AWARDS

Grantee Profiles

Makes Me Mad : Stereotypes of Young Urban Womyn of Color is a participatory action research project conducted by the Fed-Up-Honeys research team at the Center for Human Environments, City University of New York, Graduate Center, 2002-3. The research team is composed of six young women who are also residents of the Lower East Side neighborhood. Researchers have been trained in social research skills as part of an immersive process where they worked together over the course of a summer to conduct research on their own everyday lives.  The project is concerned with two related issues:

1. What is the relationship between the lack of resources (for ex. education) and stereotypes of young urban womyn of color? In what ways does stereotyping affect young womyn’s well-being?

2. How does reinforcing stereotypes lead to the way you explain—characterize—understand yourself and others? How does this then affect negatively the community?

We invite you to check out our website: www.fed-up-honeys.org. For more information or for a copy of our report please contact us at all_honeys@fed-up-honeys.org

The following quotes from the researchers involved are excerpted from a book chapter we wrote together:  Cahill, C.; Arenas, E.; Contreras, J. ; Na, J. ; Rios-Moore. I.; and T.Threatts (2004) Speaking back: Voices of young urban womyn of color. Using participatory action research to challenge and complicate representations of young women. In Anita Harris (ed) All About the Girl. New York: Routledge

“ The most difficult part of doing collaborative research was also the most rewarding.  We are probably one of the most diverse groups of people I’ve ever spent an extended amount of time with, and when I say diverse I’m talking about more than cultural diversity but diversity of personality and opinion.  …. we never would have met due to the different ways we live despite that fact that we’re from the same small community.”

“ When we decided on researching stereotypes then using it to educate the womyn in our community it seemed new, like something no one has done before. Most likely there were and are many who do this but are not recognized, but that’s where our research will be different we have explored many options to speak to our community and have come up with very effective ways like the stickers, website, and paper to reach our community. Using our research to talk to our community made me realize that research is not just words of a paper for statistics but it can be used to empower. Research can be anything the researcher wants it to be and that is a powerful thing."

“I could never have imagined how excited and proud of what we were doing I would be. When we decided to make the stickers and the website I almost couldn’t wait to see how they would look. ... It was a very meaningful thing to me. I can’t describe how good I felt.”

“ We opened up to each other and expressed ourselves passionately. It was like I was getting paid to go to therapy….All of our ‘therapy sessions” eventually triggered ideas in our minds and they resulted in our sticker campaign which received great feedback, our website which we are very proud of and has been visited by many, and a study of our findings we have just recently completed and posted on our website. We call these our babies and we couldn’t be more proud our accomplishments.”

Related publications

Cahill, C.; Arenas, E.; Contreras, J. ; Na, J. ; Rios-Moore. I.; and T.Threatts (2004) Speaking back: Voices of young urban womyn of color. Using participatory action research to challenge and complicate representations of young women. In Anita Harris (ed) All About the Girl. New York: Routledge

Rios-Moore, I.; Arenas, E.; Contreras, J. ; Na, J. ; Threatts, T.; Allen, S.; and C. Cahill. (2004) Makes Me Mad: Stereotypes of Young women of Color. Report published and distributed by the Center for Human Environments.

Cahill, C. (forthcoming 2004) Defying Gravity: Raising consciousness through collective research Special issue “Inclusion, Exclusion, and Belonging” Children’s GEOGRAPHIES.

Participatory Evaluation of Research Methods Class

conducted in 2006 - 2007 in the graduate program in environmental psycholgoy at the CUNY Graduate Center.