Anti-racist Perspective Research Articles

Undoing Racism and Mitigating Bias Among Healthcare Professionals: Lessons Learned During a Systematic Review.

BackgroundResearch indicates that the implicit biases and racist attitudes of healthcare workers are fundamental contributing factors to race-based health inequities. However, few studies and reviews appear to have examined the provision and effects of anti-racist education and training on post-licensure healthcare workers. The purpose of this systematic literature review was to explore what research methods are being used to ascertain the training healthcare workers are receiving post-licensure and to identify the goals and outcomes of this training.MethodsUsing PubMed, CINAHL, and Google Scholar databases, peer-reviewed articles meeting inclusion criteria were identified and reviewed by the authors from March through October of 2020 in alignment with the renewed national focus on anti-racism and racial justice. Studies or initiatives involving students were excluded as were commentaries on studies and studies not specific to racism or anti-racism.ResultsEleven articles were identified as meeting stipulated inclusion criteria. Few were outcome studies (n = 3), and many articles did not clearly delineate training methods, content, or outcomes assessed. Identified methods included group discussion, case studies, and online modules. Reported outcomes included increased self-awareness of implicit biases and racism. Only two studies focused specifically on nurses, with the majority of studies centering on physicians (n = 5).ConclusionsA considerable knowledge gap exists regarding effective methods, tools, and outcomes to use for undoing racism and mitigating bias in healthcare professionals. Nothing less than a seismic paradigm shift is called for, one in which an anti-racist perspective informs all healthcare education, research, and practice.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40615-021-01137-x.

Blunt talk or faux outrage? The politics of expanding migrant worker programs under Canada’s former Conservative government (2006–2015)

This paper combines critical antiracist perspectives with Poulantzas’ and Hall’s concepts of authoritarian statism and populism to examine the diminishment of democratic processes and the intensification of social relations of inequality in citizenship, immigration, and the state that accompanied the controversial expansion of migrant worker programs under Canada’s former Conservative government (2006–2015). It also discusses how the party and former government sought to maintain these problematic structures and their later response to the political fallout caused by their approach. The conclusion discusses this policy realm under the subsequent Liberal government during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Biased Impartiality: A Survey of Post-Rds Caselaw on Bias, Race and Indigeneity

Based on an empirical review of post-RDS caselaw, I argue that there is a demonstrable colour blindness within the existing jurisprudence on judicial impartiality. I illustrate this colour blind approach through two arguments. The first argument is based on the evidence needed to pierce the veil of judicial impartiality. A large number of the cases surveyed illustrate the propensity of decision makers to deny recusal arguments based on the cogency of the evidence. In these cases of colour blind decision making, the presented evidence was deemed insufficient to warrant piercing the veil of judicial impartiality. The second argument focuses on judges that adopt an antiracist perspective. When judges have relied on social science evidence to engage in contextual and antiracist judging, they have been policed and their decisions overturned by supervisory and appellate courts.

Decolonizing psychology: Power, citizenship and identity

ABSTRACT I adopt a decolonizing perspective in understanding how the culture of psychology creates specific explanations about self and identity. I mainly draw on my recent research on decolonizing psychology and previous work on acculturation and identity to examine how history, whiteness, citizenship and culture shapes the field of psychology and psychanalytic conceptions of self and identity. That is, my argument is that the larger historical and cultural roots of psychology produce specific conceptions of culture in the clinical and therapeutic context. In particular: 1) I give examples of how colonialism and coloniality have shaped psychological theories; 2) I analyse post- 9/11 narratives from the Sikh diaspora to show how marginalized groups become raced and othered in the context of political crisis; 3) I provide modest suggestions for rethinking conceptions of self and identity through an antiracist perspective.

Racismo, eugenia e doença falciforme: o caso de um programa de triagem populacional

O objetivo deste artigo é problematizar a relação entre eugenia e racismo associada às doenças genéticas, especifiamente à doença falciforme, tendo como referência o caso do Programa de Triagem Populacional (PTP), cuja implantação em Salvador, Bahia, não se concretizou devido às mobilizações sociais. Realizou-se uma pesquisa qualitativa, ancorada na perspectiva feminista e antirracista, que aliou a análise documental da proposta do programa e entrevistas em profundidade com mulheres negras com doença falciforme acerca da percepção sobre o conteúdo do programa. A análise do documento evidenciou conteúdos racistas e eugenistas, relacionados com um discurso de cerceamento do direito reprodutivo de mulheres com este agravo. Entre as mulheres negras entrevistadas, prevaleceu o sentimento de indignação frente à interdição de seu direito reprodutivo. Há necessidade de destituir práticas institucionais que se forjam sob o crivo do racismo institucional e produzem violências sobre os corpos negros.

EDUCAÇÃO ANTIRRACISTA NO SERTÃO CENTRAL CEARENSE: CONSTRUINDO PONTES ENTRE A EXTENSÃO UNIVERSITÁRIA E QUILOMBOLAS

This paper aims to highlight the importance of university extension regarding racial issues in private higher education from an anti-racist perspective. Numeq has prioritized the construction of knowledge regarding the racial issue, and in this two-way way with the quilombo, recognizes and revalues its knowledge in the academic sphere. It also shows students 'and teachers' views on Numeq as well as their contribution to the exact, health and humanities courses. It could be noted that, through the readings, reflections and experiences, the extension project allowed students and teachers to have a comprehensive view and a political and historical awareness about oppression, more specifically racism.

Las Fronteras de los archivos. Lo exótico en Pasolini.

Hoy se considera a Pier Paolo Pasolini como uno de los intelectuales italianos más importantes del siglo XX. Su vida recoge el pasaje desde el régimen Fascista al neocapitalismo y del colonialismo al poscolonialismo.Si tenemos en cuenta el contexto geopolítico italiano actual con respecto a las políticas migratorias y al desarrollo neoliberalista y neocolonial ¿qué significa analizar la referencia pasoliniana hoy? ¿y qué ocurre con el imaginario que se ha construido acerca del poeta como icono de la lucha anticapitalista radical si al analizar su obra y su vida desplazamos nuestra mirada hacia una perspectiva antirracista? El objetivo de esta contribución es situar la figura pasoliniana en el contexto histórico italiano, analizar su interés sobre los archivos y visibilizar el aspecto más orientalista de su obra. Today Pier Paolo Pasolini is considerated as one of the most important Italian intellectuals from the 20th century. His life picks up the passage from the fascist regime to the neo-capitalism and from the colonialism to the post colonialism. Holding the actual Italian geopolitical context in mind in regard to the migration policies, the neoliberal and neocolonial development ¿what does analyse the pasolinianan reference mean now a day? And what happens in regard to the imaginary that was build around the poet as an icon of the fight against radical anti-capitalism if by analyzing his work and life we move our attention to an antiracist perspective? The objetive of this contribution is to situate the pasolinianan figure in the Italian historical context. Analysing his interest about archives and making the more orientalist aspect of his work.

Between campus and planet: toward a posthumanist paideia

ABSTRACTOver the last decade, humanities advocates have called for public support of liberal arts education, noting the vital contributions of the humanities to local, national, and global conversations. At the same time, systemic public problems have energized serial community discussions on campuses across and beyond the U.S.A. In the contexts of corporatized higher education and posthumanism, this essay suggests specific contributions rhetorical education can make in the service of human welfare and democratic life. We contribute a defense of rhetorical education by tracing its humanist foundations to revivify its promises for the global multiversity poised between campus and planet. We advance a posthumanist paideia, a rhetorical education that builds on the best of the humanist rhetorical tradition while including a plurality of historically distant and contemporary theories of rhetoric oriented toward feminist, antiracist, and posthumanist perspectives on citizenship, civic engagement, and “the public.” We advance a posthumanist paideia that takes campus public problems seriously and equips students with the collaborative habits and ethical communication practices necessary to respond to the calls of posthumanist democratic life. Our posthumanist paideia fosters the collaborative habits and practices of posthumanist public scholarship.

Theorising decolonisation in the context of lifelong learning and transnational migration: anti-colonial and anti-racist perspectives

ABSTRACTIn the age of transnational migration, the practices and policies of lifelong learning in many immigrant-receiving countries continue to be impacted by the cultural and discursive politics of colonial legacies. Drawing on a wide range of anti-colonial and anti-racist scholarship, we argue for an approach to lifelong learning that aims to decolonise the ideological underpinnings of colonial relations of rule, especially in terms of its racialised privileging of ‘whiteness’ and Eurocentrism. In the context of lifelong learning, decolonisation would achieve four important purposes. First, it would illustrate the nexus between knowledge, power, and colonial narratives by interrogating how knowledge-making is a fundamental aspect of ‘coloniality’. Second, decolonisation would entail challenging the hegemony of western knowledge, education, and credentials and upholding a ‘multiculturalism of knowledge’ that is inclusive and responsive to the cultural needs and values of transnational migrants. Third, decolonisation would lead to the need for planning and designing learning curricula as well as institutionalised pedagogy based on non-western knowledge systems and epistemic diversity. The final emphasis is on the urgency to decolonise our minds as lifelong learners, practitioners and policy-makers in order to challenge the passivity, colonisation, and marginalisation of learners both in classrooms and workplaces.

Diversity, inclusion and (anti) racism in health and physical education: what can a critical whiteness perspective offer?

ABSTRACTThis Fritz Duras lecture argues for the importance of physical educators’ critical engagement with issues of race and ethnic diversity. Despite its colonial history and close relationship to sport - where racialised discourses about the body contribute to shaping commonsense ideas about race - we have yet to engage in any sustained way with issues of race in Health and Physical Education (HPE). Concerns over rises in racism, coupled with persistent gaps between a largely white profession and ethnically diverse school populations in developed countries, point to the need to support teachers’ critical engagement with race. In the paper I examine the potential - and challenges - of adopting a critical whiteness perspective for this task. Antiracist perspectives focusing on the effects of racism position white teachers ‘outside’ of race, and contribute to a deficit view of minority ethnic students in HPE as ‘problems’ for not being ‘active or healthy enough’ in relation to an accepted white (male and middle class) norm. Critical whiteness perspectives shift the focus towards an examination of the workings of the dominant culture through a critical engagement with whiteness, centralising white teachers within processes of racialisation. I ask what such an approach might mean for HPE educators and our (antiracist) practice. To do this, I draw on recent research, funded by the British Academy, that sought to explore the cultural resources on which physical educators draw to make sense of race, including an analysis of discourses of race evident in national curricular policy. Examples from the findings demonstrate how whiteness in HPE works through two discursive techniques, universalisation (the way in which white experience and knowledge is taken to count for the experiences of everyone) and naturalism (the ways in which race is defined in relation to ‘others’, so that white bodies and perspectives are seen as ‘natural’ and the norm). The paper concludes by returning to what a critical whiteness perspective might offer teachers in their anti-racist practice.

Federal Wealth Policies in Support of Jim Crow

Recognizing the specific ways that systemic racism has and continues to function in our society is essential to developing a political economy that effectively examines contemporary problems and issues, whatever they may be. To do so, this paper identifies key elements of an anti-racist perspective and uses them to illuminate critical aspects of our racial wealth gap. Given the nature of wealth – its inherent durability and transferability across generations – this paper demonstrates how the current racial wealth gap is the result of past wealth policies that privileged whites. Further, it demonstrates how our current wealth policies are not simply encouraging the concentration of wealth among the 1 percent, but also recreating a system of racial segmentation. In a time in which overtly racialized policies and laws are often illegal, our wealth policies now function as a modern version of past Jim Crow laws and norms. This paper relies on the Survey of Consumer Finances and Joint Committee on Taxation data to document its claims.

Caseworker Perspectives on Mental Health Disparities Among Racial/Ethnic Minority Youth in Child Welfare

ABSTRACTDisparities in mental health service use exist for children of color in the child welfare system. Studies exploring a theoretical link of provider racial bias to disparities in service use recommend further inquiry into this association. Since measuring caseworker racial bias may be difficult, examining language, particularly as to whether caseworkers attribute racial disparities to structural mechanisms or individual agency and beliefs, may illuminate unconscious racial bias that caseworkers have towards their clients. Therefore, this study employed discourse analysis to examine child welfare caseworker racial explanations of mental health disparities. Qualitative data derived from focus group transcripts of 36 caseworkers who discussed barriers and facilitators of mental health service use were used in this study. Results showed that caseworkers cited factors at the institutional, community, and organizational levels as causes of racial disparities, but also ascribed ultimate responsibility for service use on clients and on caseworkers to facilitate access to services. Integrating anti-racist perspectives into caseworker training and agency policies can challenge racial stereotypes and empower caseworkers and agencies to address structural-level racial disparities. Future research should examine the impact of caseworker referrals on mental health disparities and evaluate the effectiveness of anti-racist training in reducing caseworker racial bias.

Racism and Denial of Racism: Dealing with the Academy and the Field

AbstractWe discuss our experiences of both racism and its denial in the context of our interactions with research participants, research teams, and academic communities. Greenhill questions scholarly traditions that insist upon objectivist methods and, in the process, side with researchers and research participants who refuse to acknowledge and expose White-identified, privileged social actions. Reflecting on decades of responses to her own research on the performance of race and gender in Morris dancing and Brommtopp, she concludes that both the denial and the performance of raced and marginalized others underscore deeply held views about Canadian homogeneity, diversity, and multiculturalism. Marshall focuses on responses to the anti-racist histories she has collected, and, more importantly, to the ethnographic ways that she has collected them. By straddling the boundaries between academic and non-academic life, she has used her work to reveal the histories of people who have often lived in the shadows of dominant cultures. Yet questions about methods, methodology, and theory have sought to erase the results of research on the level of systems of knowledge--to make it impossible not because of its content but because of its sources. We contend that diversity must be about the use of multiple methods, theories, and approaches that guard against the denial of racism. Defending, explaining, and fighting for anti-racist perspectives is eye-opening and sometimes exhausting, even for two White-identified, privileged academics like ourselves.

Toward a Race Radical Vision of Bilingual Education for Kurdish Users in Turkey: A Commentary

This commentary presents a Race Radical Vision (RRV) for Kurdish-Turkish bilingual education in Turkey. A RRV reinforces the need to consciously include issues of racism, imperialism, identity, and local practices in the development of bilingual education teacher education programs that advocate for minoritized language use in all aspects of education. It is argued that without a RRV for bilingual education, the State will represent bilingual education to benefit of own interests, ultimately destroying bilingual education as a strong anti-racist educational practice. Turkey needs a strong RRV of Kurdish-Turkish bilingual education to ensure that racism and colonialism remain in the national educational discourse. This commentary draws on experiences of bilingual education in the United States as well as other countries to show the importance of a RRV for developing bilingual education from a local language rights perspective. It also points out some of the challenges bilingual educators and scholars face when State becomes involved in funding and shaping the anti-racist perspective in bilingual the State takes over the anti-racism practices, especially when the State is tied to neoliberalism and neoliberal ideals of individualism and colorblindness.Keywords: Bilingual education, RRV, Kurdish, Turkey

Feminism, Modernity and Critical Theory

The relationship between modernity and normativity is central to the project of critical theory, and yet this relationship has come under increasing pressure in recent years, in particular from postcolonial critics. For feminist critical theory specifically, the demand to rethink the relationship between modernity and normativity can be seen as coming simultaneously from two different directions: both from the direction of a feminist theory that strives to be genuinely inclusive of the perspectives and experiences of all women, including those in the global South, by developing an intersectional analysis of the cross-cutting axes of racial, gender, and imperial domination; and from the direction of a critical theory that can only be truly critical if it can take on board a postcolonial perspective. And yet rethinking the relationship between modernity and normativity poses serious problems for certain prominent understandings of feminist critical theory. In particular, insofar as the normative perspective of critical theory is dependent upon a particular understanding of modernity that is tied to a developmental, progressive reading of history, and insofar as this very perspective is called into question in postcolonial scholarship, the taking on board of a postcolonial, anti-racist and anti-imperialist feminist perspective seems to threaten the very normativity of critical theory. In this paper, I explore these issues by: first, sketching the relationship between modernity, normativity, and feminism in the work of the two major contemporary representatives of the Frankfurt School critical theory tradition, Jürgen Habermas and Axel Honneth; second, exploring how this relationship is recapitulated in the work of feminist critical theorist Seyla Benhabib, despite her attempts to address intersectional and postcolonial feminist concerns; and finally, by way of a conclusion, briefly considering what follows for feminist critical theory once we rethink the relationship between modernity, normativity and feminism.

“Bursting Bubbles”

In this column, the author presents a brief reflection of the challenges that are associated with teaching social work from a critical, antiracist, postcolonial, feminist, antiheteronormative, and self-reflective perspective and raises questions about the future of critical social work education within changing neoliberal institutional contexts.

Addressing Whiteness in Nursing Education

This article describes a project designed to change the climate of whiteness in academic nursing. Using an emancipatory, antiracist perspective from whiteness studies, we describe a project that helped faculty and staff to work together to challenge and begin to change the status quo of unnamed white privilege and racial injustice in nursing education.

An Exploratory Study of How Multiculturalism Policies are Implemented at the Grassroots Level

The concept of multiculturalism has become a fixture in Canadian society as part of a nation-building mechanism. In many ways, this suggests a perception that public policies promoting multiculturalism are working. However, this perception is based on assumptions that there is a coherent and shared definition and understanding of the implementation of multiculturalism policies. This paper reports the findings of an exploratory study that examined how multiculturalism policies are actualized at the grassroots level through community organizations. This study involved key informant interviews and focus groups of government staff responsible for the delivery of multiculturalism at the federal, provincial, and municipal levels, as well as discussions with service users and service providers of multiculturalism. Findings of this study show that, first, there is a difference in the understanding of the meaning of the policies among these research participants. Second, there has been a subtle shift of governmental interpretation of multiculturalism policies to an antiracist perspective. Third, although both federal and provincial governments have positioned community organizations as key partners in actualizing multiculturalism policies at the grassroots level, their relationship has been strained, i.e., in order to attain their goals for multiculturalism, community organizations have had to adapt to changing rules and to learn how to maneuver through the funding process. Some policy implications are suggested at the end of the paper. Le concept du multiculturalisme fait partie intégrante du mécanisme de la reconstruction d’une nation au sein de la société canadienne. De plusieurs façons, cela suggère qu’une perception existe selon laquelle les politiques des gouvernements ayant pour but de promouvoir le multiculturalisme fonctionnent bien. Toutefois, cette perception se base sur la prémisse qu’il existe une définition et une compréhension cohérentes et partagées de la mise en œuvre de politiques qui gouvernent le multiculturalisme. Cet article présente le compte rendu des données recueillies lors d’une étude exploratoire de la manière dont les politiques gouvernant le multiculturalisme sont actualisées au niveau fondamental par l’intérmédiaire d’organismes communautaires. Cette étude présente aussi des entretiens tenus avec certaines personnes-ressources clés ainsi qu’avec un groupe de discussion formé de membres du personnel de la fonction publique chargés de la mise en œuvre du multiculturalisme aux niveaux fédéral, provincial et municipal, aussi bien qu’avec les utilisateurs et fournisseurs de services reliés au multiculturalisme. Les données recueillies dans cette étude démontrent que, premièrement, il existe différents niveaux de compréhension de la signification des politiques parmi les participants de ces recherches. Deuxièmement, il existe dans l’interprétation faite par les gouvernements des politiques du multiculturalisme, un transfert subtil vers une perspective antiraciste. Troisièmement, bien que les gouvernements aient visé certains organismes communautaires comme partenaires-clé dans l’actualisation des politiques au niveau fondamental, la relation entre les gouvernements et ces organismes demeure un peu étrange. De plus, à la fin de cet article, nous suggérons certaines implications des politiques gouvernant le multiculturalisme.

Sins of Omission: Hisaye Yamamoto’s Vision of History

I challenge both critical views as I reconsider Yamamoto's politics through an analysis of the vision of history evident in her work and in some key moments of her biography, with a focus on the postwar period that was the peak of her literary production as well as her political activ ity. Beginning with analysis of the debate over Herman Melville's Benito Cereno that erupts in her communication with Winters, followed by a reconsideration of Yamamoto's decision to leave her position as a journal ist for Los Angeles Tribune (which Lee portrays as her retreat from politics), I trace the emergence of Yamamoto's decidedly counter-hege monic and anti-racist perspective toward history. Turning to Wilshire Bus, Yoneko's Earthquake, Seventeen Syllables, and The Legend of Miss Sasagawara, four of Yamamoto's best known stories from this era, I examine how this critical vision is expressed through the predicament of

The development of an ethnically sensitive approach in social work in Slovenia

The paper presents an ethnically sensitive approach in social work within the Slovenian context. The main focus of an ethnically sensitive approach is an anti-racist perspective and is based on the critical analysis of processes that maintain the status quo in social work with members of ethnic groups. This approach also involves user perspectives with particular emphasis on the views and experiences of ethnic group members and with a particular interest in how they perceive social work services and how social work services meet their needs. Despite the rise of anti-racist social work education in Anglo-Saxon countries in the 1980s, the Slovenian system of social work education remains without adequate literature on this field. The author suggests that practice in the field of social work with minority ethnic groups is often racist, especially when social service users are members of the Roma ethnic group.