The Africana Critical Race Framework: Relocating Qualitative Method Under Conditions of Anti-Blackness

This article advances an Africana Critical Race Framework (ACRF) as a reconstructive methodological intervention that relocates qualitative inquiry under conditions of anti-Blackness. While Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) is widely used for structured analytic procedures, its philosophical foundations draw selectively upon predominantly European phenomenological and hermeneutic traditions concerned with experience, interpretation, and openness. Where anti-Blackness structures intelligibility, the adequacy of those inherited philosophical resources requires interrogation. Rather than functioning as a critical lens applied to intact procedures, ACRF reconstructs the ontological ground from which interpretation proceeds. Drawing upon Black Critical Race Theory, the Colonial Matrix of Power, and Black Africana Existentialism, ACRF relocates the philosophical conditions through which qualitative interpretation becomes possible while selectively retaining IPA’s idiographic analytic scaffolding. Through this selective reconstruction, the article demonstrates epistemic delinking through analysis of Black British-born male psychotherapy trainees, reconfiguring validity, reflexivity, and ethical practice under ontological exclusion. In doing so, the article positions ACRF not as an extension of existing critical methodologies but as a reconstructive methodological orientation grounded within Africana intellectual traditions.