Embracing a Radically Transformative Intellectual Approach

Abstract

This article analyses how, as a child in a mixed status family in North Carolina, I was essentially born into the field. I come from the community I study and I am both a scholar and analyst of that community, as well as a civic leader in it, by, for example, serving on a local Human Rights Commission and working with coalitions that sought to vote out of office sheriffs whose policies were causing deportations and family separations, and voting in better sheriffs. I rightly describe myself as taking a radically transformative intellectual approach and see no conflict with my role as a scholar. My scholarly, publicly engaged, and community leader work emerge from intertwined strands in my personal history, a history that led to my personal insights, scholarly analyses, and civic leadership and action on the issues of sheriffs and their role in promoting deportations and family separations.