Volume 12, No. 3

Geraldine (Geri) Palmer, Jesica Siham Fernandez, Dominique Thomas

Introduction to Part II of the Special Issue

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We are appreciative of the voices that are constantly being raised around the world, and the public discourse centered on unsettling systemic racism, anti-Blackness practices, discrimination and other related prevailing social issues. We believe that these voices in conversation signal that the stronghold of silencing among activists, abolitionists, and all other allies and co-conspirators in this space is being dismantled as we speak and write. We are also aware that dialogues must move to actions and concrete strategies for justice.

We developed this two-part special issue around the themes of anti-racist and racial justice praxis to illuminate actions happening locally, nationally and globally, and how the work of anti-racism/racial justice might be adapted, integrated or used as guides for ongoing racial justice and social progress. These articles represent a call for a participatory, action oriented and decolonial liberatory standpoint rather than a bystander or deficit approach.

Ericka D. Mingo, Christopher Balthazar, Bradley Olson

The Premise of Persistence: Deconstructing Colonial Authority in Community Psychology Curricula and Structures, Towards Liberative Andragogy and Practice

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In the U.S., Community Psychology (C.P.) arose in the 1960s, attempting to break traditional clinical and research psychology patterns. While CP rejected many Eurocentric and oppressive ideas, remnants remain in every ecological corner of our work: research, professional organization, academic institutions, and community practice. There are also underlying assumptions that White authority, domination, and control systems will persist throughout time. This "premise of persistence" is a damaging and almost universal assumption in the field, particularly for students, and can limit the conceptualization of freedom and autonomy for oppressed populations. The premise of persistence lives inside many of our theories, forcing research and practice to reside within first-order change efforts. This paper takes a historical look a the origins, maintenance, and risks of the premise of persistence. What is proposed is the deconstruction of existing literature, prevalent ideology, and even gatekeeping in community psychology classrooms, which often insists on empowerment as the end goal, without consideration of more radical second-order change.

Ciann L. Wilson, Amandeep Kaur Singh, Ann Marie Beals, Rajni Sharma, Brianna Hunt, Ellis Furman, Natasha Afua Darko, Tiyondah Fante-Coleman, Vivila Liu, Natalie Kivell

Dialogues of Disruption: Confronting Oppression in the Academy

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Within academia in recent years, there has been a concerted effort to re-center the perspectives and rights to free speech of the status quo at the expense of the safety and wellbeing of queer, trans, racialized, and Indigenous communities.  Historically, critical race scholars have identified the centering of freedom of speech as an exercise by the old-guard in white supremacist culture to repurpose and repackage language about political freedoms in an effort to retain white settler control of a society that has long outgrown stunted ideologies about binary gender norms, and the continued oppression of Black, Indigenous, and racialized communities. Through our hard-fought lessons learned from often painful lived experiences as queer, trans, and Black, Indigenous, People of Colour (BIPOC) scholars and activists, this paper aims to: 1) Archive and document the testimonies and experiences of multiply-marginalized students and emergent faculty in the field of community psychology in a mid-sized Canadian university; 2) Utilize critical and intersectional analyses in unpacking the layers of violence and harm expressed and experienced through case examples; 3) Use our experiences to share strategies on the successful navigation of white supremacy in the academic spaces in which we work and learn; and 4) Call academic disciplines, including community psychology, to action by identifying their ethical responsibility to cultivate non-violent spaces for BIPOC people.

Nataka Moore, Julissa Pagán-Peña, Paola Rodríguez-Dávila, Rebecca Rodríguez-Rivera, Tiana Santisteven

Talking about Race in Puerto Rico: Four Descendants of the Transatlantic African Diaspora Share their Experiences

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Puerto Ricans are racially characterized by a mix of three races (Spaniard, Taíno, and African). In fact, this statement dominates any other version of the Puerto Rican racial identity, which has limited the discussions about racial issues such as blanqueamiento and racism. In an effort to better understand racial dynamics and the Puerto Rican’s perception of race, four descendants of the African Diaspora engaged in a self-reflective process using a roundtable approach to analyze their experiences in Puerto Rico. The roundtable approach is based in an ethnographic method of the qualitative approach. Each individual journaled each moment from their own perspective, then as a group they came together to discuss the themes, experiences, and impressions of the journey. They did this by attending the Latin American Studies Association Conference that was held in San Juan in 2015.  While visiting the conference, the attending researchers made efforts to learn as much as they could through experiences such as visiting historical sites and engaging with residents. The investigators discussed the themes they observed in Puerto Rico that related to the overarching question, “What does Blackness mean in Puerto Rico?” and the impact of this meaning on the well-being of Black Puerto-Ricans.  These roundtable discussions took place over a year with multiple 2-3 hour meetings. In discussing the themes, the researchers created a space where each author had an equal voice and expertise. This roundtable process not only expanded the authors’ understanding of how Blackness is understood in the diaspora, but also their very own personal understanding of Blackness. The findings from each author were compared to develop a broader and deeper understanding of how each viewed the research questions.  If the themes from the different authors arrived at the same resolution, then their confidence in the themes was strengthened. This process resulted in the team identifying four major themes; the romanticization of belonging to the three races, psychological sense of belonging and resiliencies, tension points in Loíza: resiliency, resistance and social exclusion and the rehabilitation of each individual’s cultural identity as descendants of the Transatlantic African Diaspora. Each individual reproduced their own experiences in this process into these four themes. In regards to the romanticization of belonging to the three races, one member wrote

 

On my way home I couldn’t believe the day we had. I saw discrimination and racism with my own eyes.  I saw it here in a place I always believed was filled with no racism. In a place, I consider was innocent to color differences and that respected and valued the power of differences. I discover that as Puerto-Ricans we are so used to the fantasy of diversity that we do not see that, for some, diversity is unrealistic; especially when you can’t even acknowledge the basic rights of others.

 

Using their individual reflections as data, the four researchers were able to identify the resiliency factors that have helped to strengthen their and others’ racial identity. In this process, the researchers were able to have a deeper understanding of their African ancestry and develop a more inclusive Puerto Rican identity.  This process included the researchers examining ways that anti-blackness and colorism are displayed in the Puerto Rican culture, and also detecting areas of racial justice and resiliency throughout their community. The ultimate goal is to determine how transgenerational transmission of resiliency could better inform interventions and strategies targeting racial adversities for all descendants of the Transatlantic African Diaspora while considering its impact on cultural identity development and formation. Collectively, as a result of this project, there is a higher sense of connectedness to African roots.  In team discussions, it was found that a limitation of this paper is not having a person who identifies as Black Puerto-Rican as an author and how this would have added greatly to the roundtable discussions and findings. The authors recognize that there may be tension points that exist for Puerto-Ricans to fully accept their African heritage. The objective of this paper is to start a dialogue to open up spaces and opportunities to engage in this difficult conversation. It is the authors’ hope that this paper can spark conversations and strategies to address the historical and contemporary impact of how Blackness is socially constructed in Puerto Rican Society.  Finally, it is with hopes that this can connect the experiences of Black Puerto Ricans’ historical/contemporary resiliencies to the larger knowledge base of strategies that can help address racial adversities of all people from the Transatlantic African Diaspora.

Leigh Rauk

Getting to the heart of it: A Reflection on the Importance of Community Psychologists Developing an Anti-racist Practice

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Reflexivity is an introspective practice of becoming aware of personal biases, values, and assumptions related to our positionalities as researchers (Case, 2017; Fernández, 2018a). This paper responds to the call by Langhout (2015) for community psychologists to engage in more personal writing about the ways in which affective politics impact feelings and emotions surrounding our work as scholar-activists as well as critiques the core community psychology values of social justice and diversity. Through a framework of head, heart, and hand work, I connect my own identity, experience, and reflexive process to critical theories of whiteness and racism, which has helped to inform my engagement with a Black-led youth organization and development of an anti-racist practice. I conclude by providing recommendations for how community psychology programs can better train white graduate students to engage with racialized communities in ways that are grounded in ethical reflexive and anti-racist practices (Fernández, 2018a).

Kevin Ferreira van Leer, Kimberly M. Ashby, Sriya Bhattacharyya, Gloria G. McGillen, Cedrick-Michael Simmons

When Students Listen: A Co-Constructed Autoethnography of Graduate Student Activists Eradicating Racism in Higher Education

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Although anti-racist and decolonial scholars in community psychology have shared valuable ways professionals can promote racial justice and contend with potential barriers (e.g., Lykes et al., 2019; Makkawi, 2017), little consideration has been given to graduate students’ resistance to institutional oppression. This paper explores the experiences of five graduate student activists resisting institutional racism at their institution. Through co-constructed autoethnography, it provides narratives addressing three central themes: (1) isolation, racism, and community-building; (2) direct actions and institutional pushback; and (3) internal conflicts and endurance. It considers how graduate students, as individuals who are structurally disempowered in higher education, persist in the face of oppressive institutional structures to challenge them, risks they experience in doing so, and techniques and resources that aid them. It concludes with a discussion of the importance of embracing graduate student activism to advance anti-racist praxis in community psychology.

Charles R. Collins, Erin Watson

Subverting Whiteness: A Systems Theoretical Approach to Anti-Racist Praxis

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Whiteness as a is a socio-political identity characterized by expectations, conscious and/or unconscious, of power and privileges that are granted to individuals or groups conferred into a White racial classification. This identity was born out of historic conditions (e.g. laws, policies, and practices) that gave rise to a racial hierarchy in the U.S., granting social, political, and economic privileges to people considered “White” and created the expectation that these advantages should continue. This hierarchy and related structural advantages persist today. To subvert Whiteness, activists, educators, and scholars created White privilege (and other related) interventions seeking to illuminate the power inherent in Whiteness. However, these psychologically focused (implicit bias) interventions frequently fail to alter the systemic conditions that perpetuate and reinforce White privilege and BIPOC oppression. To address this issue, we provide a framework that takes a systems approach to subverting White dominance. Bringing together critical Whiteness and systems change theories, we provide readers with a framework designed to alter systems’ and settings’ relationship to Whiteness. Specifically, we detail how interventions may be successful in altering White dominated spaces by (1) defining local patterns of racial privilege/oppression and the system conditions reinforcing them; (2) designing interventions to disrupt and realign these system conditions to promote equity; (3) implementing interventions in ways that uphold justice; and (4) redefining patterns of privilege/oppression and system conditions to learn if efforts are starting to make a difference. We conclude by providing recommendations to change agents, stakeholders, and researchers.

Gloria Dykstra, Cristien Storm

Imagination Praxis: White Anti-Racist Culture Building

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This paper will chronicle the racial justice praxis the authors, and seven additional white colleagues, have undertaken in response to our growing awareness of the need for critical-liberatory spaces in which white anti-racist cultures can be cultivated. The practices undertaken by the group of white therapists and psychologists are a gesture toward anti-racist imaginings; striving to disrupt social and institutionalized white body supremacy. This work is informed by the recognition of a longstanding call from Black and Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) for white people to recognize that dismantling white supremacy is white peoples’ work. Our practices draw on long lineages of Black radical imaginations and BIPOC theory, including works from Octavia Butler, Grace Lee Boggs, Derrick Bell, Robin D.G. Kelly, N.K. Jemisin, Dr. Joy DeGruy, adrienne maree brown, and many other BIPOC thinkers and cultural world-builders.