Anti-racist Activism Research Articles

Community-school-university partnerships: possibilities for activism and racial justice

Critical school-community-university partnerships are central to activism for racial justice. Drawing on the scholarship of anti-racist activist leadership and community-school-university partnerships, this critical co-constructed auto-ethnographic comparative case study explores two such cases in Toronto, Ontario, Canada: the York University Faculty of Education Summer Institute (FESI) and the Nubian Book Club (NBC). As insiders-outsiders, the authors analyze various forms of data, such as informal observations, structured conversations between them, and program documents to understand the knowledges and possibilities that emerge in critical community-school-university partnerships and how leadership in these partnerships influence education for racial justice. Both cases resist, refuse, and subvert hegemonic educational discourses, legitimize fugitive and other marginalized knowledges, and imagine future possibilities for racial justice in schooling. This study concludes with recommendations for school districts, universities, and communities to engage in an activism-learning-action trifecta towards racial justice in education.

Water Drops

This article examines how individuals of diverse cultural backgrounds in Norway participate in anti-racist activism via social media. It investigates the nature of digital activism compared to traditional paradigms, highlighting the varied forms of engagement enabled by digital technology. Drawing on nine months of ethnographic fieldwork among individuals in the arts and cultural sector, it reveals how seemingly minor actions on social media can spark organized activism, unveiling the political activism inherent in daily life and social media practices. The article argues that individuals not identifying as political activists still contribute to political change through everyday social media activities, suggesting that contemporary activism can exist without activists. Introducing the metaphor of ‘water drops’ the article conceptualizes everyday politics as small contributions that may collectively shape meaningful change. Small acts can be merely drops in a vast ocean without major significance. However, if sustained over time, efforts across disparate online spaces can coalesce to challenge and subvert dominant social narratives regarding difference, racism, discrimination, and exclusion. Thus, contemporary activism can thrive with ordinary people who contribute to collective social transformation through digital and mundane interactions.

The Politics of a Portrait: Biopics, Slavery and Contemporary Racial Politics in the United States

The article examines the connection between the past and the present, and between the personal and the political, in three recent biographical pictures directed by filmmakers of color: The Birth of a Nation (2016, dir. Nate Parker), Harriet (2018, dir. Kasi Lemmons), and Emancipation (2022, dir. Antoine Fuqua). By addressing the history of American slavery, the films not only come into a dialogue with the preexisting representations of slavery in music, photography and cinema, but also reflect on current racial politics and antiracist activism in the United States. They offer a commentary on changing attitudes towards the issue of race in America, and engage with the collective memory of slavery - a past trauma, which has shaped the African American identity.

Re-placing Race in the Public Space

In this article I engage with the un- and re-making of monuments in the context of the globalization and mediatization of Black Lives Matter and anti-racist activism. I analyze in particular two examples that display transcultural negotiations of antiracism against the background of different colonial histories: The induction of Josephine Baker to the French Pantheon in November 2021, which opens the space of a key monument of French heritage to a black woman for the first time. The defacing of the statue of the Italian journalist and prominent intellectual Indro Montanelli in Milan in June 2020. The analysis emphasizes, on the one hand, the fluidity characterizing the transnational circulation of language, media and spatial practices. On the other, it points to multiple asymmetries deriving from the globalization and the transculturalization of communication. In order to take both aspects into account, I use a border perspective, and expand the category of ‘monument’ to include processes of un- and re-making heritages. In particular, I de-border the concept of language and crisscross the borders between discursive spaces and material spaces of representation. The article contributes to diversify postcolonial theory by showing that labels such as ‘European’ (post)coloniality or ‘global’ anti-racism are far too reductive with respect to the diversity of colonial histories and postcolonial realities. Accordingly, it pleads for putting transculturality at the core of decolonial struggles within and outside academia.

‘[K]neeling only goes to highlight your ignorance. England is NOT! a #racist country’: aversive racism, colour-blindness, and racist temporalities in discussions of football online

ABSTRACT Drawing on theories of aversive racism and colour-blindness, which stress the invisibility of contemporary racism, this article analyses online discussions on taking the knee (TTK) during EURO2020 men’s football tournament. While highly visible racist abuse directed at Black English players after losing the final to Italy (dominative racism) received most public attention and repudiation, based on 6,850 English language tweets published on Twitter/X, this article shows how subtle racism and colour-blindness were reinforced in discussions around TTK over the duration of the tournament (aversive racism). The article also shows how individuals online developed a variety of strategies (evidence, othering, critique, and activism) to challenge the main arguments against anti-racist activism in football (identified in four themes: BLM, Marxism, virtue signalling, and woke). The article makes an original contribution by examining the changing intensity of online conversations on TTK over the duration of the tournament. Our analysis identifies key moments in the tournament, political elites’ rhetoric, and trends of success and failure as relevant factors that shaped vernacular conversations online. The discussion ultimately argues that investigating the temporal patterns of public discussions on (anti)racism provides valuable insights to understand the contemporary complexity of racism in football and society more broadly.

Antiracist Psychology to Advance Equitable Public Policy

The discipline of psychology, with its roots in scientific racism, has been complicit with the enactment of racist policies that have significantly harmed the psychological well-being of many minoritized people in colonial societies. The American Psychological Association (APA) has acknowledged and apologized for this racist history and has committed to an antiracist path for the future to right the wrongs. As a part of Dangerous Opportunities special issue, we examine the antecedents to racism in psychology, the racist behaviors of psychology and the APA during its existence, and the harmful consequences contributed by racist policies supported or endorsed by psychologists. Additionally, we provide a listing of required changes we view as necessary for the discipline of psychology and the APA (as its primary professional organization) to enact to prepare the discipline and the Association for antiracist activities and to capably and responsibly support and advance antiracist policies outside of psychology in the public interests. Transformation of the discipline and its associations, institutions, and programs is necessary for psychology to remain locally and globally relevant in a culturally diverse and interdependent. Antiracist activities are essential for this transformation to occur. Key words: antiracism, colonialism, decolonization, psychology, policy.

Antiracist Anger as Social and Moral Inquiry in Colectivo Ayllu's Devuélvannos el oro: Cosmovisiones perversas y acciones anticoloniales (2018)

Abstract: My essay looks at how diasporic, racialized, and sexually-and gender dissident voices that collaborated with Colectivo Ayllu in their first year of residency at CRA Matadero Madrid (2017–18) approach antiracist activism from a decolonial feminist perspective that analyzes gender and sexuality in relation to race and coloniality. I analyze Devuélvannos el oro: Cosmovisiones perversas y acciones anticoloniales , a compilation of visual, poetic, and essayistic pieces curated by Ayllu that emerge from experiential and political reflections, as well as anticolonial actions developed during the group's residency. I read Ayllu's emancipatory thinking first within a view of decolonial epistemology that enacts situated notions of knowledge, beauty, and truth outside Eurocentric frameworks. I also bring to light a concurrent understanding of decolonized epistemology that permeates Devuélvannos 's project and allows for making normative truth claims about systems of inequality and human flourishing. I discuss the consequences of both (compatible) notions of decolonial epistemology in Ayllu's formulation of antiracism activism. My essay bridges critical lenses from postpositivist realist theories of identity, women of color feminism and decolonial feminism to the study of emotions as embodied forms of knowledge that may offer "clarity" and insight into how ideologies and structures of power operate in a society.

Without Struggle, There Is No Progress!

Aldon Morris on a life of anti-racist activism.

Pursuing Racial Order and Social Progress: Violence, Afrophobia and “Religious Racism” in Brazil

Abstract This article explores “religious racism,” or discrimination against devotees of African-derived religions in Brazil, as a broader pattern of structural racism rooted in racialized religious alterity, Afrophobia, and the epistemic divide between religion and nonreligion. The term religious racism has been proposed by some devotees and anti-racist activists to emphasize that Afro-Brazilian religions are uniquely targeted in ways other non-Christian religions are not. Unlike religious intolerance, the term religious racism explicitly connects discrimination against Afro-Brazilian religions to colonization, color or racial hierarchy, and anti-Black prejudice. This article clarifies the ideological groundings of religious racism that encourage Neo-Pentecostal extremists to pursue “order and progress,” as the national motto suggests, through physical violence.

Emotional reactions to concepts of racism and white privilege in non-Aboriginal professionals working in remote Aboriginal communities.

This research, conducted by a non-Aboriginal, White researcher, examines how health professionals working in remote Aboriginal communities engage with antiracism as instructed by national standards, whether strong emotions are elicited while reflecting on these concepts, and how these reactions impact on antiracist professional practice. Eleven non-Indigenous allied health professionals were interviewed in a semi-structured format. Interviews were transcribed, thematically analysed and compared to existing literature. Every participant identified overwhelming emotions that they linked to reflecting on racism, White privilege and colonisation. Professionals reported grappling with denial, anger, guilt, shame, fear, anxiety and perfectionism, loss of belonging, disgust and care. They reported that these emotions caused overwhelm, exhaustion, tensions with colleagues and managers, and disengagement from antiracism efforts, and contributed to staff turmoil and turnover. Previously, these emotional reactions and their impact on antiracism have only been described in the context of universities and by antiracist activists. This research identifies for the first time that these reactions also occur in health services in Aboriginal communities. Wider research is needed to better understand how these reactions impact on health service delivery to Aboriginal communities, and to evaluate ways of supporting staff to constructively navigate these reactions and develop antiracist, decolonised professional practice.

‘These are large ideals that we hope for’: heritagising the past and present of anti-racist activism in the Black Archives

ABSTRACT This article focuses on The Black Archives (TBA) in Amsterdam, a cultural organisation that is establishing itself as an alternative centre of knowledge production about the legacies of colonialism. It situates TBA’s efforts to recover and produce a lineage of Black Dutch anti-racist activism in the period before and after the 2020 Black Lives Matter demonstrations. This moment marks a stage where a particular way of doing activism – one that employs practices of memorialisation and heritage-making – begins to gain legitimacy within mainstream public discourse. By critically assessing how TBA is bringing previous campaigns into dialogue with the 2020 protests, this article aims to explore the tensions and contradictions that arise when memories that are not fully sedimented are used as a resource to produce stable, cohesive identities. What kind of politics is made possible by the heritagisation of activism in the present?

Medical learners' anti-racist activism: Promoting learners to lead social change.

The author provides examples of medical learner leadership in anti‐racist activism to support the argument for empowering medical learners to lead social change.

Sources, Conceptualizations, and Mechanisms of Racism/Oppression for Academic and Mental Health Outcomes

Interpersonal and systemic racism and discrimination persist in our educational system—from primary and secondary institutions through college, despite the forward strides of desegregation, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Black Lives Matter movement. This special topic collection identifies and applies empirically and theoretically grounded conceptualizations of racism to improve our understanding of the experience of racism, interventions to mitigate it, and protective factors. The papers in this collection reflect two themes: 1) racial and religious identities in classrooms, schools, and universities, focusing on how educators mitigate and perpetuate systemic racism, including how White teachers understand the impact of race, how inclusive and antiracism curricula are received and rejected by future educators and clinicians, and the impact of exclusionary social networks in the hiring of teachers of color and 2) school belonging and climate, including documenting that students of color feel less safe, are disproportionately exposed to harsh discipline, question their belonging, and question commitments to diversity. The negative sequelae are concurrent and last into adulthood. In addition, there are several advances in theory and measurement, including assessing gendered and racial biases in teachers’ attributions about students’ abilities, frameworks for mitigating colonial and racialized trauma, and domains of antiracist activism to bring racial justice and equity to schools.

Righteous Anger: Celebrating the Anti-racist Activism of Sir Michael and Ann Dummett, written by New College Library and Archives

Righteous Anger: Celebrating the Anti-racist Activism of Sir Michael and Ann Dummett, written by New College Library and Archives

Funding Opportunities Designed to Promote Antiracist Change Across a Health Sciences University

As health professionals acknowledge the historic and current influences racism has on patient care and health outcomes, leaders must develop antiracist activities to disrupt current narratives. To examine the outcomes of antiracism funding opportunities for development, implementation, and evaluation of initiatives across a multi-health professions academic university. This mixed-methods cohort study involved the evaluation of 17 antiracism projects conducted at a midsize single academic university in the Pacific Northwest with schools of dentistry, medicine, nursing, pharmacy, and public health. Projects were designed by students, faculty, staff, and community members, many of whom were from diverse backgrounds. Data collection and analyses were conducted between January and December 2022. Influence and reach of institutionally funded antiracist projects and best practices for funding them. Key metrics included project types, allocation of funds, level of community engagement, number of individuals engaged, demographic characteristics of project leaders, and project facilitators and barriers. Forty-two proposals were submitted, and 17 were selected for funding, representing 3 of 5 health profession schools. Study teams included women (15 of 19 [79%]), gender queer (1 [5%]), Asian American (5 [26%]), Black or African American (2 [11%]), Hispanic or Latinx (1 [5%]), Middle Eastern, North African, or biracial (4 [21%]) and White (7 [37%]) individuals. Four of 17 teams (24%) returned funds because their proposed projects exceeded their workload. Eight projects (47%) were fully implemented, most in the School of Medicine. Community engagement surveys were completed by 10 projects (59%), and 1741 participants engaged in 1 or more funded events. Two focus groups were attended by 7 of 17 projects (41%), which reflected diversity among grantees. Participants noted that facilitators of antiracist activities included strong community engagement, improved well-being, and sense of support by both the community and the institution. Barriers to advancing antiracist initiatives included restrictive timelines, being unprepared for the time needed for their efforts, distrust from community members due to previous experiences with diversity and inclusion projects, and difficulties navigating complex institutional systems and processes. The findings of this study suggest that efforts needed to implement antiracist change should not be underestimated. Engagement should be inclusive across academic health centers and communities. Future efforts need to support innovator full-time equivalent support, individual mentorship, and institutional sponsorship.

Transforming Confederate Memory Sites into Spaces for Encounter: Reclaiming Space at Marcus-David Peters Circle

ABSTRACT In the wake of George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police in May 2020, cities across the United States erupted in protest. These public displays reignited debates over the presence of Confederate monuments, such as the Robert E. Lee statue in Richmond, Virginia. This essay examines several protest events at the Lee statue memorial space in summer 2020, arguing that these moments are a sustained form of a space for encounter. Protestors reclaimed the Lee statue through art and renaming the space, celebrating Black heritage and excellence, and creating educational, accessible, and safe spaces to encourage conversations about racial justice across social differences. The Lee memorial space, renamed Marcus-David Peters Circle by protestors, shows how spaces for encounter can navigate moments of contingency and eligibility for antiracist activism, and how other toxic memory sites can be remade into generative spaces that offer alternative visions of the future.

Axó of the spider woman: Black activism in Goya Lopes’s patterned fabrics

This article delves into the remarkable work and journey of Goya Lopes, an Afro-Brazilian designer, entrepreneur and activist. It explores the intersection of fashion and art within her designs of patterned fabrics, which encompass a wide range of everyday and unique garments, household items and more. The discussion highlights pivotal moments in Lopes’s career, including her 2008 solo exhibition The African Diaspora in Brazil, her collaborative book Imagens da Diáspora (‘Images of the diaspora’) with Brazilian historian Gustavo Falcón in 2010 and her 2017 installation Sentidos Afro-Baianos (‘Afro-Bahian senses’). Through examining select fabric patterns, the article unveils their significance as integral components of Lopes’s ongoing anti-racist activism, which has spanned over five decades from the region of Bahia in northeastern Brazil. Lastly, it delves into Lopes’s unique conceptualization of her fabrics as axós, drawing on the Yoruba term for aso (‘cloth’), and highlights their role as empowering, protective and militant Afro-diasporic mantles. The article underscores how Lopes employs fashion design as a form of activism and a subtle yet potent means to propagate political ideas.

“Meeting of the Lines”: Lessons from a Lived Labour Life

This paper is a personal reflection about ‘learning labour’ within the context of a twenty-year relationship with my late partner, Mary-Jo Nadeau (1965–2021). As an academic, self-identified labour geographer, I give recognition to a number of lessons that I learned from Nadeau, herself a feminist sociologist, anti-racist activist, and labour organizer. The paper borrows from a largely feminist inspired literature on academic relationships and how such relationships influence intellectual development and pursuits. The paper explores a number of questions including: How do these relationships work? Do they increase professional success? What is the intellectual impact on each other’s work, even if you do not write together? And also important, what are the effects of gender and other relations of power in such a relationship? The paper concludes that reflection upon engagements with intimate partners is something that geographers and other scholars should be more open to. Further such reflections must go beyond mere acknowledgement of the intellectual contributions of those who are too often rendered invisible in research processes to how such intimacies shape research and scholarship.

ART Praxis: Evidence-Based Strategies for Antiracist Teaching in Nursing.

This integrative review seeks to provide effective teaching and learning strategies for teaching about racism and advancing health equity. Most faculty preparation remains devoid of an exploration of racism and the skills to critique how historical events and socialization create and reinforce the biases that influence how we teach and provide care. It is difficult to teach what we do not know. Using Whittmore and Knafl's approach, we conducted an integrative review of multidisciplinary literature from 2009 to 2021 to uncover best practices for teaching about racism. Seven databases yielded 55 relevant articles from 18 disciplines. Four themes emerged illuminating effective strategies for teaching and learning about systemic racism: encounter education, reflection, discussion, and activism. Findings of this review align with Mezirow's transformative learning theory and highlight the importance of not just "doing" antiracist activities in a course but "becoming" an antiracist educator.

Beyond the Binary of Race and Class: A Marxist Humanist Perspective

Abstract The emergence of a new generation of antiracist activists and theorists seeking to advance an anticapitalist agenda creates a new vantage point for re-examining how racism relates to the logic of capital. This essay explores sources in the work of Marx, twentieth-century Marxists, and Frantz Fanon that can provide direction for overcoming the binary of class and race.