Movement For Racial Justice Research Articles

The role of White identity in anti‐racist allyship

AbstractAlthough White allies attempt to support racial justice movements, their behaviors can be interpreted as performative rather than genuine by racially minoritized individuals. In the current work, I discuss how White individuals' personal connection to their racial identity and the power it confers—White identity form—shapes their allyship behaviors. Specifically, moving beyond conceptualizations of White identity as centrality, I call for a study of White identity that incorporates power‐relevant ideologies, understanding how White individuals make meaning of their unearned privilege and incorporate it into their self‐concept. I suggest that a power‐cognizant identity form, which involves personally connecting the self to Whiteness and unearned power, is necessary for White individuals to engage in genuine anti‐racist allyship. I discuss White identity measurement issues as well as potential interventions for promoting a power‐cognizant identity form.

On Social Media Photography

This article looks at the photography of Kris Graves and the circulation of the artist’s images on his social media accounts as a way of promoting social progress and racial justice, with a focus on his 2016 A Bleak Reality photoseries for Vanity Fair. The series consists of eight images that address the haunting specters of police brutality against eight African American male citizens who lost their lives at the hands of the state. Looking at Instagram, I posit a threefold claim about the social media photograph. First, I argue against the association of the social photo with the everyday. I examine a photoseries that initially participated in an economy of art but then migrated across a network of social relations in order to enhance its visibility—its dissemination ushering in the social life of the photograph that undergirds Black Lives Matter. Second, I suggest that the affective residues of Instagram’s content linger in an indexical trace that transcends the transplatform network’s digitally composited, modified, duplicated, and distributed images. This dual focus illuminates how social media function, on the one hand, as a technology of race while they allow Graves, on the other hand, to document instances of police brutality against African Americans. Third, in so doing, this article locates A Bleak Reality within a genealogy of civic media in order to explore how the co-optation of photography’s reproductive affordances by African American photographers, artists, scholars, intellectuals, and abolitionists has allowed them to construct a counter-archive of Black cultural production around historical movements for racial justice.

Ideological Connections: An Integrated Humanistic-Social Psychological Approach to Examining the Relationship Between Controversial Opposing Opinions

The social, economic, political, and civil unrest surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 United States election, and the increased activity of the racial justice movement has seemingly divided not just the nation but the world. Thoughts and behaviors are guided by ideological beliefs—collections of ideas or philosophies associated with power structures. I examined the overlap between positions on controversial topics and identified how ideological alignment, values, and identity characteristics influenced the holders’ views. I found significant relationships among the variables categorized as social, political, health and medical, and safety, security, and legal ideologies. The results indicated that participants’ views in one ideological category were similar to those in the other ideological categories. Finally, the current study presents models of integrating worldviews in which ideological viewpoints in the various categories align, supported by the Moral Foundations Theory, Ideological-Conflict Hypothesis, and the Rigidity-of-the-Right Hypothesis.

Comparing Social Isolation in Older Adults With and Without Physical Health Challenges During COVID-19: Church and Church Friends Matter.

Older adults were disproportionately affected by COVID-19. The purpose of this study was to explore experiences of sudden-onset social isolation and factors that influenced it among social isolation in two groups of older adults. A qualitative thematic study with a survey component was conducted comparing 18 older adults in two groups: 12 reporting physical health challenges and 6 reporting no physical health challenges. Three qualitative themes describe experiences of (a) avoiding risk to personal health as the reason to postpone healthcare, (b) grieving church and church friends as a lost social connection, and (c) compound stress due to converging factors related to personal health, public health, racial justice movement and critical national events. Those with physical health challenges were less able to postpone seeking healthcare, suffered from compound stress, and were more likely to feel isolated when unable to participate in church activities. Religious, faith, or spiritual supports may be important buffers against social isolation during public health emergencies, especially for older adults with physical health challenges and when there is concurrent social unrest.

From the racialization of finance to the financing of anti-racism: Tracing the US financial industry’s investments in closing the racial wealth gap

This paper examines profit-seeking investments that US financial industry actors have made in the name of racial justice since the summer of 2020. This trend, which builds on the proposition of “sustainable” finance that private profits and social benefits can coexist, is known in the industry as racial justice investing. To understand how the industry frames racial justice as an object of financial intervention, I draw from theories of social reproduction, racial capitalism, and social finance to analyze the historical and contemporary processes through which racial injustice is conceived in economic terms as a “gap” between the wealth of white and racialized households. Then, I analyze the political economy of these investments, focusing on how solutions to the wealth gap are oriented around extending credit and economic inclusion to racialized households and business owners. Ultimately I illustrate how the financial industry’s investments in closing the racial wealth gap largely sidestep questions of power and, paradoxically, justice that animate many contemporary racial justice movements.

Doomscrolling or Joyscrolling? A Study of English Lexical Innovations of 2020-2022

The years 2020-2022 experienced a number of world-shifting events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, a global economic recession, the racial justice movement, the US presidential election, and extreme climate conditions. Since no social phenomenon can avoid being represented in language, these episodes have influenced the language system, language use and discursive practices. The English linguistic landscape has not been spared the impact of the aforementioned events. The article focuses on analysing the meaning and formation of new coinages in the English language that reflect the changes in society within the specified timeframe. The data used for this study were collected from 2020-2022 updates to online dictionaries which include new words, revised versions of existing entries and new word suggestions. The research data were analysed both in qualitative and quantitative terms. The study singled out five lexical categories of neologisms based on the thematic criterion: 1) discrimination, 2) the influence of famous people, 3) climate change, 4) lifestyles during the COVID-19 outbreak, 5) the business world and employment. The classification manifests that these coinages have become integrated into the English language as part of everyday use for social and communicative purposes. The research findings show that the most productive word formation processes that contribute to the creation of the selected neologisms include compounding, blending, and compounding + affixation.

Stress and trauma among police officers: Implications for social work research and practice

Racial justice movements sparked by police killings of Black and Brown persons have led to a reassessment of the role of policing in America. This has promoted important conversations about how best to improve public safety and design law enforcement practices that are equitable and just across communities. A component of this conversation is addressing stress and trauma faced by police as a routine part of their duties, as it can affect the quality of policing. Job-related stress and trauma experienced by police officers are an international phenomenon, yet underexplored areas in social work research and practice. Police officers experience high levels of stress from routine exposure to traumatic situations, leading to high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder, substance use, and depression. Officers who are actively experiencing symptoms of stress and trauma are more likely to engage in misconduct, including the unnecessary use of force. This study explores the stress and trauma-related experiences of police officers. We conducted one-on-one, semi-structured interviews with 23 officers from an urban police department in St Louis, Missouri. Analysis of interviews addressed three areas: (1) stress and trauma experiences associated with police work, (2) negative effects of stress and trauma on officers, and (3) factors impacting officer access to treatment. We conclude that social work can contribute to improved policing outcomes by helping officers address their job-related stress and trauma through engaged research and practice.

#YellowPeril supports Black power: Performing affective memory work for solidarity

As various racial justice movements emerged under the “Black Lives Matter” slogan after George Floyd’s murder in May 2020, artist Monyee Chau posted a piece with the slogan #YellowPerilSupportsBlackPower on her Instagram page. The artwork, which depicted a yellow tiger, symbolizing Asians, and a black panther, symbolizing Black Americans, ignited Asian activism in support of Black Americans. In this study, I conceptualize #YellowPerilSupportsBlackPower movement as digital activism and analyze how Asian Americans project their “Asianness” to advocate for the Black community. In particular, I focus on Asian participants’ mediated memory work via Instagram to support the Black community. By identifying three types of affective memory work, I conclude that this affective memory work plays a key role in the legitimizing process through which Asian Americans produce affective ties with the Black community to build a multiracial identity that reaches beyond color lines.

Destination: Wokeness? Possibilities for exploring domestic educational travel as conscientizing praxis

I explore the possibilities for domestic educational travel to impact students’ understandings of racism, and their attitudes and planned behaviors toward enacting change in their communities. Prompted by movements for racial justice and drawing from the critical pedagogies of Paulo Freire, students on the “America’s Race Issues” community engagement program traveled throughout the Northern and Southern US to explore issues impacting the Black experience, such as slavery and the Civil War, the civil rights movement, environmental injustice, contemporary racial justice activism, and community organizing. Six students documented their experiences through photos and participated in interviews that illuminated the program’s impact on their process of conscientization. The program contributed to students’ conscientization in various ways and to varying degrees, yet shortcomings exist. This study suggests that domestic educational travel with a purposeful focus on race and racial justice activism can contribute to student conscientization, but further research and program improvement is needed.

Community organising in higher education: activist community-engaged learning in geography

ABSTRACT This paper highlights the transformative potential of place-based community organizing as a theory and practice of progressive social change and as a critical approach to the social purpose of community engagement in Higher Education Institutions. The aim is to expose power asymmetries and civic renewal “from below” through a focus on community engaged learning, specifically community organizing on the curriculum for geography undergraduates. The empirical focus is an English university, but the issues and observations are widespread. Around the world, students are coping with disruptions following a global pandemic, austerity, and loss of trust in local democracy – participating in climate emergency and racial justice movements. This paper advances community organising and community engaged learning as a mutually co-constitutive challenge to conventional notions of the student as a passive consumer of recruitment, learning, and individualised notions of civic responsibility. Methods of community organising are based on the theory that if you want change, you need power: change ultimately traces a motivational journey from anger to agitation and action. Empirical vignettes explore the transformative role of emotionally stirring “political theatre” and direct action, while exposing tensions that arise due to the transitory status of students in place and time.

Virtual communities of practice as responses to the turbulence of 2020: developing equity and justice leadership

PurposeVirtual communities of practice (VCoPs) supported educators during the COVID-19 pandemic and the resurgent movement for racial justice that arose in 2020. Four VCoPs offered a venue for practitioners and researchers to develop social capital in the face of pandemic and persistent institutional racism.Design/methodology/approachResearchers conducted semi-structured interviews with organizers of four VCoPs and collected supporting documentation from those organizers.FindingsVCoP organizers created opportunities to develop bridging and bonding capital of equity- and justice-focused educators.Research limitations/implicationsThe analysis points toward the affordances of VCoPs in crisis response and equity leadership.Originality/valueThis original analysis extends work on communities of practice, generally, virtual communities of practice, and equity leadership development.

Disturbing a Discipline: Towards Pluriversal Peace and Conflict Studies

ABSTRACT This article examines the implications of race critical and decolonial theories for peace and conflict studies. It critiques dominant epistemological frames in the field that overlook coloniality and racial capitalist violence while emphasizing human rights and universalism. The detachment of human rights from racial history is explored to reveal the coloniality of peace. The concept of ‘disturbing the disciplinary peace' is introduced, drawing on Sara Ahmed's figure of the ‘feminist killjoy’, to disrupt Western liberal peace through racial justice movements. Insights from decolonial thinkers and Indigenous resistance in Aotearoa are explored, challenging liberal human rights and offering prospects for pluriversal peace.

When coupled with anti‐egalitarianism, colour evasion predicts protection of the status quo during a university‐wide movement for racial justice

AbstractMovements for racial justice on college campuses can have wide‐ranging implications for promoting justice and well‐being. In this research, we sought to better understand how the dominant ideology of colour evasion might serve to protect the inequitable status quo. Believing that ‘people should not see race anymore’ can have different implications for efforts to reduce racial inequities depending on how this belief system is construed. Although one perspective can promote efforts to reduce inequitable outcomes between groups, through another lens this colour‐evasive ideology can serve to strengthen existing inequalities. We examined whether adhering to colour evasion might be associated with protecting the status quo on a college campus for those students who endorse hierarchy among social groups. We tested these predictions during a large, university‐wide movement for racial justice. In a cross‐sectional study of students (N = 255), we found that, for relatively anti‐egalitarian, but not egalitarian, students, the more they endorsed colour evasion, the less they supported the Black Student Coalition's demands, the less social justice action they took, the less effective they deemed the demonstrations, the less satisfied they were with student leaders and the more they thought the demonstrations were promoting intergroup conflict. This work makes contributions to the social dominance theory and colour evasion literatures and student activism scholarship generally, as well as to applied work endeavouring to promote efforts to reduce racial inequities.

#BlackLivesMatter (BLM) Was Never About Officer Race

Of course, #BlackLivesMatter (BLM) is about race. However, the ‘B’ in BLM refers to the victim’s race, not that of the officer involved in the interaction. Still, the discourse has primarily been framed as White law enforcement versus Black citizenry. The BLM social movement for racial justice began as a hashtag following the 2012 death of Trayvon Martin. In the following years, #BlackLivesMatter was used to bring attention to inequitable police interactions experienced by Black people, disproportionately resulting in death. The George Floyd case acted as a focusing event for the movement, where a Black victim was killed by a White police officer but calls for #BlackLivesMatter were not because the officer was White. In this essay, we argue that the police system is embedded with institutional racism at the organizational level (e.g., policies, procedures, climate) and that public trust in police is positional, not racial, indicating that systemic changes are required at the organizational level to improve police outcome equity.

#BlackLivesMatter (BLM) Was Never About Officer Race

Of course, #BlackLivesMatter (BLM) is about race. However, the ‘B’ in BLM refers to the victim’s race, not that of the officer involved in the interaction. Still, the discourse has primarily been framed as White law enforcement versus Black citizenry. The BLM social movement for racial justice began as a hashtag following the 2012 death of Trayvon Martin. In the following years, #BlackLivesMatter was used to bring attention to inequitable police interactions experienced by Black people, disproportionately resulting in death. The George Floyd case acted as a focusing event for the movement, where a Black victim was killed by a White police officer but calls for #BlackLivesMatter were not because the officer was White. In this essay, we argue that the police system is embedded with institutional racism at the organizational level (e.g., policies, procedures, climate) and that public trust in police is positional, not racial, indicating that systemic changes are required at the organizational level to improve police outcome equity.

Embedding anti-racism in Schools of Public Health: a pathway to accountability for progress towards equity.

The importance of seeing race as a socially constructed idea continues to produce unfair differences between humans and establishes power relations that lead to injustice and exposure to death. Since the racial justice movement in early 2020, therehas been a heightened awarenessof,and increased interest in,addressinghistoric racial disparities across Schools of Public Health (SPH) in Canada. Steps have been taken to recognize systemic racism and increase diversity through structural reforms to advance equity and inclusion; however, addressing racism demands collectively uprooting racist institutional designs still inherent in learning, teaching, research, service, and community engagement. This commentary highlights the need for sustained commitment to establishing longitudinal benchmarks for greater racial equity among students, staff, and faculty; revising curricula to include historic and contemporary narratives of colonialism and slavery; and providing community-engaged learning opportunities as instrumental to dismantle systemic drivers of racial health inequities locally and globally. We also advocate for intersectoral collaboration, mutual learning, and sharing of resources across SPH and partner agencies to accomplish a continual collective agenda for racial health equity and inclusion that is intersectional in Canada, while being held accountable to Indigenous and racialized communities.

The Role of ACEs and Discrimination on Mental Health: A Longitudinal Analysis Among College Students

ABSTRACT Both adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and perceived discrimination have been found to impact mental health in adults, but less is understood about the ways they interact to affect anxiety and depression symptoms. In the spring and summer of 2020, there were large societal changes stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic and social and racial justice movements in the United States. The current study aimed to characterize the interactive associations of ACE history and perceived discrimination with mental health in a sample of college students assessed prior to the pandemic in the fall of 2019 and then again in the fall of 2020. Results showed that in 2019, greater discrimination and more ACEs were associated with greater anxiety/depression symptoms. In 2020, a negative interactive effect of ACE history and discrimination on mental health was found, such that for individuals with low ACEs, greater discrimination was associated with significantly greater anxiety/depression symptoms. We also found that increases in perceived discrimination from 2019 to 2020 were significantly positively associated with increases in anxiety/depression symptoms over that same time period. The findings highlight the significant impacts that both ACEs history and perceived discrimination have on mental health and suggest that experiences of discrimination should be thought of as a critical, dynamic factor impacting college students’ mental health.

REPERTOIRES OF CARE AND ACTIVIST SUSTAINABILITY IN U.S. SOCIAL JUSTICE ORGANIZING

Sociologists have a longstanding interest in how movements survive and how individuals persist in their activism over time (e.g., McAdam 1986; Downton and Wehr 1998; Corrigall-Brown 2011; Bunnage 2014). The role of care in activist sustainability stands out as a neglected domain for a better understanding of how movements maintain the human labor they need to survive. Some social theorists and on-the-ground activists have warned about the potentially individualizing and depoliticizing effects of “self-care” on movement culture. However, social justice movements, particularly racial justice movements, increasingly emphasize the role of healing, care, and the body in movement survival. Drawing on all 128 episodes of the Irresistible podcast (formerly the Healing Justice Podcast), its problematic founder, and its ultimate demise, I use a Black feminist framework that holds the tensions within political care to understand the conditional relationship between the functions and hazards of care within activism. Following and complementing Charles Tilly’s (1977) repertoires of contention, I develop this “repertoire of care” analytitoto better situate proliferating discourses of movement care within broader theoretical conversations around persistent activism and movement survival.

Critical Race Theory: A Tool to Promote an Anti-Racist Pedagogy

There has been much controversy surrounding critical race theory (CRT) and the discussion of race and racism in education. The national emergence of racial injustices such as state-sanctioned violence, police killings of people of color, schools’ pipeline to prison, and COVID-19 racial disparities, in addition to racial justice movements such as #BlackLivesMatter, #SayHerName, and #BlackAndMissing has ignited the need for the social work profession to bring awareness to the pervasiveness of race and to fully acknowledge the role of white supremacy on education, social systems, institutions, legal systems, and culture. This article highlights the need for social work education to develop anti-racist education and practice and increase awareness of white supremacy in the United States. In addition, this article suggests the value of infusing CRT as an anti-racist pedagogy and tool to teach race, actively oppose racism, and organize social change.

Looted artifacts and museums'perpetuation of imperialism and racism: Implications for the importance of preserving cultural heritage.

In the midst of recent protests and antiracism movements following the death of George Floyd in May of 2020 and other Black, Indigenous, and people of Color (BIPOC) murdered in the United States by police violence, protestors and advocates around the world recognized the need for Western governments and other institutions to reckon with their own imperial history-to acknowledge the linkage between the slave trade, colonialism, and racism in their countries. This recognition led to the tearing down of statues depicting racist colonial leaders and calling for museums who have perpetuated imperialism and racism through their acceptance and display of looted artifacts to return them. This article sought to answer the question posed in the call for papers, can the many manifestations of racism be effectively dealt with in our society if the status quo is unwilling to engage with the issues, address them, and relinquish power. Further the author argues that cultural looting has its roots in colonialism and racism and discusses implications of the linkage between one's stolen cultural heritage and individual and community well-being. Answers to the question include both yes, manifestations of racism can be addressed, and no, they cannot be addressed when institutions and governments refuse to engage, address the issue and do not relinquish power. The article also includes the author's thoughts on using a living heritage approach to preserve cultural heritage and offers suggestions that community psychologists, advocates and activists can help to decolonize museums as part of the broader social and racial justice movement.