Search Results (93)

African, Caribbean, and Black (ACB) communities face increased COVID-19 morbidity and mortality, coupled with significant barriers to vaccine acceptance and uptake. Addressing these challenges requires innovative, multifaceted strategies. Peer-led interventions, grounded in critical health literacy (CHL) and critical racial literacy (CRL), and integrating collaborative equity learning processes, can enhance community capacity, empowerment, and health outcomes, contributing to long-term health equity. This paper describes and presents the evaluative outcomes of a peer-led intervention aimed at enhancing COVID-19 vaccine confidence and acceptance. The Peer-Equity Navigator (PEN) intervention consisted of a specialized training curriculum grounded in CHL and CRL. Following training, PENs undertook a 5-month practicum in community or health settings, engaging in diverse outreach and educational activities to promote vaccine literacy in ACB communities. The evaluation utilized a modified Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation, and Maintenance (RE-AIM) Framework, using quantitative and qualitative methods to collect data. Sources of data included tracking records with community feedback, and a PEN focus group, to assess program feasibility, outreach, and effectiveness. From 16 September 2022, to 28 January 2023, eight trained PENs conducted 56+ community events, reaching over 1500 community members. Both PENs and community members reported high engagement, endorsing peer-led, community-based approaches and increased vaccine literacy. The PEN approach proves feasible, acceptable, and effective in promoting positive health behaviors among ACB communities. This intervention has clear implications for health promotion practice, policy, and research in equity-deserving communities, including immigrants and refugees, who also face multiple and intersecting barriers to health information and care. Full article

This paper explores the complex power dynamics of UK social work higher education through an autoethnographic account of a Black woman course leader’s experiences over a period of two years, focusing on issues related to race, internalized oppression, and class. Drawing on Critical Race Theory (CRT), narrative analysis, and lived experience, it examines how systemic inequities manifest through three interlinked themes: (a) academic contrapower harassment (ACPH), (b) internalized oppression and toxic team dynamics, and (c) the interplay of harassment, institutional failure, managerial inaction, and the marginalization of social work as a discipline. This study illustrates how the intersectionality of multiple identities—namely, race, gender, and professional identity—impacts career progression, well-being, and institutional inclusion. This study examines the tensions between social work’s ethical foundations and performance-driven academic environments, advocating for systemic and policy interventions to stimulate institutional reform and cultivate a more equitable culture that enhances educational outcomes and, ultimately, improves social work practice. Full article

With increasing attention on DNA ancestry tests, scholars have explored how these tests inform modern understandings of race. Current research reveals the flaws and misinterpretations that arise when DNA tests, such as those offered by 23andMe and AncestryDNA, are used as a proxy for racial identity. While prominent in popular culture, the legitimacy and implications of these tests remain contested in the scholarly literature. Some researchers have explored how the increased availability of DNA tests affects how multiracial individuals identify and disclose their racial and ethnic identities, though this exploration remains limited. As discourse about mixed race identity and ancestry tests becomes more nuanced, I argue for the utility of using diunital perspectives, an expansive lens that resists either/or thinking, to complicate conversations about ancestry tests and multiraciality. This scholarly essay integrates personal narrative and a genealogical deconstruction of monoracialism to explore the question, “How can DNA tests contribute to the unlearning of monoracialism?” I share two personal vignettes to illustrate how these tests can reveal a preference for discrete racial categories. Drawing from Critical Race Theory, strategic essentialism, and diunital perspectives, I examine how DNA tests intersect with identity, family, and monoracialism, concluding with implications for disrupting monoracial logics. Full article

Health disparities among marginalized populations persist in many developed countries despite substantial population health advancements, highlighting persistent systemic inequities. Visible minorities, defined as the non-White and non-Indigenous racialized population in Canada, face earlier disease onset, worse outcomes, barriers to care, and shorter life expectancy. Conventional single-axis research frameworks, which examine factors like race, gender, or socioeconomic status in isolation, often fail to capture the complex realities of these disparities. Intersectionality theory, rooted in Black feminist thought and Critical Race Theory, offers a crucial lens for understanding how multiple systems of oppression intersect to shape health outcomes. However, its application in health research remains inconsistent, with often inadequate and tokenistic applications of this theory attributable to the limitations of a research approaches and resources, as well as biases from researchers. Integrating intersectionality with other relevant frameworks and theories in population health, such as ecosocial theory that explains how social inequalities become biologically embodied to create health inequities, strengthens the capacity to analyze health inequities comprehensively. This article advocates for thoughtful application of intersectionality in research to understand health disparities among visible minorities, urging methodological rigor, contextual awareness, and a focus on actionable interventions. By critically embedding intersectional principles into study design, researchers can move beyond describing disparities to identifying meaningful, equity-driven solutions. This approach supports a deeper, more accurate understanding of health inequities and fosters pathways toward transformative change in public health systems. Full article

Several studies emphasize that the limited representation of Afro-Latinx communities in Spanish language curricula affects students’ understanding of the diversity in Spanish-speaking societies. However, research has yet to evaluate the impact of a curricular intervention incorporating an Afro-Latinx module into an L2 Spanish language course. The present study addresses two research questions: (1) what the changes in knowledge after implementing an Afro-Latinx module in an L2 Spanish language course are, and (2) how the module impacts students’ understanding of language variation and diversity in Afro-descendant communities. Guided by Critical Race Theory, Critical Language Awareness, and Raciolinguistics, this mixed methods study analyzed pre- and post-tests alongside journal reflections completed by 50 college students. The findings demonstrated significant improvements in students’ knowledge, indicating a strong association between the intervention and the observed increase in knowledge regarding the representation of Afro-Latinx communities. It also deepened students’ understanding of language variation within Afro-descendant communities and illustrated the role of language in deconstructing social hierarchies and enabling collective memory, resistance, and empowerment. Full article

This paper proposes the application of Yosso’s Community Cultural Wealth (CCW) framework, rooted in the critical race theory (CRT), as a transformative lens for sport-based youth development (SBYD) research. Moving beyond traditional deficit-based models, which often depict youth as problematic or at-risk, CCW emphasizes recognizing and building upon the cultural strengths and assets of marginalized youth. We begin by reviewing the development of theoretical applications within the youth development, positive youth development (PYD), and SBYD literature to highlight the criticisms against conventional deficit-focused approaches. CCW offers an asset-oriented lens by offering six forms of capital—aspirational, linguistic, familial, social, navigational, and resistant—that are typically overlooked in mainstream frameworks. We illustrate how these forms of capital can reposition SBYD programs as spaces for cultivating resilience, identity, and social justice while addressing systemic inequities. By incorporating CCW with participatory research methods and critical theories, such as intersectionality and CRT, researchers can broaden the theoretical and methodological scope of SBYD. This paper concludes by suggesting practical implications for program design, organizational advocacy, and policy development, advocating for culturally responsive, community-led initiatives that prioritize the active engagement and empowerment of marginalized youth. In sum, CCW provides the “why” for critical SBYD research and practice. Full article

In this duoethnography, we examine our own experiences of multiracial fatherhood to disrupt metanarratives about race, multiraciality, and privilege. By synthesizing critical multiracial theory and critical race parenting, we advance three propositions of critical multiracial parenting to attend to the permanence of (mono)racism, the shifting salience of multiraciality across time and space, and the possibilities of expansive pedagogical approaches to challenge racial rigidity. We weave together and disrupt each other’s narratives by presenting two scenes of multiracial fatherhood, complicating our understanding and assumptions of White privilege, multiracial identity, and generational proximity to an interracial union. Our hope is that our duoethnography is not a beginning nor an end; rather, we call on readers to continually add their voices to disrupt and complicate how whiteness works in family systems and multiraciality discourses. Full article

Set within the context of the calls for a critical approach to the integration of international students, this paper draws on decolonial theories to examine the experiences of international students from Asian and African countries as they make sense of institutional policies designed to support their integration. The study uses a phenomenological approach to analyse focus group discussions and semi-structured interviews with international postgraduate students. The findings reveal how international students demand the decolonisation of a “Eurocentric” curriculum and a pedagogical framework that acknowledges their experiences and agencies as epistemic equals. Participants expressed diverse opinions about the institution’s academic culture, while inclusion policies are perceived as “tokenistic gestures” that fail to address racial invalidation and microaggressions. Findings from this study suggest the need for institutions in “post-race” times to transcend superficial equality discourses that commodify diversity as “good business sense”, targeting raced, mobile, and gendered “others” for inclusion by situating EDI strategies within a much longer history of global entanglements shaped by colonial, capitalist relations, rationalities, and subjectivities. Full article

In Australia, the Early Years Learning Framework sets out a vision for all children to experience belonging, wellbeing, confidence, and a sense of identity. This article forefronts the voices of parents with refugee experience, through focus groups and interviews, to explore why they removed their children from early childhood education and care (ECEC) services. Supplemented by interviews with early childhood practitioners and researcher experience, constructivist grounded theory overlaid with critical race theory provided a lens through which to scrutinize the way racism implicitly impacts structural practices within ECEC environments. The overarching message was that everything is framed within the parameters of the dominant culture, which was taken for granted by educators, who are predominantly White and middle class. Parents withdrew their children because they perceived care to be culturally unsafe and unsuitable and because cultural and linguistic support was rarely available. Of concern were the smothering effects of assimilation and the imposition of a foreign culture which unsettled family life. Compromised identity and the nullification of cultural and linguistic heritage left children with little or no sense of belonging. Full article

Given the various shortcomings of classical phenomenological methods identified by critical and liberatory theorists, this paper considers what phenomenology has to offer theorists of multiply marginalized experience. The paper begins with an account of the major reasons for which Latinx feminists such as Linda Martín Alcoff, Jacqueline Martinez, and Mariana Ortega have found a phenomenological approach useful in their projects. This account reveals that though Latinx feminist phenomenologists have found useful resources for theorizing multiply marginalized theory and identity in the classical texts of phenomenology, experiences unique to those subjected to marginalization remain significantly underdeveloped or absent from classical accounts. Taking seriously the primacy of lived experiences of ‘rupture’, this paper argues, is therefore necessary in the development of a phenomenological approach that does justice to life in the borderlands and the lived experience of being-between-worlds. Informed by the work of Latinx feminist theorists such as Gloria Anzaldúa and María Lugones, this paper closes with a proposed critical feminist phenomenological approach that centers the moment of ‘rupture’ described in such work. Ultimately, this paper argues that the communication and documentation of these ruptures in the form of phenomenological description allows for the examination and interrogation of sedimented logics of oppression on the way to liberatory ends. Full article

This paper takes a political sociological look at the knee-taking in football (or soccer) inspired by the Black Lives Matter campaign. Based upon a study of the new elites, it explores the essence of this performative act and situates it within the ‘obsession’ with racism and anti-racism. Based less on the reality of the problem of racism than upon the emerging values of this new ‘class’, the celebration and promotion of taking the knee is understood as a new type of political etiquette that combines a sense of shame-awareness with a certain contempt for the ‘masses’ who attend football matches. The confusion about whether the support for Black Lives Matter was political or not is discussed with reference to the idea of the changed and to some extent incoherent nature of the modern elites whose values, it is suggested, are more a form of anti-matter than a clear projection of ideas and beliefs. As a result, the quasi-religious nature of the sentiment expressed in modern anti-racism and the action of taking the knee are considered in relation to the ideas of ‘raising awareness’ and of ‘educating yourself’, both of which have an implicitly elitist quality but also lack precision or clarity about either the problem being addressed or any solution to it. Often more therapeutic than overtly political, elite anti-racism is almost by necessity performative, but also comes with a disciplinary dimension for those who refuse to ‘take the knee’ to it. Ultimately, it is suggested that the contestation over the knee-taking gesture reflects a growing cultural divide between the disconnected globalist elites and the more grounded and situated masses who often opposed those who demand their acquiescence towards this performative form of anti-racism. Full article

This study examines persistent racism, despite its formal denial, through an interdisciplinary approach that combines critical race theories, whiteness study and social psychology. It questions whether the analytical and empirical distinction between different forms of prejudice—despite their coexistence—can yield positive outcomes in the fight against racism. Considering the case of the Roma community in Italy, specifically within the universalistic approach of the Italian school system, the level of prejudice was measured in a sample of 305 middle school teachers. The main findings confirm the persistence of blatant prejudice concealed beneath a veneer of subtle racism and reveal that an educational institution’s rhetorical commitment to democracy may not substantially impact the behavior of democratic teachers when interacting with Roma individuals. The systemic inequalities ingrained within the education system are reminiscent of colonial times, where practices that once suppressed the potential of Africans are now used against Italian Roma citizens. This article finally suggests how teacher training might be improved to reduce racism, based on the different profiles of prejudicial attitudes detected among teachers. Full article

The field of sociology has largely ignored critical race theory (CRT) as a relevant theoretical and pedagogical framework for the study of white supremacy and Indigenous and Black race relations in Canada. In the United States, CRT has long been a theoretical framework tethered to and contextualizing the underpinnings of systemic racism and white supremacy as the cornerstone of structural oppression in American legal society. The initial focus of this work was to study the operationalization of the myriad ways in which race and racial power were constructed and represented in American law and society and the attendant ways in which Black civil rights under American law could never be achieved through the application of legal jurisprudence. CRT’s theoretical milieu has expanded beyond legal research to examine the sphere of racist structural oppression as systemically embedded in immigration, housing, education, employment, healthcare, and child welfare systems. The writing of this article has been an intentional active disruption to the claims that multiculturalism has the answers to race relations in an ever-changing Canadian society. While there are six main tenets of CRT, this article specifically focuses on three core tenets of CRT which argue that (1) racism is an ever-present dynamic of life in Canada; (2) racial subordination remains endemically tied to the political, cultural, and social milieu of white supremacy impacting the lives of Indigenous and Black peoples in Canada; and (3) racism has contributed to all historical and contemporary manifestations of structural oppression related to land theft and anti-Black racism. As such, CRT has much to contribute to race-radical research, pedagogy, and praxis when it comes to understanding race relations in a Canadian society grappling with an ever-changing multicultural narrative. Full article

Informed by ideas drawn from critical race theory and decolonial thought, in this paper, I mount a critique of Roy Jackson’s proposal for an Islamicate philosophical and theological contribution to the Transhumanist goal of forging a posthuman successor to humanity. My principal concern is to draw attention to the assimilatory nature and status of Islamicate Transhumanism within the broader context of Transhumanism, understood as a technological articulation and refinement of global white supremacy in a technoscientific register. Full article

I am from Oxnard, California, a predominantly Latinx city that is stereotyped as “too hood”, “too ghetto”, or “crime-infested” because of its low-income Brown people. Such negative narratives are so commonplace that they become believable, but we can challenge these oppressive narratives using critical race counterstorytelling. There are multiple ways to tell a story, and I pride myself in producing counterstories that are accessible and enjoyable to mi gente. So, to encourage stay-at-home practices and empower my own community during the COVID-19 pandemic, I created a social justice coloring book with the help of artistic friends and local Oxnard Latinx artists. In collaboration with Chingon Bakery, a local panaderia in Oxnard, we delivered over 500 FREE conchas and coloring books to the Oxnard community during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this creative piece, I explain why counterstorytelling, as a framework, served as the foundation for this coloring book and I include several examples of the coloring pages. Additionally, I discuss how and why this coloring book has proven to be a tool for cultural empowerment in my community. Ultimately, I argue that artistic representations of counterstories are necessary in the struggle to challenge and dismantle systems of oppression. Full article