Anti-racist Praxis Research Articles

Students Want to Build Anti-racist Praxis: How to Support Them in the Classroom with Grassroots Organizers

While university institutions have been legally codified as sites of free expression and academic autonomy, university administrations consistently repress student-led campus rebellion and activism against racism. With the resurgence of intersectional and transnational anti-racist and anti-war student activism across college campuses, how can sociology educators pedagogically invest in students’ desires to build anti-racist praxes within and beyond the university? Informed by experiences with mutually constructive grassroots spaces and undergraduate courses, I argue that educators of race, including but not limited to sociologists, must engage with grassroots and community organizers (especially organizers who are racially minoritized and queer, femme, and/or gender non-normative) and incorporate their learning tools for popular and political education. First, I use the example of “community agreements” to show how educators can incorporate political and popular education tools into their race courses to help their students build their anti-racist toolkits. Second, I discuss two examples of how educators can collaborate directly with working class and racially minoritized grassroots organizers and invite them into the classroom. I end with a call to support community-centered learning spaces beyond the university classroom, as it can strengthen anti-racist pedagogy. Despite academic and state repression, I highlight the long-held tradition and responsibility of educators to support their students’ anti-racist critiques and action. Continuing June Jordan’s anti-racist pedagogical legacy (along with others alike), the university can only survive through co-learning and co-building with students and grassroots organizers, especially racially minoritized ones.

An integrative review of racism in nursing to inform anti-racist nursing praxis in Aotearoa New Zealand.

To synthesise international literature to identify mechanisms that maintain racism in nursing and understand the factors that contribute to designing and implementing anti-racist praxis to inform nursing in Aotearoa New Zealand. An integrative literature review was undertaken, integrating Indigenous Kaupapa Māori methodologies to ensure a cultural and philosophical lens. Peer-reviewed literature published, between January 2011 and July 2023 were sourced. Of 1296 articles, 16 met the inclusion criteria and 4 were identified via citation chaining. In total, 20 articles were included. The Johns Hopkins Research Evidence Tool was applied, findings extracted, and thematic analysis completed utilising Indigenous Kaupapa Māori principles. Databases, including CINAHL, Scopus, PubMed and Aus/NZ Reference Centre, were searched in July 2023. Two key themes were identified: (1) colonial active resistance to change; and (2) transformational, visionary, and proactive nursing. Nurses are well-positioned to confront the structures that maintain racism in health and education systems but are often actors in maintaining status quo. Anti-racist praxis can be a mechanism for nurses to reimagine, redefine and transform nursing care, leadership, and nursing education to begin to eradicate racism. This integrative review adhered to the 2020 Preferred Reporting for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) method. No patient or public contribution. Racism remains prevalent in nursing and the healthcare system. It is necessary to implement anti-racist praxis and policies that resist, deconstruct, and dismantle power and racism while validating Indigenous values, beliefs and practices. This is vital to deliver equitable health care. This integrative review presents lived realities and knowledge of Indigenous and racially minoritised nurses and scholars, alongside nursing allies to inform anti-racist praxis. This evidence signifies that it is time to walk the walk to challenge the colonising systems and processes that hold racism in place.

Poverty and racism: How we think and talk about poverty reduction matters

There is a close connection between poverty and racism yet insufficient literature integrates anti-racist praxis in poverty reduction work. We draw here on the first stage of a project that brought together the Saskatoon Poverty Reduction Partnership (SPRP) and the Saskatchewan Anti-Racism Network (ARN) to explore possibilities for better alignment of the advocacy of both organizations. We conducted a media discourse analysis of 462 newspaper articles systematically extracted from grey literature site Factiva on how poverty reduction is framed and how media reportage links poverty and racism in Saskatchewan. We find that very few newspaper articles published on poverty reduction focus on the connections between poverty and racism. Additionally, there are four dominant ways of framing poverty reduction namely: i) the cost framing of poverty reduction ii) the shame and embarrassment framing of poverty reduction iii) the human rights framing of poverty reduction and iv) the root cause analyses of poverty reduction. The cost and shame framings of poverty reduction may further marginalize or de-center those living in poverty compared to the human rights and root cause framings. More explicit connection needs to be made between poverty reduction work and anti-racist praxis for effective advocacy.

Interventions in Support of Anti-Racist Praxis in Athletics

Interventions in Support of Anti-Racist Praxis in Athletics

Making Waves in Academia: Asian/Asian American Feminist Mentoring as Activism

Multicultural Feminist Mentoring (MFM) models have provided an important foundation to address the further need for conceptualizing a mentoring model that is specific to Asian/Asian American (A/AA) experiences. In this collaborative autoethnography, six researchers in three mentor-mentee dyads explored what it means to pursue Asian/Asian American feminist mentoring (A/AAFM), through dyadic and group interactive dialogues and collaborative analysis. A/AAFM can be conceptualized as anti-racist praxis, where each mentor attempted to consider mentoring as activism within academia, being grounded in values stemming from A/AA experiences and feminism. Results yielded a model of A/AAFM which emphasizes a convergence of multifaceted racial and cultural identities, feminist values, and activism. Three specific processes emerged: being holistic, relational, and mutual; a focus on community and intergenerational generosity; and intentional flattening of the power hierarchy. Implications for training and activism are discussed.

Exploring adolescents’ experiences of talking about race, ethnicity and culture during dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT): a qualitative study using thematic analysis

Abstract Although anti-racist adaptations to dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) are emerging, little qualitative research exists exploring adolescents’ perspectives on therapists’ approach, cultural competency and humility regarding ethnicity, race and culture (ERC) within DBT. This study explored diverse adolescents’ experiences of talking about ERC during all aspects of DBT treatment. Ten adolescents from diverse ERC backgrounds who attended DBT at a National and Specialist Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (UK) completed semi-structured individual interviews that were transcribed verbatim and analysed using reflexive thematic analysis, adopting a critical realist approach. Five over-arching themes were developed from the data. Theme 1 captures the power for explicit ERC-related conversations to facilitate change, as they are frequently overlooked in therapy. Theme 2 discusses factors that facilitate or inhibit ERC-related discussions. Theme 3 captures the difficult ‘double bind’ that adolescents find themselves in: not wanting to be a spokesperson for ERC issues whilst hoping for their therapist to facilitate/model ERC-related discussions. Theme 4 explores how adolescents navigated their identity in relation to ERC, their wider systemic context, and experiences of ERC-related trauma. Theme 5 explored therapeutic alliance, and how therapists might encourage DBT skills use with greater ERC sensitivity, emphasising validation. Using a bottom-up approach, we show a clear mandate from diverse adolescents for (White) clinicians to proactively create the space and safety required for ERC-related discussions. We emphasise the importance of anti-racist praxis including cultural humility, multi-cultural competencies, and validation of ERC-related difficult experiences within a wider systemic context. Key learning aims (1) A recent publication by Pierson et al. (2022) has raised the importance for White DBT therapists to adopt an anti-racist position and actively reflect on how a lack of anti-racist stance can form therapist treatment-interfering behaviours. (2) The current study explores the views of adolescents from diverse ethnic, racial and cultural (ERC) backgrounds on how ERC issues are being brought into DBT. (3) Adopting a bottom-up approach, we identify key themes from adolescents’ perspectives on the barriers and facilitators to talking about ERC in the therapy room, why such discussions are important in supporting adolescents to navigate their own identity in therapy, and recommendations for clinicians to consider on ways of increasing and enhancing such conversations in the clinical setting.

Antiracist Praxis in Community Engagement: A Partnership Rubric

This article argues for the need for a partnership evaluation rubric focused on antiracist praxis, the application of theory into practice. Such a rubric is critical given that service-learning and community engagement now exist under the neoliberal university, which uses assessment to justify program existence. Furthermore, many of our community partners work under the nonprofit industrial complex, where it is difficult to challenge racial inequity. Community-engaged scholars have identified antiracist best practices, including using a place-based approach, partnering with constituent-led organizations, making conflict productive, using an asset-oriented approach, and building solidarity. However, the analysis of our community-engaged partnership reveals that many existing equity-based partnership rubrics do not measure antiracist praxis explicitly. We thus developed and proposed a partnership rubric to assess antiracist praxis.

Unsettling the Conversation on Trans Rights

This article argues that trans rights are trapped within settler frameworks of gender and rights, therefore making them incompatible with and in opposition to Indigenous lifeways. Starting with the premise that engagement with the settler state is not benign, the authors argue that trans rights-based organizing diverts and thwarts the potential for solidarity work with Indigenous struggles for freedom and is inherently limited in its potential to secure Indigenous futurity. The authors hope that trans studies and collective struggles organized around gender embrace anti-colonial and anti-racist praxis to result in tangible and discursive outcomes to bolster Indigenous cultural continuity and land-based connections. The authors use this article to call for a collective movement toward gender self-determination that is sensitive and reflexive of settler colonialism and produces tangible decolonial actions that will benefit the lives of Indigenous Two-Spirit, trans, and nonbinary people and align with movements for Indigenous self-determination. Queer and trans settlers are urged to begin a process of accountability and to engage a decolonial praxis to support Indigenous decolonization in all its forms—fighting for land claims, defending water and land rights, and supporting the resurgence of Indigenous erotics and gender formations. To be truly decolonial we suggest that trans political organizing moves beyond the settler framework of rights and toward Indigenous solidarity in politics, practices, and shared struggles, foregrounding anti-colonial, anti-racist, and pro-Indigenous values.

Reimagining Medical Education Toward Antiracist Praxis.

Medicine has a longstanding history of racism that promulgates existing health inequities. Current medical education, largely based on the biomedical framework, omits critical discourse on racism and White supremacy, which continue to harm individuals and communities of color. Such ahistorical and apolitical orientation inadequately trains learners to identify and address racism in clinical practice. Although curricula on racial health disparities, social determinants of health, cultural competency, and implicit bias have been operationalized by several medical schools, they do not identify the racism embedded in systems of care, nor do they provide transformative steps toward true health equity and justice. As such, this article proposes bold radical frameworks as the foundation for reimagining medical education in the United States. Founded on critical race theory, abolition, and decolonization, the authors provide a view of an antiracist medical education, one that highlights the history and legacy of racism in medicine and positions medical trainees and practicing physicians as active agents in medicine's antiracist transformation.

Integrating Discussions on Racism and Health Equity into Clinical Reasoning Conference

ObjectiveIntentionally discussing racism and health equity in clinical reasoning conference may provide an opportunity to reinforce antiracist praxis. We aimed to understand 1) whether these discussions provide a meaningful opportunity to practice applying an antiracist lens in patient care, 2) the feasibility of implementing these discussions in a clinical reasoning format, and 3) the acceptability to Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) and white residents. MethodsIn 2021, 4 clinical reasoning conference pilot sessions were implemented in a pediatrics residency program. Trained faculty facilitated discussions on mitigating inequity in clinical cases. Residents who attended at least 1 session were invited to participate in focus groups, which were analyzed using grounded theory. ResultsThirty residents attended each pilot session out of the 30 to 35 who had the opportunity to attend. The focus groups included 6 BIPOC and 6 white residents. The discussions offered a meaningful opportunity to practice recognizing and naming racism. Having faculty facilitators made the discussions more feasible. Both groups experienced benefits and wanted the discussions to continue, but BIPOC residents want more engagement from their white peers. ConclusionsDiscussing racism and health equity in clinical reasoning conference was a meaningful, feasible, and acceptable opportunity for antiracist praxis.

Discussing Racism in Higher Education

Students and educators alike continue to find discussing race and racism challenging. Intergroup dialogue (IGD) offers a framework for addressing this challenge, yet much of the research on IGD is done on participants rather than with participants. Utilizing a qualitative cooperative inquiry approach, this article examines outcomes of an IGD among Black and White faculty concerning Robin DiAngelo’s (2018) book, White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism. Aligning the phases of cooperative inquiry with IGD stages, participants explore differences and commonalities, relationship building, difficulties and conflicts in the dialogue process, and steps toward action. Reflections provide insight into how IGDs on race create effective opportunities for faculty growth and for fostering anti-racist praxis.

Unsettling the ‘master’s house’

Psychology and psychotherapy have long been regarded as a Eurocentric and largely homogenous field primarily dominated by white, socioeconomically privileged/middle-class women. This lack of racial/ethnic diversity and inclusion within the field has become an area of increased focus of discussion within psychological professions due to its significant impact on the care, experience, and outcomes of service users. Individuals from racially minoritised backgrounds face multiple systemic barriers when accessing the profession during their training and as qualified psychological professionals. Extensive research indicates that clinical psychologists from racially minoritised backgrounds experience racism in clinical psychology and this has persisted over the years. Similarly, in the psychotherapy literature, there has been an emphasis on addressing the lack of acknowledgement of racial disparities in psychotherapy training. As a result, it feels imperative that there is a radical shift in psychology and psychotherapy which involves acknowledging its role in creating and perpetuating racism and discrimination, as well as an urgent need to adopt a decolonised, socio-constructionist approach.
 Despite this, there has been little focus or momentum on clinical psychology training programmes to actively address issues of racism and to develop anti-racist practice. The Newcastle University Clinical Psychology Doctorate Programme recently made an active stance to adopt anti-racist practice and implement an approach that supports collective responsibility and accountability. In this article, the authors engage in a critical, radical, and collective dialogue around their experiences, and share their reflections on developing a clinical psychology anti-racism strategy, attending to power, discomfort, and the role of systemic oppression. The diverse voices of trainers, trainees, and aspiring clinical psychologists presented suggest that collective action, solidarity, as well as attending to power and relationality, had a profound impact on the development of the anti-racism strategy, as well as on relationships, trust, and relational safety. The authors offer critical reflections on how these experiences can be helpful in further understanding the complexity and multi-faceted nature of anti-racist praxis in clinical psychology and psychotherapy.

Un/Commoning Pedagogies: Forging Collectivity Through Difference in the Embodied Classroom and Beyond

Un/Commoning Pedagogies Collective are seven dancer-scholars who centre embodied anti-racist praxis in our teaching across the fields of anthropology, sociology, African American and Africana studies, gender, sexuality and women’s studies, dance, and performance studies. Since 2019, the Un/Commoning Pedagogies Collective has engaged in consistent, process-based collaboration around teaching, scholarship, movement practice, and collegiality. We have co-authored essays, facilitated workshops, and given talks and performances. We also share syllabi, strategies, stories, milestones, failures, resources, and friendship. This writing is rooted in our ongoing collaborations and documents a co-generation of knowledge about the possibilities and tensions of teaching with and through our full-bodied selves. Moving beyond the syllabus, we offer you a glimpse into our concerns, commitments, experiences, and strategies as movement educators. We invite you to participate with us in a process of un/commoning pedagogy through embodied practice, dialogue, and reflection.

Race-Conscious Caring for Anti-racist Leadership: A Narrative Ethics for Cultivating Communal Responsibility

Background -- Limited work has been done to integrate ethical leadership and anti-racist school leadership practice. Through narrative ethics, this paper links caring with race-consciousness to form a foundation for critical praxis. Purpose -- The authors address the limitations of caring leadership by arguing for a race-conscious narrative ethics that promotes communal responsibility for students, with specific attention to racialized and marginalized students. Research Design – This conceptual paper draws on caring theory, feminism, womanism, and culturally responsive leadership. The paper considers racism within a United States context, drawing from theory developed in additional contexts. Analysis – The paper builds from the limitations of caring theory and seeks alternative caring ethics from critiques and African-American historical struggles for sustainable and anti-racist praxis. Results -- The authors argue that predispositions toward caring among teachers and school leaders are insufficient for the project of anti-racist education because of uncritical assumptions of sameness, misplaced empathy, and the evasion of race and racism. The resulting impersonal caring reproduces racist power relations and reinforces standardized and competitive notions of responsibility for children, forestalling opportunities for collective action. Conclusions -- As an alternative to impersonal caring, the authors explore the possibilities of deepening leaders’ engagement in race-conscious caring through the significance of experience, the quality of caring relations, and the value of narrative ethics. A key implication is that race-conscious caring is necessary but insufficient for the work of anti-racism unless it informs changed practices, structures, and systems.

Suturing White Wounds: Racialized Therapeutic Rhetoric as a Strategy of Whiteness

ABSTRACT This essay advances racialized therapeutic rhetoric as a framework for analyzing how whiteness mobilizes strategically in antiracist discourse. Racialized therapeutic rhetoric functions to center and soothe reactionary white emotions and promote white self-introspection and personal transformation over collective antiracist praxis. My analysis reveals that racialized therapeutic rhetoric operates through intertwined modalities of discursive suturing and temporality. Suturing works to ameliorate the emotional wounds of fragile white people as temporality bolsters white linear progress narratives. Together, suturing and temporality construct the present as an emergent moment of white racial awakening, absolve white people of guilt for the racist past, rationalize ongoing white inaction, and promote a (re)turn to post-racial humanness as a progressive solution for the future.

Ignoring race and denying racism: A meta-analysis of the associations between colorblind racial ideology, anti-Blackness, and other variables antithetical to racial justice.

One critical role counseling psychologists can play in dismantling anti-Blackness and eradicating systemic racism is to build on the field's strength in understanding individual-level processes (i.e., systems are created and maintained by individual actors). Drawing on antiracism scholarship, we aimed to better understand how colorblind racial ideology (CBRI), or the denial and minimization of race and racism, may serve as a barrier to engaging in antiracist praxis. Specifically, we conducted a meta-analysis to determine if color evasion (ignoring race) and power evasion (denying structural racism) CBRI were differentially associated with anti-Blackness and processes linked to antiracism. Findings based on 375 effects drawn from 83 studies with more than 25,000 individuals suggest different effects based on CBRI type. As hypothesized, we found that power evasion CBRI was related to increased endorsement of anti-Black prejudice (r = .33) and legitimizing ideologies (r = .24), and negatively associated with a range of other variables associated with antiracism, including social justice behaviors (r = -.31), multicultural practice competencies (r = -.16), diversity openness (r = -.28), and racial/ethnocultural empathy (r = -.35). Consistent with theory, color evasion CBRI was related to increased diversity openness (r = .12). We discuss limitations of our study, as well as outline future directions for research and practice to focus on the role of CBRI in sustaining and perpetuating anti-Blackness and systemic racism. Thus, this meta-analysis has implications for pushing the field of counseling psychology to build the bridge between individual ideologies and creating structural change. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

I Want to Die Well.

Public health scholars, practitioners, organizations, and governmental agencies broadly declared that racism is a public health crisis in 2020. Their declarations highlight the need to address how racism destroys Black life and communities. This poem looks at the various ways Black people have died in the United States due to racism, and offers a comparison to wealthy white men whom often die peacefully, of old age, surrounded by money and generations of family. This poem is but a glimpse into the many ways Black life ends painfully at the hands of racist systems, policies, and people-an unfiltered reminder of the imperative of committing to antiracist praxis within health promotion research and practice. To view the original version of this poem, see the supplemental material section of this article online.

Antiracist Emotion Regulation: Redressing the Motivation Problem

Because white supremacy is designed to deliver unearned privileges and advantages to white people, they especially have a responsibility to engage in antiracism. However, many white people fail to do so, time and time again. We posit that, in many cases, antiracist efforts are thwarted because individuals face what we call “the motivation problem.” The motivation problem is a persistent lack or reduction of motivation to engage in antiracist praxis. We suggest that “emotion regulation”—acts performed with the goal of modifying an emotion—plays a key role in the creation of the motivation problem. In some cases, emotion regulation can cause individuals to experience emotions ill suited for motivating antiracism. In other cases, individuals experience emotions that are well suited for motivating antiracism but they undergo emotion regulation that counteracts these feelings. In both cases, emotion regulation reduces motivation for antiracist praxis. To redress the motivation problem, we propose that people can repurpose emotion regulation strategies to increase motivation for antiracism. We thus suggest that emotion regulation is both a cause of and a solution to the motivation problem. Overall, the paper’s 164 first aim is to show that emotion regulation plays a unique and devious role in sustaining white supremacy via the motivation problem. Our second aim is to show that emotion regulation can and should be repurposed for antiracist ends.

Antiracism and Community-Based Participatory Research: Synergies, Challenges, and Opportunities.

Structural racism causes stark health inequities and operates at every level of society, including the academic and governmental entities that support health research and practice. We argue that health research institutions must invest in research that actively disrupts racial hierarchies, with leadership from racially marginalized communities and scholars. We highlight synergies between antiracist principles and community-based participatory research (CBPR), examine the potential for CBPR to promote antiracist research and praxis, illustrate structural barriers to antiracist CBPR praxis, and offer examples of CBPR actions taken to disrupt structural racism. We make recommendations for the next generation of antiracist CBPR, including modify health research funding to center the priorities of racially marginalized communities, support sustained commitments and accountability to those communities by funders and research institutions, distribute research funds equitably across community and academic institutions, amplify antiracist praxis through translation of research to policy, and adopt institutional practices that support reflection and adaptation of CBPR to align with emergent community priorities and antiracist practices. A critical application of CBPR principles offers pathways to transforming institutional practices that reproduce and reinforce racial inequities. (Am J Public Health. 2023;113(1):70-78. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2022.307114).

Optimizing the Equitable Deployment of Virtual Care for Women: Protocol for a Qualitative Evidence Synthesis Examining Patient and Provider Perspectives Supplemented with Primary Qualitative Data.

Women experience numerous barriers to patient-centered health care (e.g., lack of continuity). Such barriers are amplified for women from marginalized communities. Virtual care may improve equitable access. We are conducting a partner-engaged, qualitative evidence synthesis (QES) of patients' and providers' experiences with virtual health care delivery for women. We use a best-fit framework approach informed by the Non-adoption, Abandonment, Scale-up, Spread, and Sustainability framework and Public Health Critical Race Praxis. We will supplement published literature with qualitative interviews with women from underrepresented communities and their health care providers. We will engage patients and other contributors through multiple participatory methods. Our search identified 5525 articles published from 2010 to 2022. Sixty were eligible, of which 42 focused on women and 24 on provider experiences. Data abstraction and analysis are ongoing. This work offers four key innovations to advance health equity: (1) conceptual foundation rooted in an antiracist action-oriented praxis; (2) worked example of centering QES on marginalized communities; (3) supplementing QES with primary qualitative information with populations historically marginalized in the health care system; and (4) participatory approaches that foster longitudinal partnered engagement. Our approach to exploring virtual health care for women demonstrates an antiracist praxis to inform knowledge generation. In doing so, we aim to generate findings that can guide health care systems in the equitable deployment of comprehensive virtual care for women.