Researching Racism in Yearbooks

Black Students In Virginia Spent Months Archiving Images Of White People In Blackface” — Vice News, 2019, 6:56https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SW20Ug7Y-8c

These students are being paid to do a type of visual content analysis on old yearbooks throughout Virginia. They are tasked with compiling examples of overt and covert racism, or anything that comes across as racially insensitive. While this is important research financed via crowdfunding, there is controversy surrounding how the data will be used. How should it be published or made accessible? Should it contain identifying labels? What about the safety of the research team? With these issues in mind, this video is a great example of research methods, especially in terms of validity and ethics.

From the video’s description: After a few months of searching through Virginia yearbooks for people in blackface, a group of students had cataloged over 380 examples of offensive images and words — ranging from the less-surprising in the 1920s to the '70s.