Is teaching anti-Black racism relevant when recreating a post-COVID nursing curriculum?

Abstract

Abstract During the COVID-19 pandemic several issues were galvanized as global urgencies. One of which was racism, following reports that Black and low-income communities were disproportionately impacted by the pandemic (Public Health Agency of Canada, 2021) and the lack of race-based data in Canada (Ahmed et al.,2021). But it was the racially induced killing of George Floyd and others that brought global awareness through the Black Lives Matter movement of the extent of structural and institutional racism. We witnessed a convergence of protests regarding anti-Black racism, anti-Indigenous racism, anti-Asian racism, and more recently Islamophobia. These series of events have led to emerging and compelling questions from millennials and Generation Zs within the nursing classroom. Nursing education is called to embrace and draw upon multiple forms of pedagogies, methodologies, and theories that reflect and support student learning and enquiry (Coleman, 2020; Prendergast et al., 2020;). Nursing education’s longstanding history with colonial frameworks, practices, and standards (Holmes, 2008; McGibbon et al, 2014; Waite & Nardi, 2019), attests to the need to decolonize the nursing classroom, which in effect will decolonize colonial practices within clinical settings. One approach to assist nursing education in the classroom and workplace setting is introducing anti-Black racism (ABR) within the nursing curricula. ABR was coined by Akua Benjamin (2003) to explain the historical, lived experiences of African Canadians, and how colonial legacies in policies and institutions continue to mask racist practices. ABR creates spaces of resistances that can protect recipients and providers of the healthcare system and can disclose and rupture any invisible forms of inequitable practices. Based on the four tenets of ABR, which are, history, experience, invisibility, and legacy, ABR creates critical thinking and dialogues across multiple barriers, therefore providing opportunities for transformative learning and action. By implementing ABR within the nursing curricula, nurses may gain meaningful insights into the various ways racism plays out in the lived experiences of Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour by engaging the student into historical events and lived experiences that expound on varied forms of physical, mental and social enslavements. This presentation will conceptually illustrate the relevance of implementing anti-Black racism within Canadian nursing curricula as an effective strategy that can respond to issues pervading the current climate as well as support student learning and development. As nursing has an ethical responsibility to prepare and educate students to care and protect patients, nursing is also called upon to decolonize its classroom, reform educators and students, and create new practices that will reflect a new, post covid curricula.