Anti-racist Approaches Research Articles

Peering Inside the White Container: Feminism and Antiracism in the Work of JFSR

Peering Inside The White ContainerFeminism and Antiracism in the Work of JFSR Sailaja Krishnamurti (bio) As a new board member, I welcome this opportunity to respond to Judith Plaskow’s essay, “Race, Racism, and the JFSR,” part of a series of actions that Feminist Studies in Religion (FSR) has undertaken as a response to growing concern about anti-Black racism and carceral violence in the United States. When I was invited to join the board in 2020, I was glad to become part of an academic community that has made so many important interventions in the field. But as Plaskow rightly observes, for many of us scholars of color, the journal still feels like a “white container.” To understand this problem, I invite readers to reflect on three questions. First, what does the word race mean in FSR’s action plan? There is a critical difference between advocating for “diversity” and committing to antiracist work. Let me contextualize my question by first interrogating my own position in this discussion. I am a queer cisgender woman of Brahmin (upper caste) Hindu South Asian descent. I live and work in Canada, the carceral state next door. As a racialized settler on colonized land, and as an academic of color with tenure, I occupy positions of marginalization and of privilege in academia and in North American society. I locate myself this way as a practice of interrogative positionality, a method which asks that we continually reexamine our locations, orientations, and relationships to power.1 From this vantage point, I can see that I am one of those non-Black scholars of color whose numbers, Plaskow notes, have grown on the board in recent years while the number of Black scholars has stayed steady. Non-Black women of color are indeed often used as an alibi in equity initiatives: the number of women of [End Page 51] color goes up, and “diversity” is achieved.2 Why is it that non-Black women of color like me grow in number in academic spaces when Black women do not? The core problem—that white supremacy, class inequality, and anti-Black racism are deeply embedded in American and global history and culture—cannot be addressed through institutional diversity initiatives that do not radically change institutions. It requires an explicitly antiracist approach that understands anti-Black racism and settler colonialism as institutional ontologies and as transnational phenomena. A second question therefore arises: What does it mean to engage in “the study of religion” when we know that our field owes its existence to colonial, orientalist, and imperial institutions? These are the same institutions that are responsible for exploiting people of color all over the world. Some traditions, and some scholars, sit more comfortably in relation to the term religion than others. Assumed divisions between insider and outsider, practitioner and scholar continue to shape our theories and methodologies. It is inevitable, therefore, that efforts to diversify representation within the field will expose the limits of what “religion” itself can contain. Plaskow writes that “like systemic racism, Christian hegemony is built into the fabric of the academy and society in ways FSR has been unable to escape” (7). Indeed, white Christian hegemony is so deeply enmeshed in the academy that we must ask how we can challenge it as long as we are so invested in maintaining its terms and structures. Here is one small and unscientific example. A brief search of JFSR’s hundreds of articles shows that only eighty-three contain the word Hindu, and of those, only sixteen are authored or coauthored by scholars who are (or at least whom I know to be) racialized people. I offer this observation to make two points: a) diversity in the coverage of religious traditions does not always equal racial diversity, and b) white scholars continue to dominate many fields of religious studies, particularly those which have been historically connected to the colonial apparatus. In her 2020 blog post “Not Just the Syllabus, Throw the Whole Discipline in the Trash,” Harvard MTS scholar Ciarra Jones writes that the “foundation of American academia is white supremacy. By refusing to reimagine not only the canon but also the theories and methods...

Disrupting white hegemony: A necessary shift toward adopting critical approaches within the teaching and learning environment

Utilizing Yoon’s whiteness-at-work framework, the purpose of this paper is to articulate critical whiteness and anti-racist pedagogical approaches for educators. We specifically offer practical strategies, to be taken up discretely or together, in an effort to disrupt white hegemony, to which the American educational system is seemingly beholden. Currently, the teaching profession, writ large, is predominantly white, and within K-12 the teaching force is mostly (79%) White women, conceivably yielding a number of implications. Hence, it is our hope, that by adopting some or all of these recommendations, educators would begin to improve learning conditions, bolster the effectiveness of long standing culturally-based pedagogies, and strengthen justice efforts.

Antiracism Starts With Us: School Counselor Critical Reflection Within an Multitiered Systems of Support Framework

Due to ongoing inequities, discrimination, and injustice, the antiracist movement has gained momentum in all parts of society, including education and school counseling. A foundational aspect of antiracism is self-reflection to increase awareness, identify biases, and build cultural proficiency. Multitiered systems of support (MTSS) is an evidence-based framework widely used throughout K–12 education in the United States to assist with every student’s school-related success. In this article, we propose an antiracist approach to the MTSS framework, in which reflection serves as the foundation. We provide practical activities and reflections to facilitate growth and promote antiracism within MTSS.

Disrupting White Supremacy in Assessment: Toward a Justice-Oriented, Antiracist Validity Framework

ABSTRACT In this article, we propose a justice-oriented, antiracist validity framework designed to disrupt assessment practices that continue to (re)produce racism through the uncritical promotion of white supremist hegemonic practices. Using anti-Blackness as illustration, we highlight the ways in which racism is introduced, or ignored, in current assessment and validation processes and how an antiracist approach can be enacted. To start our description of the framework, we outline the foundational theories and practices (e.g., critical race theory & antiracist assessment) and justice-based framings, which serve as the base for our framework. We then focus on Kane’s interpretive use argument and Mislevy’s sociocognitive approach and suggest extending them to include an antiracist perspective. To this end, we propose a set of heuristics organized around a validity argument that holds justice-oriented, antiracist theories and practices at its core.

Mad Studies is Maddening Social Work

This article explores the role and place of mad studies within social work theory, education, and practice. This includes a discussion of the role social workers have played in the past and continue to play in the present in relation to oppressive practices within mental health services; a role that includes serving as passive assistants to biogenetic psychiatric expertise and a turning away from the profession’s social expertise, all to the detriment of mad people. The interconnection between racism, colonialism, imperialism and psychiatrization is then discussed as it relates to the current treatment of mad people of colour within European and white settler state contexts. This is followed by a discussion of the potential contribution of mad theory to social work education and practice. Repositioning social workers as embracing their social expertise, a call towards developing a more thorough social justice leadership in mental health is explored. Mad studies, existing at the edges of transdisciplinary theoretical and methodological understandings, offers a potential in social work for fundamentally anti-oppressive, anti-sanist and anti-racist approaches to service provision. In effect, this article engages in the maddening of social work, through the incorporation of mad studies into critical social work theory, education, and practice.

A Trauma- and Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI)-Informed Approach to Suicide Prevention in School: Black Boys’ Lives Matter

Black boys have been dying by suicide at an increasing rate. Although the reasons for this increase are unknown, suicide in Black boys is likely influenced by multiple, intersecting risk factors, including historical and ongoing trauma. Schools can serve as an important mechanism of support for Black boys; however, without intentional antiracist frameworks that acknowledge how intersecting identities can exacerbate risk for suicide, schools can overlook opportunities for care and perpetuate a cycle of racism that compromises the mental health of Black youth. By recognizing their own implicit biases, modeling antiracist practices, listening to and recognizing the strengths and diversity of Black youth, and fostering school-family-community partnerships, school psychologists can help transform the school environment to be a safe and culturally affirming place for Black youth. This paper outlines how school psychologists can apply a trauma- and Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI)-informed approach to suicide prevention in order to more holistically support Black boys, disrupt patterns of aggressive disciplinary procedures, and improve school-based suicide prevention programs. By applying this lens across a multitiered systems of support (MTSS) framework, school psychologists can help to prevent the deaths of Black boys and begin to prioritize the lives of Black boys. Impact Statement This article calls on school psychologists to take a trauma- and Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI)-informed approach for school-based suicide prevention and interventions. The sociopolitical context of suicide risk and protective factors in Black boys, as well as the influence of intersecting identities on these factors, underscores the importance of antiracist approaches towards building school-community-family partnerships. A trauma and JEDI-informed approach to suicide prevention necessitates a culturally responsive collective impact team and culturally grounded approaches to prevention and intervention across a multitiered systems of support for prioritizing Black boys’ lives.

Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine Special Statement: Race in maternal-fetal medicine research- Dispelling myths and taking an accurate, antiracist approach

Profound inequities in maternal and infant outcomes based on race exist, and the maternal-fetal medicine community has an important role in eliminating these disparities. Accurately employing race and ethnicity as social constructs within research that guides clinical practice is essential to achieving health equity. We must abandon commonly propagated myths that race is a surrogate for genetics or economic status and that data are exempt from potential bias. These myths can lead to harmful misconceptions that exacerbate racial disparities in maternal and infant health outcomes. Furthermore, these myths obscure racism as the true underlying etiology of racial disparities. Understanding that race is a social construct and using an antiracist approach to research are essential in combating racism and eliminating unacceptable disparities in maternal and infant health. This document provides specific suggestions to approach the research process with an antiracist framework.

Crisis-Resilient and Antiracist Approaches to Community-Based Participatory Research During COVID-19 and Beyond.

Social and health inequities among communities of color are deeply embedded in the United States and were exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is a powerful approach to advance health equity. However, emergencies both as global as a pandemic or as local as a forest fire have the power to interrupt research programs and weaken community relationships. Drawing from Public Health Critical Race Praxis (PHCRP), as well as our research experience during the pandemic, this article proposes an expansion of prior CBPR principles with an emphasis on advocacy and storytelling, community investment, and flexibility. The article summarizes key principles of CBPR and PHCRP, contextualizes their relevance in COVID-19, and outlines a practical vision for crisis-resilient research through deeper engagement with antiracism scholarship. Structural barriers remain an issue, so policy changes to funding and research institutions are recommended, as well, to truly advance health equity.

CREATING AND IMPLEMENTING FACILITATED DIALOGS ON ANTIRACISM IN PSYCHIATRY, CHILD PSYCHIATRY, AND ACADEMIC MEDICINE

There is a significant and urgent need across psychiatry and other academic medicine departments to design, create, and execute effective dialogues on race, while examining unconscious bias and privilege. The overarching goal of facilitated dialogue is to create a safe space for faculty, staff, and trainees of different racial backgrounds to engage in meaningful dialogue that helps all develop an antiracist approach to their work and lives.

Interracial Team Teaching in Social Work Education

This article aims to explore anti-racist social work education through interracial team teaching, where one instructor is White, and the other is Black, Indigenous, or a Person of Color (BIPOC). This pedagogical approach is presented as an emerging conceptual model to consider in anti-racist social work education. As an anti-racist approach to teaching, this model aims to engage students and faculty in a more active and accountable role in dismantling systemic racism and White supremacy through social work education. A close examination of published articles on interracial team teaching revealed an absence of theoretical frameworks to guide this teaching method. Critical Race Theory (CRT) emerged as a compatible theoretical framework for teaching anti-racism within an interracial team-taught model. Five CRT tenets from Sólorzano et al. (2005) align with previous studies to support this emerging pedagogical approach as a viable option. Findings suggest that anti-racist education requires explicitly naming terms like White supremacy, racism, and colonization within the social work curriculum. Interracial team teaching necessitates shared power and authority between instructors and calls for White educators to examine their White identity and resist performing allyship. Academic institution hiring practices need a greater representation of BIPOC faculty to reduce overburdening faculty of color.

The Influence of Linguistic Bias Upon Speech-Language Pathologists' Attitudes Toward Clinical Scenarios Involving Nonstandard Dialects of English.

Purpose Variation within languages, including dialects, takes on an indexical function, marking belonging and connection. Meanwhile, attitudes toward these speech varieties become marked by linguistic bias. Within the speech-language pathology profession, research evidence, assessment tools, and intervention programs have largely been designed for and by the White, English-speaking middle class. As such, linguistic bias with a preference for standardized dialects is prevalent in the training and practice of the speech-language pathology profession, resulting in discriminatory and racialized practices. Method To investigate the influence of linguistic bias upon speech-language pathologists' (SLPs') clinical decision making, data were collected from 129 Australian SLPs via an online survey. Inferential statistics were used to investigate the relationship between clinical decision making and SLPs' attitudes toward nonstandard dialects as well as personal and professional factors. A content analysis of extended responses was conducted to identify themes in clinical decision making. Results SLPs with more years of experience and those who had received professional development were significantly more likely to seek out more information before making a diagnosis, while those with more negative attitudes toward linguistic diversity were significantly more likely to identify a disorder than a difference. SLPs provided a range of justifications for their clinical decision making, but few acknowledged the influence of their own attitudes and bias upon their decision making. Conclusions SLPs' linguistic bias towards speakers of nonstandard dialects has the potential to impact upon their clinical judgment of difference versus disorder and lead to inequality of service provision for speakers who do not express themselves in standardized forms. Before the profession can truly move toward an antiracist approach of equitable service provision for all, SLPs must engage in critical self-reflection to disrupt the adherence of the speech-language pathology profession to standardized "White" norms of communication.

African American Head Start Teachers’ Approaches to Police Play in the Era of Black Lives Matter

Background:Scholars in the fields of early childhood education (ECE) and multicultural education have argued that preschools are key sites in which children learn about race and racism. However, there is little research on how teachers negotiate conflicting tensions and enact antiracist approaches within Head Start (HS) classrooms that use comprehensive and commercialized curriculums.Study Purpose:This article is about the challenges early childhood educators face when young children (ages 3–5) bring painful and uncomfortable issues of race, racism, and incarceration to preschool. This study is part of the research project Negotiating Head Start Curriculum (NHSC), a comparative study of policy implementation in four cultural communities in the United States. Here we focus on educators’ response to the “Jail Scene,” a pivotal scene taped in an HS classroom serving African American children.Research Design:The method used in the NHSC project is a multivocal ethnographic research method combined with a comparative case study design. We selected classrooms in each community that implemented both Creative Curriculum® and Teaching Strategies Gold®, led by experienced teachers in Chicanx and Latinx, Samoan, and white Appalachian communities. We made videotapes of similar activities across all sites. We then used these videos as cues for focus group interviews with educators (teachers, directors, and instructional personnel). We applied constant comparative, Critical Discourse Analysis, and Voloshinovian literary analysis to 41 interview transcripts of 132 educators’ talks.Findings:Analysis of transcripts indicates Black teachers are more likely to recognize racism, including the effects of incarceration and arrest on children’s talk and play, in ways unavailable to teachers from outside their community. Despite extant research suggesting early childhood teachers of color are no more likely to engage with young children about racism than white teachers, our study found that Black teachers offer nuanced, careful, and responsive approaches to antiracist pedagogy. They respond in sensitive, child-led, playful ways, inserting counternarratives within the confines of scripted curricula.Conclusions:ECE teachers’ disparity of interpretation has particular importance as ECE moves to professionalize the field. If elementary school patterns are any indication, the field should expect a sharp increase in the percentage of white, middle-class teachers instructing children of color. Unintentionally, these teachers may fail to recognize the play and talk to contain challenges born out of racism and inequality. We suggest policymakers, curriculum designers, and the broader field of ECE must carefully consider the approaches of teachers of color and take these approaches seriously.

A multi-pronged, antiracist approach to optimize equity in medical school admissions.

Increasing the number of physicians who identify as an underrepresented minority (URM) has been a focus for decades. Despite the US Department of Health and Human Services establishing The Council on Graduate Medical Education focussing on the underrepresentation of minorities in medicine in 1990, US medical students in 1998-1999 were15.2% URM and twenty years later, URM students comprise only 14.6% of matriculants. This reflected our experience at University of Maryland School of Medicine despite our diverse community where over 60% of the population identify as Black or African-American. We share our strategies to mitigate bias in the admissions process and our resulting outcomes. We implemented multiple interventions including interviewer training, recruitment strategies, holistic screening, changes in the interview process and increased racial, ethnic and gender diversity on our admissions committee. These changes were made over a two-year period initially focussing on the committee, followed by focussed interventions for interviewers. With these interventions, we demonstrated an improvement in the number of URM applicants that matriculated. In 2019, we had the first class that was in which no one ethnicity or race comprised the majority of the class, with 54% of matriculants identifying as students of colour. In 2020, in addition to sustaining a majority of the class identifying as students of colour, the proportion of URM students increased from 10%-13% for the preceding 3years, to 24% of the entering class. The number of physicians who identify as URM must be increased for the benefit of our patients and health care system. Unconscious bias training for interviewers, focused recruitment strategies, holistic screening deemphasising the MCAT, blinding interviewers to MCAT scores and GPA, and increasing admissions committee diversity are five concrete steps that yielded the desired outcome of increasing URM representation among our medical school matriculants.

A call to action: Antiracist patient engagement in adolescent and young adult oncology research and advocacy.

Amidst the concurrent global crises of coronavirus disease 2019(COVID-19), uprisings against Anti-Black racism and police brutality, as well as anti-Asian racism and violence, the field of medicine found itself simultaneously called upon to respond as essential workers in the public health devastation of COVID-19, and as representatives of healthcare institutions wrought with the impacts of systemic racism. Clinicians, researchers, and advocates in adolescent and young adult (AYA) oncology, mustcome together in authentic activism to begin the work of creating structural change to advance antiracist approaches to patient engagement in AYA oncology research and advocacy. Critical review of existing practices is needed to ensure that ethical and effective research methods are employed when engaging with racial andethnic minority AYApatients with cancer, who may be particularly vulnerable and exploited in the current context.

Sites of Sanctuary: Examining Blackness as “Something Fugitive” Through the Tactical Use of Ethnic Clubs by Haitian Immigrant High School Students

In this theoretical article, the authors elaborate a revisited theory of Third Space from a BlackCrit/Afropessimist stance, exploring Black youth ethnic and racial identity formation searching for place and belonging in the context of a raced world. To illustrate their theoretical contributions, the authors draw on empirical research conducted with Haiti-born and U.S.-born Haitian immigrant high school students and their teachers. They argue that, as Third Space, Haitian ethnic clubs were sites of sanctuary where students felt free to challenge, play with, and question complex ideas about racial identity, sites of resistance to test and exercise resistance against demoralizing forces, sites of fluidity for Black adolescent development, and sites for regulating and protecting Blackness. Thus, Third Space Theory from a BlackCrit perspective can offer an anti-racist approach to capturing how Black youth become aware of contradictions and ambivalence in the worlds they inhabit and their acceptance of situations where ambivalence helps in their learning and also their survivance.

Commitment to Positive Change: Structural Anti-racism Audit of Nursing Education Programs

Amidst many opportunities to create positive change and examine systemic anti-racist decolonial practices (Moorley et al., 2020), we are advocating for concrete action at the root of Nursing education programs by way of a structural anti-racism audit. Based on decolonial and antiracist theory (Garneau et al, 2018; Gaudry & Lorenz, 2018; Kendi, 2019; McGibbon & Etowa, 2009), we propose to engage in systems-level action (McGowan et al, 2020; Mulgan, 2006; van Wijk t al., 2018) and examine institutional structures through an anti-racist framework (Sutton, 2002) based on audit processes for equity, diversity, and inclusion (Chun & Evans, 2019; Olson, 2020; Skrla et al., 2004; Skrla et al., 2009; Zion, et al., 2020). Structures within and influencing curriculum, pedagogy, evaluation will be examined to advance systems-level anti-racist practices and policies (Moorley et al., 2020) with Nursing students, faculty, staff, leadership as a foundation for equitable Nursing education and care (National Collaborating Centre for the Determinants of Health, 2014). This anti-racist approach to Nursing education reform promises to address the pernicious harms of discrimination in the healthcare system, as noted in a recent report on Indigenous-specific racism (Turpel-Lafonde, 2020). We aim to conduct a strengths-based structural anti-racism audit that does not lose sight of disparities (Fogarty et al., 2018). We are currently conducting a literature review and audit framework development and will pilot the structural anti-racism audit in fall 2021. Rather than requesting endorsement of our project, and with respect for diverse approaches, we asked Nursing colleagues to sign this letter to demonstrate shared commitment to critically examine racist challenges and anti-racist opportunities in their Nursing program at a structural level (see this survey: https://forms.gle/tZPN2z1kUoARNPp1A

Principles for Raising Funds With an Anti‐Racist Approach

The Major Gifts ReportVolume 23, Issue 8 p. 4-4 Diversity and Inclusion Principles for Raising Funds With an Anti-Racist Approach Megan Venzin, Search for more papers by this author Megan Venzin, Search for more papers by this author First published: 29 June 2021 https://doi.org/10.1002/mgr.31757Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onEmailFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume23, Issue8August 2021Pages 4-4 RelatedInformation

Black social workers: Identity, racism, invisibility/hypervisibility at work

Summary This article provides a reflexive account of qualitative research with Black female social workers in the North of England. It uses ‘Africanist Sista-hood in Britain’ as the theoretical framework guiding the research. The data are gathered from six semi-structured interviews and two focus groups. Data were analysed via thematic analysis. Participant data are used to discuss issues of identity, race and racism as they contribute to positions of visibility, invisibility and hypervisibility within the social work spaces discussed. The article challenges Western forms of knowledge production as the dominant discourse in social work research, practice, education and training and links this to wider issues of power, privilege and suppression of marginalised voices. Findings The findings section reveals examples of racism, marginality, invisibility and hypervisibility as part of the lived experiences of Black female social workers in the study. It includes discussions of ‘collective strategic projection’ as a consequence of the development of the ‘race taboo’ often present in these work environments. Applications The article calls for social work educators, practitioners and the wider academic field to do more to centralise anti-racist approaches in an attempt to challenge racism in social work.

Developing antiracist integrated health professionals.

As the Collaborative Family Healthcare Association (CFHA) has increased its focus on justice, diversity, and inclusion in integrated care delivery, it is increasingly evident that widespread upstream transformation is needed to ensure that the integrated care workforce is appropriately prepared to deliver equitable care. This column highlights the need for systemic change in admissions standards, integrated care curricula, student mentorship/sponsorship, and faculty development within higher education in order to support the success of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) students and increase antiracist approaches among health care professionals. CFHA members working in, or in collaboration with, academia are uniquely poised to influence higher education systems to promote diversity, inclusion, and antiracism among future integrated health professionals. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

From Diversity and Inclusion to Antiracism in Medical Training Institutions.

The glaring racial inequities in the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the devastating loss of Black lives at the hands of police and racist vigilantes have catalyzed a global reckoning about deeply rooted systemic racism in society. Many medical training institutions in the United States have participated in this discourse by denouncing racism, expressing solidarity with people of color, and reexamining their diversity and inclusion efforts. Yet, the stagnant progress in recruiting, retaining, and supporting racial/ethnic minority trainees and faculty at medical training institutions is well documented and reflects unaddressed systemic racism along the academic pipeline. In this article, the authors draw upon their experiences as early-career physicians of color who have led and supported antiracism efforts within their institutions to highlight key barriers to achieving meaningful progress. They describe common pitfalls of diversity and inclusion initiatives and call for an antiracist approach to systems change. The authors then offer 9 recommendations that medical training institutions can implement to critically examine and address racist structures within their organizations to actualize racial equity and justice.