How Field Relationships Shape Theorizing

Racist Activists

Both scholars and white supremacists expect that anything the other says is likely to be misleading. Scholars realize that racist movements are grounded in falsehood and exaggeration, from claims about the genetic superiority of whites to overstatements about the movement’s size, level of organization, and potential to inflict harm on its enemies. Racist activists, schooled in conspiratorialism claims that enemies are everywhere and whites are on the verge of extinction, are similarly inclined to see anyone outside their movement, including scholars, as deceitful. In such field relationships, all words and actions are presumed to be false, inauthentic, disingenuous, and in need of decoding.

Suspicions are not only privately held beliefs that guide the actions of racists and the scholars who study them. They are also messages that each party endeavors to send to the other. It is important not only to be mistrustful but also to make it evident that you are. The fraught nature of the relationship between racist activists and researchers is thus simultaneously overt and hidden. Openly signaling distrust is important because neither party can allow themselves to be regarded by the other as too trusting. Being seen as naive is a vulnerable position in a setting in which researcher fear violence and racists fear exposure. Signaling distrust also projects a standard of what is expected: for example, the researcher will not accept obviously erroneous information and cannot be manipulated or that information will not be provided to the police. It sets a boundary against being harmed or taken advantage of. At the same time, distrust has to be hidden. Neither party can allow their suspicions to be so obvious that they erode the possibility of future interactions.

The dynamics of distrust were deeply etched into my field relationships with racist activists. In each interaction, both of us worked to indicate openness and a willingness to be forthright but also a resolve not to let down our guard. We simultaneously indicated that we would treat the other’s words as accurate and honest and assumed a wary stance that made clear that nothing would be taken at face value. These complicated rules of engagement continually shaped the questions I asked and the avenues of inquiry I explored.

Two examples show how the balance of receptivity and distrust plays out in field relationships with racist activists, with varying consequences for theorizing. ⁵ The first example is from my interactions with Joane, a longtime member of a violent Ku Klux Klan who flirted with neo-Nazism. After meeting so many women whose experiences in the Klan involved serious abuse at the hands of their male comrades, I was surprised at Joane’s insistence that she had always been treated with respect in the movement. Since she had extensive familial ties to Klan men, I speculated that kinship provided a level of safety that unattached women did not share. But my shaky relationship with Joane collapsed any avenue by which to explore this hunch. Any probe would expose me as either skeptical (thus antagonistic) or gullible (thus vulnerable), both dangerous positions in a world in which violence can arise quickly. The calculus of trust and wariness, distance and familiarity that defined my interactions with Joane opened new questions (an abductive possibility) even as it foreclosed inquiry into those questions.

The second example is my interactions with Cindi, a young racist skinhead woman who lived in a squatted building with other skinheads (mostly men). From the beginning, my relationship with Cindi was highly unusual, as maternalist as scholarly since her vulnerability, youth, and needs were obvious and compelling. So was Cindi’s unusual ability to access help from outsiders, itself a risky venture. Indeed, I was introduced to her by a police officer from the antigang task force monitoring her skinhead group who Cindi had persuaded to give her food and even let her stay in his house during several rough patches. Our relationship was complicated by Cindi’s similar requests to me (which I declined), but these interactions allowed me to see her both as a needy teenaged girl and a violent racist. Through that lens, I could notice the surprising ways in which racist ideas seemed quite incidental to her life even as they defined her. To the outside world, her skinhead attire and hate-filled words designated her as an extreme racist. But to Cindi, these did not reflect her true self which she saw as artistic and creative. My dual view of Cindi opened inquires that I had never anticipated, such as how the trappings of adolescent status from the mainstream world (including fashion, style, and fads) were replicated in racist extremism, serving both as a lure into racist groups and a rationale for remaining in such a marginal and stigmatized world (Berbrier 2002). With Joane, our relationship remained as scholar/subject which closed off potentially prickly topics. But with Cindi our relationship had developed a more personal and empathic dimension that allowed me to see, and her to guide me into, the role of clothing, body adornment, and adolescent social life in racist scenes.

Threats and violence defined virtually all my field relationships with racist activists. Lurking in the background of our interactions were their worries about whether I posed a threat to them and, correspondingly, my worries about the consequences if they decided I had betrayed them, either by being a potential recruit who does not enlist or by informing to the police. To forestall efforts to recruit me, I declared that I disagreed fully with their ideas and agendas at our first encounter. To combat suspicions of being an informer, I shared my professional profile and encouraged them to confirm the details. (When I asked them for personal information, however, I never indicated that I would be confirming these later.) Racist activists virtually never acknowledged such assurances and often wielded their suspicions later in the form of provocations. For example, they frequently declared that I was probably with law enforcement or the SPLC, an organization known to infiltrate racist groups. Such accusations required my immediate denial, ⁶ although that did not close the matter. Most probably did not believe that I was an informant, but accusing me of operating in disguise served multiple purposes. It delivered a message that they were conscious of the dangers they faced from outsiders. It also conveyed a warning that I should not expect to receive candid information or expect to be shielded from violence.

Issues of violence also emerged around my racial identity, resulting in tense interactions. That my skin color is unambiguously white was not a sufficient marker of racial loyalty for some racist activists who regard white “race-traitors” as their enemies (Blee, 1998, 2000, 2002). Indeed, one of my most scary episodes was with the spouse of a high-profile imprisoned racial terrorist who suddenly terminated our evolving but fragile relationship by publicly denouncing me as an “academic race traitor,” a label that made me a target to other racists. I have been denounced as well in anonymous postings on highly read racist web forums such as Stormfront’s “White Pride World Wide”; some even disclosed private details about my family members. Carolyn Ellis (1995) and Annette Lareau (2014) have written frankly about the negative reactions they received from those they studied. Negative reactions from racist activists are more threatening due to the extensive networks of racists on the Internet and social media. In some cases, threats have been made by people I know, but more often they seem to come from people I’ve never met but who know—or identify with—those I met and interviewed. ⁷

The ubiquity and unpredictability of violence in racist groups limited the depth of relationships I could establish in the field. In much qualitative research, scholars can establish productive relationships with research participants by stressing the commonalities in their lives, such as children, work stress, and similar upbringings. ⁸ The resulting rapport can deepen participants’ engagement in the research, increasing the extent, depth, and veracity of the information they will provide and even enlisting their help to analyze data and disseminate findings (Rubin and Rubin 2011). When studying racist groups, however, personal revelations to research participants put me and people connected to me in danger. With rare exceptions, I avoided giving any details of my life outside work, even though this lessened the possibility of deeper rapport (Blee 1998). It also created awkward interactions to evade sensitive topics. Asked whether I had children, for example, I typically deflected with a comical question, such as “do I really look that harried?”

A less-discussed consequence of pervasive violence is that impedes scholars’ ability to reorient a course of inquiry in light of unanticipated information. For instance, several racists hinted at, or even explicitly described, their criminal connections, activities, and ambitions, an aspect of organized racism that is poorly understood. With less dangerous research participants, such revelations would drive a new avenue of investigation. But with racist activists even a hint of interest in their criminality might shift our interactions in a treacherous direction by reinforcing their fear that I would provide information to law enforcement or antiracist organizations. The undertone of violence can also suppress the researcher’s recognition of what is unexpected—the surprise that is key to theorizing. My notes reveal many occasions that I did not act on information that seems surprising in retrospect. Some omissions were due to inattention, an issue widely discussed in qualitative methods (Weiss 1995). But other oversights reflected my preoccupation with my vulnerability in this setting. An example is my interactions with Susan, an intermediary between incarcerated racists (in her terms, “prisoners of [race] war”) and the racist movement. Nearly everything I learned about Susan should have pushed me toward new questions: She was an elderly confidant of mostly young racist skinheads; she was trying to maintain prisoners’ connections to a racist movement that, in many cases, had failed to support them during their arrests and trials; and she seemed to have strong connections to racist leaders yet no affiliation with a racist group. Yet I did not follow up any of those anomalies. I was more concerned about Susan’s ability to use her connections to former prisoners and their allies to retaliate if she decided I had betrayed her.

Field relationships vary according to the racist group’s insularity and the member’s integration in the group. Since highly insular groups are deeply suspicious of outsiders, I generally made contacts through dissatisfied or former members who viewed participating in my research as a way to settle scores with comrades or minimize their involvement in the group. The complicated ways this affects research are illustrated by my relationship with Alice, a long-time member of a very violent racist group.

Alice told me she wanted to leave her racist group but was reticent about why. At first, she just said it was just time to do something different. As I won her confidence, Alice revealed that she had been sexually abused by men in her group. She also gave me a memoire she was writing with graphic details of the abuse. It also contained, or so she claimed, deep secrets of her group.

Giving me her memoire fractured my fragile relationship with Alice by introducing a new expectation of reciprocity. She knew I did not have other means of learning the information she claimed to be in her memoire, so, in return Alice wanted my help to escape. To Alice, my profound distance from her and her racist world positioned me perfectly to value the memoire enough to help her. However, the memoire was not as valuable to me as she imagined as it was probably unreliable and, in any case, could not be corroborated without serious risk to both Alice and me. Helping her escape would certainly make me a target for retaliation from her comrades. And even considering her offer would require me to drop my wary stance and seem to accept her veracity. Unlike Joane, the Klan woman described earlier who insisted that she had always been respected, and viewed me with suspicion, Alice regarded me as potential ally. But the very different relationships I had with these two racist women ended in the same way: foregoing an analytic opening that might lead to new theorizing about gender violence in white supremacism.

Less insular racist groups allow outsiders to attend their public events and generally regard researchers as well as the media, as a means to transmit their racist ideologies to broader audiences. Yet, even members of these groups negotiate their relationships with researchers through threat and deceit, as illustrated in my visit to a Ku Klux Klan compound in a southern state:

This Klan presented itself publicly as more respectable than other Klan chapters. It minimized violence and graphic racism on its website and routinely granted interviews to the media. To outsiders, leaders described the group as working to ensure the rights of white people rather than promoting racial superiority or harming nonwhites. Despite its general openness, this Klan was hard to access. Only after many tries did I gain permission to visit its heavily guarded headquarters in a remote rural area.

The juxtaposition of familiarity and strangeness in the Klan’s setting mirrored the duality of my interactions with its members. Any brief conversation or quick tour around the property could provide evidence of this Klan’s restraint as well as its raw and threatening side. The result was a boundary on people, places, and topics that was risky to cross.

In the Klan compound, it didn’t take long to find people who belied the cultivated facade of racist harmony. Hanging around the women’s trailer, I was swept into their irritated banter about how little Klan men did to help out. Their unexpected openness let me open new questions about gender relations in this racist world.

But soon, the day began to be oddly unpredictable. A man who had been showing me around the compound and answering my questions slinked away. If he returned later, it was with his face covered and I did not recognize him. By dusk, pickup trucks and cars were arriving at the site with neo-Nazis and skinheads carting multiple kegs of beer and flaunting. They were not interested in talking with me. Several loudly declared that I seemed like a cop. Others taunted that it was too dangerous for me to leave now; the source of the danger was left provocatively vague.

The rally illustrates two features of my relationships with racist activists. One is my dependence on these fragile relationships for even very elementary understandings, a collaborative dependency that is familiar to ethnographers in conflict zones (Hoffman and Tarawalley 2014; Jessee 2015; Robben 2015). In less violent and extreme field settings, researchers know what is likely to happen so they can recognize what is unanticipated; that is, they understand the underlying causality and logic of action (Blee 2013; Ermakoff 2015). When mainstream activist groups invite outsiders to their rallies, for instance, I expect them to ensure that the outsiders will leave with a positive image of the group. If that did not happen, I would be surprised and seek an explanation. Studying racist activists, however, I had little sense of what to expect; everything was unanticipated. Neither was it easy to understand the logic of causality and action—what they expected to happen and what was surprising to them—from the perspective of those I was studying. My understanding was hampered by interactions in which both of us strove to hide information and obscure the other’s interpretations. Such dynamics exacerbated what was already a difficult task of capturing the meaning-making processes (Tavory and Timmermans 2013) of racist activists whose logics are so remote from those of mainstream society.

The Klan rally also illustrates how negotiated structures of field interactions can change quickly, even in the course of a single day. As the motives of researchers and those they study are not static, their relationships are always shifting. But in white supremacist groups, bonds of solidarity can suddenly become lines of vicious battle among members, between members and leaders, and among groups. In studies of such groups, changes in field relationships can be dramatic. For example, the cooperation I initially established with the Klan’s leader likely provoked the hostile interactions toward me from rank-and-file members who chafed under his rule and looked for opportunities to rebuff his directives. Too, the influx of new racists to the rally dramatically reshaped the tentative relationships I was constructing with resident Klan members. Even before their arrival, Klan members’ anticipation of how the newcomers might react to their leader’s permission for me to remain on the property set an edge into our interactions.

The complex dynamics of trust, risk, and identity in research on white supremacism create a peculiar interactional dynamic that pervades what Claudio Benzecry (2015:3) describes as “representational practices” in how research participants “present themselves in front of the researcher” based on “how they imagine us,…how they imagine we imagine them; but—more importantly—how they imagine we would like them to be” (and how researchers imagine their subjects and present themselves). In studies of racist activists, scholars and research participants engage in multilayered, contradictory, and evolving presentations of self that reflect changing situations and understandings of how the other regards them: deceitful/honest dangerous/trustworthy; ally/enemy. These complex negotiations can open new avenues for inquiry but also hinder the analyst’s ability to pursue these.

Grassroots Activists

My interactions with grassroots activists were easy and amiable, nearly the opposite of the difficult and tense relationships I had with racist activists. But, as with racist activists, they involved negotiations. For mainstream activists, the negotiations generally centered on how I would present them in publications. Since our relationships were based on a mutual expectation of honesty, these negotiations were subtle and almost never acknowledged openly.

Members of the grassroots groups I studied had little suspicion of outsiders. My request to study them was generally approved without hesitation or even comment. With racist activists, it was necessary to clarify my status as a researcher repeatedly to avoid dangerous misconceptions, but grassroots activists seemed to find details of my identity unnecessary and uninteresting. Most did not envision any way that my presence might bring serious negative repercussions. Early on, their lack of concern may have reflected their focus on legal, peaceful tactics; the one group in my sample that discussed more confrontational tactics declined to be studied. Yet even when members of one group were accused of destroying private property to bring attention to an issue, my relationships with members did not change substantially. They may have refrained from sharing some details, but they continued to treat me as basically trustworthy. If racist activists made pointed efforts to alert me that they had no intention to be forthright, grassroots activists acted upon an unspoken assumption of frank exchange, illustrated below:

I got to know the members of EARTH, a mostly white and middle class environmental group, as it was first forming. It had been easy to get permission to study the group, but I reminded everyone that I was a researcher before the meeting got going. No one was interested in hearing what I was doing, or seemed uneasy with me there. Indeed, it was not uncommon for members of EARTH to look to me for approval or to include me when doling out tasks. My reminders that I was a researcher, not a member, had little effect.

In our interactions, nobody asked my views on the environment or on political activism as a means of saving the earth. Members assumed that theirs were the views that anyone with access to information would have and, as a professor, I surely shared those ideas. This fit their general idea of politics: People didn’t need to be persuaded, only provided with information to come to the right conclusion.

With racist activists, I was careful to clarify that I disagreed with their ideas and actions, but with grassroots activists like those in EARTH, the issue never arose. They regarded their efforts as self-evidently good and assumed that anyone with knowledge about the topic would agree. Indeed, most grassroots activists assumed that they were operating on the basis of common sense and that I certainly shared their beliefs and goals. The expectation of goodwill meant that they rarely acted uncomfortable when internal conflicts erupted in my presence. No one thought to caution me against revealing a group’s inner secrets, even in EARTH after the state passed a law that targeted a broad range of environmental and animal rights actions as ecoterrorism. Members assumed that I liked them and wouldn’t hurt them. In my relationships with most grassroots activists, there was a presumption of mutual investment in each other’s projects: they would support my study by giving me access to information, even when this involved difficult and embarrassing situations, and I would refrain from probing too deeply into areas that might undermine their confidence in the group’s efforts and goals. This was true for conservatives as well as progressives, for groups whose members were quite different from me in social positions of age, race, and social class as well those that were similar.

Despite mutual expectations of harmony, my relationships with grassroots activists did involve subtle negotiations over the outcomes they could expect from research. They did not imagine that my research would hurt them, but we struggled over the extent to which it would helpfully present them in the best light. Even as they treated me as a fellow activist rather than a researcher, members of grassroots groups frequently made indirect comments about positive repercussions that could flow from my research, such as confirming their worth to potential funders or allies. This expectation created tension, soliciting an assurance that I could not provide. A group organized to demand people-(rather than auto)-centered transit, for instance, was frustrated that their message was not carried by the local media. Members were quick to remind me how useful my report might be, if it was finished soon. They assumed that what I wrote would make them look good, not unreasonably since I described my interest in strengthening grassroots politics as the reason for the study and a motive for them to participate. When I declined to promise that the study results would be public soon or that they would be favorable, members found my response inexplicable. It violated their expectation that I would appreciate their efforts and try to help them. A similar dynamic emerged when members talked about the tedium of activist life in which substantial time can be spent hearing the same arguments over and over or waiting for people to show up. People complained about being bored frequently but seemed unconcerned that I would see this as either significant or a problem. They knew I knew the rhythms of grassroots activism, so found it puzzling and annoying when I pressed them to tell me more about these irritating aspects of activism.

In a few grassroots groups, my relationships with activists were more fraught. As scholarship on researcher positionality in qualitative research would predict, my relationships were smoother when there was an overlap between our obvious social categories (e.g., McCorkel and Myers 2003; Meadow 2013; also Lichterman 2015). In general, it took little effort to build relationships with activists who were, like me, white and middle class than when our social positions differed. But the dynamics of the group also affected my relationships with activists. In particular, relationships could be difficult when activists were sharply divided among themselves, as in the following example:

A group of African Americans organized STOP to end the epidemic of gun violence in the city’s impoverished and largely African American neighborhoods. Some central members were long time anti-violence workers, including street ministers supported by African American churches to intervene in gang conflict. They were convinced that gun violence would only end when poor communities were healed from the problems of drug abuse, single-mother families, and neglected, aggressive youth. Although they didn’t always paint the problem in religious terms, it was clear that they saw spiritual development as the key to social change. Other members were decidedly secular, and occasionally made derisive comments about the religious members.

Fractures of social class, race, and gender surfaced in the conflict between religious and secular members when the spiritual faction sought alliances with middle-class white church groups while the secular faction claimed to represent women’s interests. Given the complex lines of loyalty that intersected the group, there was no simple template for my relationships with members. Relationships could not be forged on the basis of common life experiences, since it was painfully clear to everyone that our lives had little in common. Nor was it possible to build relationships on the basis of a common interest in their goals since members differed so sharply on the nature of those goals.

Tensions built into the structure of STOP complicated my relationships with members by leaving unclear how the research might benefit them. Its internal fissures undermined the value of the public exposure that the research might bring; in fact, members worried about how to mask their fragility. If I could not be a useful conduit to the public, there was little incentive for activists to be frank with me.

Despite these lines of friction, a platform of trust in my relationships with grassroots activists made it easier to understand the meanings they accorded to their actions and the goals they wanted to achieve than had been the case with racist activists. It positioned me to know what to expect in most situations and to advance a new line of inquiry into what I did not anticipate. An example was the puzzling but widespread practice in grassroots groups of increasing collective discussion of the importance of recruiting new members at the same time that their efforts and abilities to do so dwindled. I suspected that the paradox might reflect two overlapping processes. After an initial sense of limitless possibilities, new activist groups faced the difficult realities of sustaining enthusiasm and accomplishing their often lofty goals. Since virtually all began by expecting people to pour into the group to support its cause, the realization that the group needed to take action to attract members was discouraging. Too, the rapid turnover of members in new activist groups meant that newcomers were both highly valued and difficult to integrate into the group. I followed this line of inquiry by systematically studying people who attempted to join new activist groups but were unsuccessful, members who left, and members who stayed but became disaffected with the group. These contacts were easy to find by referral from current activists who regarded me as generally trustworthy. In the study of racist activism, in contrast, it would have been impossible to pursue such a tentative generalization because our challenging relationships would not permit either direct questioning about their recruiting practices or referrals to departed or disaffected members.

Racist Activism

The Klan rally described earlier is an example of how field relationships shape theorizing. This particular day presented an unusual opportunity to develop new insights into ideological variation among racists as the pending arrival of skinheads and neo-Nazis disrupted the usual routines of the Klan. To position themselves against these invited outsiders, members were verbalizing what was generally unspoken—beliefs they held and those that crossed the line. But I could not follow these leads, because the shifting mix of people and the volatile mixture of alcohol, fire, weapons, and young angry men undermined the relatively stable relationships I had developed with Klan members. Instead of being able to use this opportunity to locate new dimensions of racist ideology, my vulnerability in an increasingly unstable field site caused me to withdraw to the edges.

This was not the only time that racist activists tried to direct my investigation through threats. As they are accustomed to wielding their beliefs as weapons, these dynamics emerged often in our interactions. They displayed their tattoos of swastikas or 88 (for the eighth letter of the alphabet or “Heil Hitler”) to test my resolve and throw me off balance. The same was true when they described in vile detail their intent to destroy Jews, African Americans, gays and lesbians, and so forth. Such assaultive styles undermine any neutral inquiry into the ideologies, yet they also kept racist activists engaged in the research process since they regarded our interactions variously as opportunities to score points or convince, intimidate, or terrorize me.

My varying relationships with racist activists also affect my routes of inquiry. It was easier to interact with members lower in the group’s hierarchy than with leaders since they had less access to the group’s secrets and thus less to hide. Yet they also had very fragmentary understandings of their group’s ideologies. Most could repeat simple slogans garnered from speeches or propaganda, but rarely knew much more. By relying on such members for information, my understanding of racist ideologies was necessarily static. Without trusting relationships with racist leadership, there was no way to explore the dynamic quality of these ideologies, such as how the beliefs that racist groups instill in their members change in response to shifts in external or internal conditions.

If prickly relationships with racist activists closed off some routes to theorizing about racist ideology, they opened others. The vast gulf between my beliefs and those of racist group members made intersubjective understanding nearly impossible, but it highlighted the puzzle of how they came to adopt these beliefs. So too did the unintelligibility of their worldviews pull my eye toward the question of how someone could find these ideas plausible and reasonable.

Grassroots Activists

With grassroots activists, my inquiry into the alignment of individuals and groups took a decidedly different direction. I carefully followed the changes in their ideological beliefs, but never inquired as to how they came to hold those beliefs. In retrospect, my relationships with members of grassroots groups sparked my curiosity about some questions while closing off other questions.

Congenial interactions with grassroots activists made it easy to be interested in their ideas about politics. Conversations about their ideological commitments nearly always went well. As they were energized by my interest in the beliefs that brought them into activism, such discussions further bolstered our relationships. The tension that such conversations evoked with racist activists was missing. Not only did I generally agree with the ideas of grassroots activists, but they never thought to ask whether I did.

In contrast, I rarely thought to ask grassroots activists how they came to hold these beliefs. I asked how they decided to become activists, but not how their beliefs arose. In retrospective, this omission had two causes. First, since I shared many of these beliefs I regarded them as unremarkable. It is difficult to view as puzzling something that seems manifestly obvious, such as believing that people have the right to food security or communities free from violence. Second, advancing questions about how they developed their beliefs would disrupt the mutual construction of reality that I had built with these grassroots activists by implying that their ideas were not clearly true (Mishler 1991). To ask how they came to have their politics would be to risk collapsing the fragile foundation on which our relationship, and the research project, rested.