methodologiMethodological Reflections on Being an East Asian Researcher Researching the White Majority.

Criticisms have been cast toward researches concerning race and ethnicity being traditionally dominated by middle class white men, and different responses and positions to the criticisms have emerged. However still, the methodological discussions of the social positions of the researchers are circled around the issues of white researchers' challenges in approaching the minority population, or concerns among researchers of ethnic and racial minority background in studying their own groups or other minority groups. I believe that there is an obvious lack of attention in the current methodological consideration in the field of ethnic relations: What happens when a researcher who is of ethnic and racial minority background researches the white majority population? The paper attempts to open up a methodological discussion that is missing in the field today. As a researcher of East Asian background in Sweden, interviewing white Swedes generates possibilities to observe how white Swedish interviewees interact with and communicate the racial and ethnic differences between the researcher and the interviewees. This paper will draw examples from the qualitative interview materials from my doctoral dissertation on Swedes' attitudes toward interracial relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]