Black Critical Methodology as a Radical Research Paradigm

This paper introduces Black critical methodology as an iterative approach for conducting critical social inquiry, foregrounding the anti-Black condition as the focus of analysis. Drawing from Black critical theory, Black critical methodology frames research inquiry to allow radical exploration or investigation of the anti-Black condition (i.e., humanism) by adopting a perspective that presupposes race—specifically (anti)blackness—as the instrumental principle for social life and death. In this paper, we provide a novel perspective that adds context to the complexity of merging Black critical theory and methodology with critical social science and its attendant methodologies. To do so, we delineate the supposed (in)commensurability of antiblackness—the paradigmatic foundation of Black critical theory and methodology within a Euro-modernist context—with critical (social) theory by comparing their fundamental premises and elements. Finally, we explore the possibility of Black critical methodology emerging as an incipient research framework, particularly as an approach for community research. In this sense, Black critical methodology may serve as the theoretical and analytical foundation for conducting research inquiries, whether qualitative or quantitative, that allow for a radical reading of (anti)blackness as the instrumental, organizing principle of/for social life.