Black Logics, Black Methods: Indigenous Timelines, Race, and Ethnography

The article recovers two pathways emergent from an assets-based approach to the study of black life using qualitative methods generally and ethnography, specifically, (1) racial recalibration and (2) black time. Arguing that our conventional timelines for black histories and contemporary realities tend to calibrate against white notions of time and history, this article reveals a persistent, specious practice in the study of black lifeworlds. Extending from assertions of the theoretical and analytic power of everyday black wisdom, and Stuart Hall's emphasis on storytelling and the popular imagination, this article demonstrates how black perspectives, measured and apprehended using race conscious and assets-based frames, generate and innovate questions providing new ways to revisit long-debated issues in the field.