientific enough such that cultural factors minimise their impact on the research process or that the research process accounts for them or builds them in as interesting problems in themselves. However, this is easier said than done and rarely achieved, as our theories and methods have hardly developed to that level, even if we aspire that that might be so in ideal cases. Only one international research programme I know of, the Comparative Science of Cultures started at the University of Ghent by S.N. Balagangadhara, is seriously concerned with the implications of cultural differences in any meaningful sense and depth. 

We cannot also deny that the Western culture has fostered the flourishing of many different types of research traditions and held up a model of intellectual life that is open to emulation by others. If intellectuals whether of a Western or non-Western cultural background are dissatisfied with it, then they ought to develop new research traditions to suit the problems they identify. But the insertion of poorly conceived, pseudo criteria like positionality not only acts as a barrier to clear thought, but it also moreover disadvantages researchers on ad hominem, racial grounds. Unfortunately, it is one of the talismans of the declining intellectual vigour that the Western culture has fostered for so long.