Alternative forms of knowing; the intersections of community of practice and race

Folami Jones

Its 6:00 pm on a Friday and it’s my last day on call before I write my final exam for my midwifery clerkship in two days. I’ve been at two births in the last 36 hours and I’ve gotten a total of 6 hours sleep, with a pager that keeps going off every 20 minutes.  I feel utterly exhausted, but my preceptor calls to say there’s a birth about to happen and she thinks it would be a great birth for me to finish with.  I hesitate in reticence and agree to meet her in the next 15 minutes at the hospital.  Once I reach the hospital, I knock the room door and quietly enter, where I’m greeted by another midwife, her student, the mother and her support team, all whom are White.  “Hi, I’m Folami your back up midwife”, crouching beside her, I said quietly while watching her labour and waiting for a reply. The silence echoed her discontent with my presence, and I quickly divert to checking the equipment and preparations for birth.  She mumbled something unrecognizable to the midwife (Andrea), and a few minutes later Andrea asks me to step outside to talk with her. “Um Folami, we just got here from a planned homebirth, Susie isn’t quite comfortable as yet. Let me talk with her while you wait out here please”.  I knew then, that this was more than just a change in birth plans, but the beast of racism had come out to feed. So there I stood in the hall like I did in detention of the third grade, waiting and watching nurses pass me by with question. Twenty minutes later, Andrea asks me to wait in the nurse’s lounge while Susie settled with the idea of having a hospital birth. An hour and half passed when my midwife preceptor (Pam) came in the lounge and suggested for us to go back into Susie’s room. I explained to her that I wasn’t comfortable, and that it was clear to me that this was more than a change of plans but it was my being Black that was making Susie uncomfortable.  Pam tried to assure me that it wasn’t that, and everything would be fine. Unlike Pam, the sight of racism was not new to me, or the way it subtly manifests. We headed back into the room where I found myself fiddling with cotton balls to make busy as if somehow my Blackness would disappear.  Within minutes Susie was mumbling again, but this time her eyes were angrily staring straight at me.  Then, in a sharp definitive voice she says, “I don’t want her here!” I knew it; I knew that this was going to happen.  Why didn’t Pam or Andrea listen to me…I felt my face getting hot, and the room seemed to close in. I just stood there, locked in a tunnel vision staring back at her in awe. Didn’t everyone else hear her? They must of, but why wasn’t anyone saying anything?  Andrea made her way over to me and asked me to join her in the nursing station. “I’m leaving!” I told her.  I wasn’t staying in this toxic environment that was riddled with acts of racism, not ignorance due to a recalcitrant person. “I think that’s a good idea.” She said callously.  Looking at her with disgust, I turned and left, promising myself that this type of management needed serious critique.   

                Midwives in Toronto according Wenger are a constellation, of practices; that plays out within individual clinics, but as well within the larger community.  They promote natural births, women centered care and choice of birth place.  Most of all the clinics have the same style within their offices, and we all use the same prenatal forms in Ontario but vary in clinic forms.  Many midwives take students, and there is a defined role and responsibility for both preceptor and student.  Like Alinsu, the midwifery community operates within a hierarchy structure.  You report to the college of Midwives and have a defined scope of practice.  Similarities exist between Alinsu and the midwifery body in Toronto, in that according to Wenger, there is a constellation of the seven communities of practice from 7 different clinics.  Both organizations are governed by a set of rules, but in the practice and exercise of these rules midwifery as a profession is more autonomous.  The case processors of Alinsu cannot challenge the authority of Alinsu.  They accept the power structure they are fitted in, and have very little room for negation or maneuverability.  Barton and Tusting concur stating, “Wenger presents a vision of the ‘enchanted workplace’ (Gee, Hull and Lankshear 1996) where workers participate freely and act democratically, whereas in reality their space for action is severely limited.”  If even in our wildest imagination we equate the set of rules governing the practice of midwifery to the power of Alinsu over the case processors, such that members are only able to operate within the tight constraints of their mandates and governing structure, there still exists, as in my vignette, an unspoken power dynamic that Wenger does not addressed.  This hidden dynamic is located in race.  As Barton and Tusting state, “…power issues are not pursued in any depth in the communities of practice book… he deflects his focus away from power and the creation of higher level institutional structures.”

                What if in the case of Alinsu there was a Black case processor, as there was a Black midwife practicing at a local Midwifery clinic, would Wenger have addressed issues of power including race, gender or class? Would the formulations of communities of practice look different, or the negotiation of meaning change? 

                In my next blog, I will look critically at Wenger’s concepts of community of practice and how it locates race using critical race theory.