Anti-racist Praxis Research Articles

The Role of Anti-Racist Community-Partnered Praxis in Implementing Restorative Circles Within Marginalized Communities in Southern California During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the adverse influence of structural racism and discrimination experienced by historically marginalized communities (e.g., Black, Latino/a/x, Indigenous, and transgender people). Structural racism contributes to trauma-induced health behaviors, increasing exposure to COVID-19 and restricting access to testing and vaccination. This intersection of multiple disadvantages has a negative impact on the mental health of these communities, and interventions addressing collective healing are needed in general and in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Share, Trust, Organize, and Partner COVID-19 California Alliance (STOP COVID-19 CA), a statewide collaborative of 11 universities and 75 community partners, includes several workgroups to address gaps in COVID-19 information, vaccine trial participation, and access. One of these workgroups, the Vaccine Hesitancy Workgroup, adopted an anti-racist community-partnered praxis to implement restorative circles in historically marginalized communities to facilitate collective healing due to structural racism and the COVID-19 pandemic. The project resulted in the development of a multilevel pre-intervention restorative process to build or strengthen community-institutional partnerships when procurement of funds has been sought prior to community partnership. This article discusses this workgroup's role in advancing health justice by providing a community-based mental health intervention to marginalized communities in Southern California while using an antiracist praxis tool to develop a successful community-institutional partnership and to live up to the vision of community-based participatory research.

PRESENCE//Gifted: On Poetry, Antiracism, and Epistemic Violence in Health Promotion.

Through poetry, I offer a critical reflection on the racialized contexts, consequences, and (mis)representations of overlapping pandemics-COVID-19 and structural racism-crafted as counternarrative to public health's and medicine's ahistorical, apolitical, and racist proclivities in times of crises (e.g., plague, 1918 flu, HIV/AIDS, addiction, racialized police violence). I weave public health and medical concepts together with Black music, poetry, scholarship, and history to (re)frame/analyze interconnections between COVID-19 and structural racism-centering love, resistance, and solidarity to counter Black erasure within the public health knowledge canon. I contextualize the poem/use of poetry as praxis in public health antiracism discourse through a brief essay, drawing from critical, critical race, and Black feminist theory to position poetry as a space of health equity testimony, and a mode of antiracist praxis to reclaim/center the margin as site of knowing and resistance. Specifically, I discuss testimonial quieting, testimonial smothering, and testimonial incompetence as critical concepts for health promotion scholars, practitioners, and students to engage as germane to interrogating our present knowledge production norms in regards to epistemic violence and its implications for prospects of antiracist public health futures. In doing so, I suggest that poetry can play a critical role in challenging, opening up, and reimagining discourse of antiracism for advancing health equity knowledge and action.

Awakening the Antiracism Collective Through Transformative Organizational Praxis

Dismantling structures that impede social work professional and organizational growth begins with social work educational institutions. In 2020, the convergence of three pandemics – COVID-19, economic injustice, and, notably, structural racism, catalyzed a group of social work staff and faculty at a public Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) in the Southern U.S. The group relied on community organizing and organizational change strategies to form the antiracism collective (ARC). We employed a participatory evaluative case study (Merriam, 1998) methodology to answer two questions: 1) How has ARC accelerated one social work department's integration of antiracist praxis (theory, reflection, action) into all aspects of the department to support the department's mission?; and 2) How can ARC dismantle structures which impede social workers' ability to confront racism? We find that ARC 1) catalyzed department transformation as evidenced by the increased sense of critical consciousness, struggle, integrity, and community; and 2) achieved primarily individual impact, with small but potentially significant department impact, and small but potentially significant structural impact. We highlight strengths and limitations of antiracism collectives as a pathway to confront racism in other social work educational institutions.

Putting thesystem in systemic racism: A systems thinking approach to advancing equity.

Generations of scholars and activists have argued that racial inequities emerge not only because of racist ideologies but also from a hierarchical system of racial oppression. This theoretical tradition has highlighted numerous ways in which systemic racism manifests itself, from racist policies to differential access to material conditions and power. However, given that by definition systemic racism is focused on systems, theories of systemic racism would be more comprehensive and actionable by drawing on scholarship related to systems thinking. Systems thinking is a conceptual orientation that aims to understand how different types of systems function over time. This paper builds on the work of previous scholars to propose a systems thinking approach to understand and strategically disrupt racist systems. We provide a typology of system characteristics (organized into the categories of paradigms, structures, elements, and feedback loops) that together can be used to help understand the operation of systemic racism in different system contexts. The paper also provides an approach to identify and strategically target multiple system leverage points to simultaneously disrupt the status quo of racial inequity and promote the emergence of conditions enabling racial equity. This systems thinking approach can be used to guide learning and action within an ongoing process of antiracist praxis.

Indigenous adolescent health in Aotearoa New Zealand: Trends, policy and advancing equity for rangatahi Maori, 2001–2019

SummaryBackgroundRangatahi Māori, the Indigenous adolescents of Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ), have poorer health outcomes than Pākehā (NZ European /other European/“White”) adolescents. We explored the influence of policies for Indigenous youth by presenting health trends, inequities and contrasting policy case examples: tobacco control and healthcare access.MethodsCross-sectional representative surveys of NZ secondary school students were undertaken in 2001, 2007, 2012 and 2019. Health indicators are presented for Māori and Pākehā adolescents (relative risks with 95% CI, calculated using modified Poisson regression) between 2001–2019 and 2012–2019. Policy examples were examined utilising Critical Te Tiriti Analysis (CTA).FindingsRangatahi Māori reported significant health gains between 2001 and 2019, but an increase in depressive symptoms (13.8% in 2012 to 27.9% in 2019, RR 2.01 [1.65–2.46]). Compared to Pākehā youth there was a pattern of persistent Māori disadvantage, particularly for racism (RR 2.27 [2.08–2.47]), depressive symptoms (RR 1.42 [1.27–1.59]) and forgone healthcare (RR 1.63 [1.45–1.84]). Tobacco use inequities narrowed (RR 2.53 [2.12–3.02] in 2007 to RR 1.55 [1.25–1.93] in 2019). CTA reveals rangatahi Māori-specific policies, Māori leadership, and political support aligned with improved outcomes and narrowing inequities.InterpretationAge-appropriate Indigenous strategies are required to improve health outcomes and reduce inequities for rangatahi Māori. Characteristics of effective strategies include: (1) evidence-based, sustained, and comprehensive approaches including both universal levers and Indigenous youth-specific policies; (2) Indigenous and rangatahi leadership; (3) the political will to address Indigenous youth rights, preferences, priorities; and (4) a commitment to an anti-racist praxis and healthcare Indigenisation.FundingTwo Health Research Council of New Zealand Project Grants: (a) Fleming T, Peiris–John R, Crengle S, Parry D. (2018). Integrating survey and intervention research for youth health gains. (HRC ref: 18/473); and (b) Clark TC, Le Grice J, Groot S, Shepherd M, Lewycka S. (2017) Harnessing the spark of life: Maximising whānau contributors to rangatahi wellbeing (HRC ref: 17/315).

Forging an Anti-Racist Praxis: Housing Discrimination against Ottoman Greek Immigrants in Early-Twentieth-Century Portland and Seattle

Whiteness provides its possessors with the privilege of homeownership without racial restrictions and obstructs black, brown, and Indigenous people. I examine that privilege for the Ottoman Greeks, an early-twentieth-century Southeastern European immigrant cohort to the United States. To conduct the examination, I analyze data from the Dictionary of Races or Peoples, the Segregated Seattle Project, and the Portland Restrictive Covenant Project. Racial formation theory and the concept of racial fluidity provide the framework for this study’s three main findings.1 First, housing discrimination impacted Ottoman Greeks less than other racialized groups. Second, Ottoman Greeks experienced this discrimination as racially fluid Greeks or Turks. Finally, Ottoman Greek housing discrimination occurred in elite white communities of Portland and Seattle. My findings illustrate an alternate knowledge of whiteness that, when harnessed by descendants of early-twentieth-century immigrants, can potentially lead them toward anti-racist political advocacy and activism.

Angels, Virgins, Demons, Whores: Moving Towards an Antiracist Praxis by Confronting Modern Investment Law Scholarship

Abstract Racism is not a natural phenomenon. Historically, it was socialised into global existence through intentional acts that have become embedded parts of the international legal order and domestic social systems. Rejecting racism and developing alternative antiracist approaches similarly require intentionality. One area of concern for scholars is how our linguistic and framing choices perpetuate or reproduce racialised hierarchies. In this article, I employ I. Bennett Capers’s ‘Reading Black’ methodology to interrogate racialised narratives embedded in four contributions to modern international investment law debates. The purpose is not to condemn the individual authors but to identify how the socialisation and structures of racism continue to affect our scholarship. Premised on the belief that countering implicit, racialised biases is a normative good, I examine how it can also facilitate better scholarship. I offer suggestions that researchers and journals can take, individually and collectively, to develop antiracist praxes.

The Personal is Political and so is Discomfort: Intersectional, Anti-Racist Praxis in Feminist Criminology

The phrase “the personal is political” is commonly associated with 1970s feminists, for whom it denoted the relationship between personal experiences and broad systems of inequality. However, considering bell hooks’ argument that feminists have lost the power analysis fundamental to the relationship between the personal and the political, we assess the relevance of the notion the ‘personal is political,’ to our work as feminist criminologists. Building on hooks’ insight, we argue there is a need to take up an intersectional and anti-racist feminist praxis that centers multiple forms of oppression in scholarship and seeks greater accountability for sexism, racism, and transphobia both within and beyond academic spaces. We elaborate our ideas by, first, outlining the intellectual history and evolution of feminist criminology. Second, we examine how the relationship between the personal and political figures in the work of minoritized scholars. Third, we discuss the necessary discomforts associated with working towards an intersectional and antiracist feminist criminology.

From social justice to abolition: living up to social work’s grand challenge of eliminating racism

ABSTRACT How can social work live up to the 13th Grand Challenge of Eliminating Racism? In this article we argue for the replacement of the predominant social justice paradigm with a framework for anti-racist social work praxis informed by abolitionist principles. The primary aim of anti-racist social work praxis needs to be the building of power in Black, Indigenous, or Brown and poor communities. We define additional praxis principles, including engaging with critical theories, advancing macro-approaches, targeting racism at the source, and developing interventions to eliminate and address the effects of racism. We end by sharing concrete anti-racist praxis tools.

Antiracism and Regimes of Truth in Eighteenth-Century Studies

Abstract: This article argues that carving pathways of antiracist praxis in eighteenth-century studies necessitates centering not only the subjects that we study but also our own subjectivity as scholars. Though subject positions and presentist situatedness are often viewed as corrupting hermeneutic lenses, purported academic objectivity—the chimera of the disembodied, inscrutably objective, geopolitically, culturally, and historically "unmarked scholar"—obfuscates both the political investments and "regimes of truth" that inevitably underwrite our scholarship and professional activity. Engaging with Audre Lorde, Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Michel Foucault, and Ann Laura Stoler on issues of knowledge and power, I contend that scholars of eighteenth-century studies must radically challenge "regimes of truth" that animate our professional practices as well as notions of canonicity, temporality, periodization, and racialized identities that traditionally (mis)shape our field.

Necessity is the mother of invention: Virtual campus conversations on antiracism during the pandemic and beyond

Drawing on theories of antiracist pedagogy, pandemic pedagogy, and racial identity development, this article demonstrates the benefits of campus-wide virtual conversations, arguing that they provide students in particular with salient opportunities to synthesize antiracist theory and praxis while further developing their racial identities. Using data from two such campus conversations, “Antiracism, Intersectionality, and Empowerment” and “Racial Trauma and White Fragility,” we offer a series of effective strategies, lessons learned, and preliminary antiracist outcomes. We suggest that campus-wide virtual forums on antiracism assist in building the interracial, intergenerational, and interdisciplinary coalitions necessary to begin to institutionalize antiracist praxis in a predominantly white university setting.

A conceptual framework for clinical and translational virtual community engagement research.

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated a trend for clinical and translational community-engaged research in adapting to an increasingly virtual landscape. This requires a framework for engagement distinct from in-person research and program activities. We reflect on four case studies of community engagement activities that inform a conceptual framework to better integrate the virtual format into community-engaged research reflecting key tenets of health equity and antiracist praxis. Four projects were selected by community-engaged research stakeholders for an in-depth review based on how much the virtual transition impacted activities such as planning, recruitment, and data collection for each project. Transitions to virtual engagement were assessed across ten areas in which community engagement has been demonstrated to make a positive impact. Our analysis suggests a conceptual evaluation framework in which the ten community engagement areas cluster into four interrelated domains: (1) development, design, and delivery; (2) partnership and trust building; (3) implementation and change; and (4) ethics and equity. The domains in this conceptual framework describe critical elements of community engaged research and programs consistent with recommendations for health equity informed meaningful community engagement from the National Academy of Medicine. The conceptual framework and case studies can be used for evaluation and to develop guidelines for clinical and translational researchers utilizing the virtual format in community-engaged research.

Teaching Freedom Song as Antiracist Praxis

In the teaching of history, oversimplification is, perhaps, unavoidable. In certain cases, however, that oversimplification can be deadly. There are some lessons that are too complex, some stories that are too nuanced, to be reduced in such a way. By their contours and particularities, they resist easy digestion. In the spirit of this particularity, my contribution to the colloquy is specific, but hopefully applicable to contexts beyond its specificity: I argue that the US Black Freedom Movement (or civil rights movement) and its music is a story that must be taught in all its complexity, for oversimplifying it does concrete harm to the ongoing struggle against white supremacy in the present. Teaching the US Black Freedom Movement and its music is also vital if we hope to enable our students to be forces of understanding, healing, and justice in the world, and should be an integral component of any undergraduate music curriculum that hopes to be antiracist.

6.4 SYSTEMIC RACISM AND MENTAL HEALTH DISPARITIES: CALL TO ACTION FOR CHILD AND ADOLESCENT PSYCHIATRIST RESEARCHERS, PRACTITIONERS, AND POLICYMAKERS

The COVID-19 pandemic and heightened awareness of police brutality after the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and many others, have shifted our focus so that systemic racism finally centers in the discussion of children’s mental health. Specifically, racism has been identified as a social determinant of mental health. Although this pivot in the collective consciousness and the canon of child and adolescent psychiatry has recently begun, previous research exploring racism’s direct effect on child mental health, while limited, has been overlooked and underfunded despite this problem persisting for several decades. We will review data on systemic racism and discrimination and its impact on the mental health for youth and their families with an emphasis in systems of care settings, juvenile justice, and child welfare. This presentation will explore 3 theoretical frameworks: 1) Public Health Critical Race Praxis (PHCRP); 2) structural competency; and 3) racism as a root cause, to propose determination of research, policy, and practice priorities to address mental health inequity in Black, Latinx, and Native American (BLNA) youth whose well-being has been historically marginalized in these systems of care settings. This presentation includes a review of data on racial inequity across child mental health serving systems. Findings from research conducted by the presenter and colleagues investigating promising practices applying antiracist praxis will be discussed. Systemic racism in various sectors (eg, education, legal, health) drives the disproportionate contact that BLNA youth have with systems of care and influences negative health outcomes across their developmental trajectories. In particular, BLNA youth experience greater gaps between treatment need and receipt. These gaps in both service linkage and quality of care received have lifelong intersectional implications on long-term adverse outcomes. Addressing systemic racism requires multimodal interventions that apply antiracist frameworks to create actionable praxis across the domains of research, policy, and practice. PHCRP, structural competency, and racism-as-a-root-cause frameworks can help center the needs and voices of historically marginalized groups and stimulate new approaches to achieve equitable health outcomes.

1.4 UNDERSTANDING SYSTEMIC RACISM AND RACIAL INEQUITY JUVENILE JUSTICE SYSTEM INVOLVEMENT

Black, Latinx, and Native American (BLNA) youth are disproportionately overrepresented and have been for several decades. Barriers to free and appropriate educational resources and community-based mental health and substance use disorder treatment are among the drivers that potentiate disproportionate contact and confinement. This presentation includes a review of literature on juvenile justice and racial disproportionality, with particular focus on relevant legislative trends to address this problem and risk factors for justice involvement that are amplified by systemic racism. Application of the Sequential Intercept Model, which was developed to describe 5 points of justice interception, will be explored to see how this trajectory of juvenile justice contact maps onto the Juvenile Justice Behavioral Health Services Cascade, a framework for measuring gaps between treatment need and receipt. Findings from research conducted by the presenter and colleagues investigating promising practices that apply antiracist praxis in working with justice-involved youth will be presented. BLNA youth are more likely than White youth to have contact with the juvenile justice system and are also less likely to receive treatment for substance use and mental health disorders, which has implications for initial justice contact as well as sustained entrenchment in this system. Numerous studies highlight the long-term adverse health effects of incarceration on justice-involved youth. There are negative effects of justice systems having contact on youth and family well-being. Legislative policies that target race inequity have promise in reducing racial disparities. Given the disruption that justice contact at any stage poses to the healthy psychosocial development of youth, child and adolescent psychiatrists should be at the forefront of advocacy efforts that apply structural competency, antiracist, and trauma-informed frameworks for justice-involved populations. These include primary prevention, school-based and integrated substance use and mental health services, as well as community-based partnership approaches with justice-involved youth, their families, and organizations that serve them to identify and operationalize best practices for engagement.

Critical Walking Methodologies and Oblique Agitations of Place

In this Editorial, we discuss WalkingLab’s approach to critical walking methodologies grounded in queer-feminist, anti-racist praxis, and argue for the need to critically account for understandings of place in times of ongoing crises. We then introduce the articles featured in this special issue. Authored by international scholars, each article in the special issue engages critically with walking methodologies and the concept place from oblique angles.

Liturgy as an anti-racist praxis for Reformed Churches in South Africa

The sin of racism severely and deeply affects the victims. The response in many instances is to remain silent to survive. The result is traumatic and even becomes symptomatic unless addressed. This article discussed the role that liturgy could play as an anti-racist praxis. However, firstly is discussed the underlying struggle of two Reformed Churches to become not only in polity but in praxis, non-racial through the liturgy as an anti-racism praxis. Liturgy is defined in the article not only as referring to the liturgical elements of a worship service, but also within its broader sense as the covenant people’s actions when they meet, listen to, worship and glorify the triune God within all contexts. This is also true when they mutually meet each other for edification. The authors focused partly on some liturgical elements in the worship service; however, the broader context – referring to the liturgy of life – received serious attention.Contribution: The article holds that liturgy within the church service context, but mainly with what happens outside in life, would play a crucial role in helping Christians become anti-racist. The article follows a discourse analysis on the journey of two reformed denominations, on how they could, through the liturgy of life, establish an anti-racist praxis.

How to fight antisemitism? Lessons from the Russian Revolution

ABSTRACT Brendan McGeever’s book on Antisemitism in the Russian Revolution provides an analysis of Soviet response to “Red Antisemitism” – the involvement of some Bolsheviks in the pogroms of the Civil War. McGeever’s analysis provides insights that are relevant to contemporary anti-racist praxis, and particularly to response antisemitism on the left. Antisemitism, in 2021, takes place radically different set of material entanglements than in 1919, and it offers significantly different challenges. Antisemitism is not only a potential lynchpin between left wing and right-wing populism; the struggle against antisemitism is a contested terrain which is claimed by both the left and the right, as antisemitism is set apart from, and sometimes against, other conversations of racism and anti-racism. Even in these very different circumstances, McGeever’s insights appear valid: understanding antisemitism as a threat to the left is crucial; as is the role of Jewish activists in leading the struggle against it.

Symposium: Diversity is not Enough: Mentorship and Community-Building as Antiracist Praxis

This Rhetoric Review Symposium extends long overdue conversations about racism in the discipline begun in a NCTE/CCCC cross-caucus College Composition and Communication symposium titled “Diversity ...

Boundary politics and the social imaginary for sustainable food systems

In this essay, Kim Niewolny, current President of AFHVS, responds to the 2020 AFHVS Presidential Address given by Molly Anderson. Niewolny is encouraged by Anderson’s message of moving “beyond the boundaries” by focusing our gaze on the insurmountable un-sustainability of the globalized food system. Anderson recommends three ways forward to address current challenges. Niewolny argues that building solidarity with social justice movements and engendering anti-racist praxis take precedence. This work includes but is not limited to dismantling the predominance of neoliberal-fueled technocratic productivism in agricultural science and policy while firmly centering civil society collective action and human rights frameworks as our guiding imaginary for racial, gender, environmental, and climate justice possibilities for sustainable food systems praxis. She concludes by exploring the epistemic assertion to push beyond our professional and political imaginaries to build a more fair, just, and humanizing food system.