Roots Of Racism Research Articles

Book Review: Roots of racism: The politics of White supremacy in the US and Europe

Book Review: Roots of racism: The politics of White supremacy in the US and Europe

Medical students’ knowledge of race-related history reveals areas for improvement in achieving health equity

BackgroundMedical schools have increasingly integrated social justice, anti-racism, and health equity training into their curricula. Yet, no research examines whether medical students understand the complex history of racial injustice. We sought to investigate the relationship between medical students’ historical knowledge and their perceptions regarding health equity.MethodsMedical students at one large urban medical school self-rated their familiarity and importance of various racially-significant historical events and persons, as well as their agreement with statements regarding health equity, education, and preparedness to act. Descriptive and multivariate analyses were conducted in R.ResultsOf 166 (RR=31.3%) participants, 96% agreed that understanding historical context is necessary in medicine; yet 65% of students could not describe the historical significance of racial events or persons. Only 57% felt that they understood this context, and the same percentage felt other medical students did not. A minority of students felt empowered (40%) or prepared (31%) to take action when they witness racial injustice in healthcare. Multiracial identity was significantly associated with increased knowledge of African American history (p<0.01), and a humanities background was significantly associated with increased knowledge of Latin American history (p=0.017). There was a positive, significant relationship between advocacy statements, such as “I have taken action” (p<0.001) and “I know the roots of racism” (p<0.001) with mean familiarity of historical events.ConclusionsThis study demonstrates that while students agree that racism has no place in healthcare, there remains a paucity of knowledge regarding many events and figures in the history of American race relations and civil rights, with implications for future physicians’ patient care and health equity efforts.

(In)equity in athletics: U.S. antidiscrimination law and the white, middle-class advantage

ABSTRACT Equity in Athletics, Inc., v. Department of Education (2011) questioned whether schools could cut men’s sports for Title IX compliance. The case uniquely wedded racial and gender antidiscrimination precedents to argue Title IX harms men and therefore is unconstitutional. The courts disagreed and validated Title IX’s constitutionality. We argue this case did far more than endorse Title IX. Equity in Athletics showcases how antidiscrimination laws failed to redress the roots of racism, capitalism, and sexism all while ignoring harms done at the intersections. We use Crenshaw’s (1988, 1989, 1991) intersectional legal framework – single-axis, essentialism, and restrictive view of equity – to analyze Equity in Athletics. An intersectional reading of the case showcases three areas of the law – constitutionality tests, quotas, and segregation – that increase the athletic advantages for white, middle-class cis-gender girls and women at the expense and exclusion of lower-income, Girls and Women of Color, and transgender athletes.

'n Fenomenologie van rassisme: Hegeliaanse (wan)erkenning en die struktuur van koloniale bewussyn

Hierdie artikel neem Hegel se weergawe van die mislukking van wedersydse erkenning (dus wanerkenning) krities onder die loep met spesifieke fokus op die meester-slaaf-dialektiek. Hegel gee daarmee sy analise van 'n soort bewussynsontwikkeling wat lei tot vervreemde selfbewussyn in sowel die self as die ander (subjek en objek). Die proses wat hierdie soort bewussyn begrond, gee myns insiens 'n fenomenologiese beskrywing en verduideliking van die kognitiewe wortels van rassisme en geweld soos wat dit gemanifesteer word in 'n sogenaamde moderne koloniale mentaliteit (beide in die koloniale en die postkoloniale konteks). Dit bied met ander woorde 'n uiteensetting van hoe rassisme vorm aanneem in die selfbewussyn. Die moontlike wegbeweeg van rassisme na wedersydse erkenning word ondersoek met die doel om te sien hoe wanerkenning hanteer kan word (in die selfbewussyn). Dit word gedoen aan die hand van 'n model van Hegel se bewussynsteorie, wat verskillende soorte intersubjektiewe erkenning in breë trekke uiteensit. Die fokus van hierdie model is die wisselwerking tussen die dinglike en begripsaspekte van Hegeliaanse erkenning in die interaksie van die self (as subjek) met die ander. Hopelik kan hierdie model help om begrip te bevorder van hoe selferkenning, wanerkenning en wedersydse erkenning gepaard gaan met verskillende vorme van bewussyn. Teen die agtergrond van 'n koloniale bewussyn het wanerkenning en wedersydse erkenning 'n beduidende uitwerking op menslike verhoudinge. Fanon het dit verder belig met sy fokus op die rol van ras in die dialektiek en erkenning.

Capitalism, Crisis, and Contention: Race, Racism, and Resistance

Abstract For Marx, the alienation of wage labor and inherent crisis tendencies of capital would foster collective grievances and support for communist movements promising revolution and the abolition of private property, creating a society wherein “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” But a combination of material factors, the rise of the welfare state, increased wages, and later consumerism as well as ideologies such as religion and/or nationalism, thwarted revolutionary fervor in industrial societies. Nevertheless, Marxist theory provides a number of important insights that help us understand contemporary social mobilizations beginning with noting how historical legacies, materials conditions, class interests, and episodic crises dispose many movements, even those that take place on cultural terrains in public spheres and spaces while political economic/historical factors may not be evident. This can clearly be shown by understanding the nature of racism and the massive protests following the murder of George Floyd. The roots of racism, qua white ‘superiority’ were rooted in the colonial era in which the settlers enslaved Africans and forcibly displaced the native populations for clear economic gains. This was ideologically ‘legitimated’ by the dehumanization of racialized Others, it also provided ‘superior’ status and identity to Christian Caucasians. Moreover, such ideologies were sustained through violence, whether armed plantation owners, slave catchers, militias, and later police. For a variety of reasons, slavery ended but racism endures to this very day. But that said, between the growing economic and educational status of Africans Americans and the more progressive cosmopolitan/inclusive values and practices of the young, racism, for many, has waned. But police violence has not. In the face of growing inequality, the pandemic crisis that led to an economic crisis, especially onerous for the young and peoples of color, the murder of George Floyd, going viral, indicated how a number of the crises of neoliberal transnational capitalism migrated to the culture and led to massive protests and resistance against racism and police brutality.

Film Review: Holy Hierarchy: The Religious Roots of Racism in America

Film Review: <i>Holy Hierarchy: The Religious Roots of Racism in America</i>

The roots of racism

Our prejudices arise from learned responses. That means we can unlearn them, neuroscientist Lasana Harris tells Daniel Cossins

The religious roots of racism in the Western world: A brief historical overview

Racism is again a burning issue in our country. One may define racism as the conviction that not all humans are equal, but that some are ‘worthier’ than others. Usually those who are regarded as ‘unworthy humans’ are not treated on par with the rest. The ‘othering’ of humans in the Western world did not commence in the 16th, 17th, 18th or 19th centuries. It is argued that the roots of racism in the Western world date back to the 1st century CE when the early Christians severed their ties with the Jewish people and their religion, and started humiliating and denigrating them. Traces of this can be found in the New Testament in inter alia John 8:44, Revelation 2:9 and 3:9. The Jewish people and their synagogues were associated with the Devil. However, Paul also contributed to the anti-Judaism sentiments of early Christians. He argued that the gospel superseded the law. This eventually led to the conviction that Christianity superseded Judaism, and that Jews and Judaism ranked lower than Christians and Christianity. These beliefs created fertile soil for the development of racism in the Western world. The article presents a brief overview of the history of Christianity, how it developed, how it became the state religion of the Roman Empire and the dominant religion in the Western world, and how the religious convictions fed into the sociopolitical and economic policies of the Western world. The article delivers a plea for accepting the view that all religions are human constructs and that their adherents need to meet the ‘other’ on an equal footing. The Western world especially needs to look at how Christianity contributed to the way it treated other people during the course of history.

Racism Experiences of Urban Indigenous Women in Ontario, Canada: “We All Have That Story That Will Break Your Heart”

The objective of our mixed-methods research study was to present the discourse on racism experiences of Indigenous women living in two urban Canadian cities. A failure to recognize the impacts of racism on Indigenous women in Canada has emerged from the literature. Sharing circles, interviews, and a questionnaire including validated scales were used to collect data. The findings demonstrated that urban Indigenous women experience a number of racism events that span individual, collective and institutional, and cultural racism. The diversity of racist events was better captured in the questionnaire, whereas the roots of racism were understood more clearly in the qualitative findings to be an extension of historical colonial events to current day manifestations.

They have Verve: Preservice Teachers’ Perceptions about Culturally Relevant/Responsive Pedagogy

ABSTRACTBased on concerns about the permanence of racism in our society and its impact on opportunities for children’s equitable education, this empirical study used narrative inquiry to explore four preservice teachers’ developing dispositions as they studied and implemented culturally relevant/responsive pedagogy (CR/RP) in an early literacy education course framed by critical race theory. Whereas the majority of publications based on this study’s findings have focused on preservice teachers’ problematic white racial discourse showcasing narrative profiles, this article focuses on a finding that opportunities to study race and CR/RP led the preservice teachers to new perceptions about culturally relevant/responsive pedagogy, race, and racism. Yet, within these purported learnings, preservice teachers’ continued use of white racial discourse points to the need for teacher educators to engage preservice teachers in contextualized discussions about the social, political, economic, and historical roots of racism.

“But I’m not a racist!” Phenomenology, racism, and the body schema in white, pre-service teacher education

In this article, I call for a phenomenological turn in educating white, pre-service teachers. As opposed to dominant pedagogical models which focus on changing one’s beliefs about race, phenomenology points toward the importance of pre-conceptual, pre-critical forms of racial embodiment. Here I draw upon recent work on the different between body image (beliefs about the body) and body schema (what the body can do). The worry is that existing forms of anti-oppressive education miss the centrality of the schema, and thus do not go far enough in uncovering the embodied, perceptual roots of racism.

Northerners versus southerners: Italian anthropology and psychology faced with the "southern question".

Following the Unification of Italy (1861), when confronted with the underdevelopment problems of the south that had given rise to the so-called "southern question," some Italian anthropologists and psychologists began to study the populations of the south from the psycho-anthropological point of view. These scientists, at times subject to preconceived ideas toward the southerners, conveyed observations and descriptions of the southern character traits that, in general, were considered different, in a negative sense, with respect to those of the northern peoples. To explain such diversity in the "psychological" characteristics between the north and south of the country (presumed cause also of the south's backwardness), various hypotheses were advanced related to the kind of heredity theory adopted, which could be of, more or less, an "innatist" or "transformist" or "environmentalist" kind. The distinction proposed in this article between at least 2 different "hereditarian" theories formulated by the Italian scientists, and the confrontation of these theories with the hypotheses expressed by the "southernist" sociologists, contrary to the idea of "racial varieties" present in the Italian population, allows one to understand in what way and in what sense, at the threshold of the 20th century, there arose the ideology of "Nordicism" and the roots of racism were planted.

Roots of Racism

Humans everywhere divide the world into “us” and “them.” Why are we so tribal?

Toward a post-Charter health promotion

The past 25 years have seen enormous shifts in the environmental, political, economic and social landscapes that condition people's abilities to be healthy. Climate change is now a reality. China, India, Brazil and other 'developing' countries are emerging as new axes of political and economic power. Global capitalism has become increasingly predatory and crisis ridden, a result of unregulated and irresponsible greed of unimaginable scale. The elite response has been the increased erosion of the health and other social protection policies of redistribution that characterized the first-world run-up to the Ottawa Charter. These new realities challenge health promoters in ways unforeseen a quarter century ago. It is imperative that local determinants of health, to which health promoters give their attention, be traced to broader, even global levels of determinants. Support for groups acting at these levels should become a fundamental practice tenet. So, too, should advocacy for the social state, in which progressive taxation and hefty social investment blunt the health inequalities created by unfettered markets. As environmental and economic insecurities and inequalities increase in many of the world's countries, so does the risk of xenophobia and conflict. The roots of racism are complex; but weeding them out becomes another health promotion practice of the new millennium. There are some hopeful signs of health promoting political change, much of it emanating now from countries in the global South; but the threat of a return to health behaviourism in the face of the new global pandemic of chronic disease is real and must be confronted.

How can the Rise of the Far Right in the UK be Halted?

David Renton argues that only street resistance can stop the far right, while Matthew Goodwin suggests we look instead at the roots of racism. While the British National Party failed to make any gains in the 2010 general election, the last year has seen a marked increase in public demonstrations by far right groups across the UK. Only street resistance can effectively challenge groups such as the English Defence League, writes David Renton. Street protest against the far right is often costly and counterproductive, argues Matthew Goodwin. Targeting the roots of prejudice and racism is a far more successful strategy.

Beyond the status quo? Challenging normative assumptions about race

Tackling the roots of racism: lessons for success R. Bhavnani, H. S. Mirza & V. Meetoo, 2005 Bristol, The Policy Press £15.99 ISBN 1‐86134‐774‐X During a recent live interview with actors Hugh Jack...

The Roots of Racism

The Roots of Racism

Urban Inequality: Evidence from Four Cities. Edited by Alice O'Connor, Chris Tilly, and Lawrence D. Bobo. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2001. Pp. xii, 549. $45.00.

In some inquiries, racism is a given, a fundamental assumption and fact that is known to shape economic and social and spatial inequalities. In such inquiries, from the empirical studies of W. E. B. Du Bois to the social thought of Patricia Williams, the world is believed to be racialized “always already”: the task of the researcher, then, is to probe the roots of racism in particular cases, and to liberate (or compensate) the people who are oppressed by its institutional manifestations. Other inquiries—guided by a methodology of rational choice—do not assume racism to be a given. For example, in mainstream economics after Gary Becker, race is a possible “factor,” one vector of a matrix, whose strength and direction of force on earnings or housing differences is to be examined in a regression equation once all other factors have been held constant. Indeed, some economists after Becker argue that racism cannot explain differences in earnings or in opportunities because if the marginal product of labor (or the bid on a house) of a person of color exceeds that of the white competition, the argument goes, then no profit-maximizing employer or seller would deny the offer of the person of color. And since all employers and households are assumed to be profit-maximizers, the color of one's skin will have no economic significance at all.

The 1997 SPSSI Presidential Address: Affirmative Action: A Compelling State Interest

Journal of Social IssuesVolume 54, Issue 1 p. 225-235 The 1997 SPSSI Presidential Address: Affirmative Action: A Compelling State Interest Dalmas Taylor, Dalmas Taylor DALMAS TAYLOR was President of SPSSI (1996–97) and was long affiliated with the governance of the organization prior to that. He was a professor of psychology at the University of Maryland and is best known for his scholarly contributions to social psychology in the areas of group behavior and the roots of racism, and for his direction of the Minority Fellowship Program of the American Psychological Association. After leaving Maryland, he was a Dean at Wayne State University, Provost at the University of Vermont and the University of Texas, and most recently Vice President for Academic Affairs at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. We were extremely saddened by his death on January 26, 1998, and are grateful for the opportunity to publish his last public address This address was delivered at the 105th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association in Chicago, IL, August 15–19, 1997. The version presented here was transcribed from a recording of the address.Search for more papers by this author Dalmas Taylor, Dalmas Taylor DALMAS TAYLOR was President of SPSSI (1996–97) and was long affiliated with the governance of the organization prior to that. He was a professor of psychology at the University of Maryland and is best known for his scholarly contributions to social psychology in the areas of group behavior and the roots of racism, and for his direction of the Minority Fellowship Program of the American Psychological Association. After leaving Maryland, he was a Dean at Wayne State University, Provost at the University of Vermont and the University of Texas, and most recently Vice President for Academic Affairs at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. We were extremely saddened by his death on January 26, 1998, and are grateful for the opportunity to publish his last public address This address was delivered at the 105th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association in Chicago, IL, August 15–19, 1997. The version presented here was transcribed from a recording of the address.Search for more papers by this author First published: 09 April 2010 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1998.tb01215.x DALMAS TAYLOR was President of SPSSI (1996–97) and was long affiliated with the governance of the organization prior to that. He was a professor of psychology at the University of Maryland and is best known for his scholarly contributions to social psychology in the areas of group behavior and the roots of racism, and for his direction of the Minority Fellowship Program of the American Psychological Association. After leaving Maryland, he was a Dean at Wayne State University, Provost at the University of Vermont and the University of Texas, and most recently Vice President for Academic Affairs at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. We were extremely saddened by his death on January 26, 1998, and are grateful for the opportunity to publish his last public address This address was delivered at the 105th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association in Chicago, IL, August 15–19, 1997. The version presented here was transcribed from a recording of the address. AboutPDF 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 onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume54, Issue1Spring 1998Pages 225-235 RelatedInformation

East and West of Main Street: Racism in Rural America

This article describes the presence in three rural communities of racism uncovered during recent community-analysis projects. The roots of racism are viewed and analyzed from three theoretical perspectives. Based upon theoretical concepts, intervention strategies are described, and suggested methods of implementation are offered that can guide the community health nurse in the legitimation and empowerment of the various oppressed groups in the communities served.