A Harm Reduction Approach to Attitudinal Racism (original) (raw)
Related papers
Journal of Counseling & Development, 2008
Racism continues to be a pervasive problem throughout world society (Jones, 1997; Ponterotto, Utsey, & Pedersen, 2006). Manifestations of racism are direct and indirect, blatant and subtle in contemporary society (Ridley, 2005). An example of direct and blatant racism is reflected in the derogatory remarks by radio "shock jock" Don Imus about a group of young female Black student athletes in the spring of 2007. These comments stimulated a national dialogue about racism, sexism, and popular culture that took place for a limited time (Kosova, 2007). Additional forms of racism and prejudice were stimulated by the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001. Research indicates that the incidence of various forms of implicit anti-Islam prejudice and discrimination increased by 83%, and overt acts of discrimination against Muslim persons rose by 76% since 9/11 (Sheridan, 2006). Hurricane Katrina, the natural disaster that disproportionately affected the Black residents of New Orleans, led to pointed criticism of institutional racism reflected in the government's response to the disaster (Gheytanchi et al., 2006; Henkel, Dovidio, & Gaertner, 2006). These examples underscore the fact that racism, prejudice, and discrimination are widespread in U.S. society and manifest themselves readily and in a wide variety of contexts. It is therefore essential that social scientists devote increasing energy to researching the dynamics of racial attitudes along with their underlying emotional, cognitive, and developmental influences. Counseling professionals, particularly, given their strong research and applied skills, as well as their commitment to social justice, need to play a critical role in the study of racism and prejudice (Toporek, Gerstein, Fouad, Roysircar, & Israel, 2006). Awareness of racial attitudes is essential in working with clients of diverse racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds. The purpose of this article is to discuss the nature of racism, review research on the leading model of prejudice reduction, and advocate for enhanced technological sophistication in measuring racism. Given the position of some leading counseling researchers (e.g., D'Andrea & Daniels, 2001; Ponterotto et al., 2006; Sue, 2003) on the importance of White individuals acknowledging and confronting their own racism, the focus of this article is specifically directed to the complex problem of White racism and the sort of racial prejudice that underlies this problem.
Prejudice and racism: Challenges and progress in measurement
2001
COUNSELORS AND PSYCHOLOGISTS are increasingly designing and implementing prejudice prevention programs in schools, communities, and organizations. Critical to the development of these programs is the evaluation of outcomes and research on treatment-intervention efficacy. Clearly, measures that operationalize prejudice are an important n eed if counseling practitioners and researchers are to understand the attitudes of clients/research participants and the effects of prejudice reduction programs on changing negative attitudes. Prejudice toward a variety of groups based on social categories (e.g., gender, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic class) has been overtly expressed with little or no societal repercussions throughout most of the 20th century. Allport (1954) wrote about a world that witnessed African Americans being lynched, the rise of the KKK and Nazism, and the political oppression of McCarthyism. White Americans in particular seemed to feel uninhibited in the overt expression of their racist and homophobic attitudes. During this period in psychological research, prejudice was often measured as a unidimensional concept (e.g., Social Distance Scale; Bogardus, 1933), predominately through self-report paper-and-pencil assessments (Biernat & Crandall, 1999). The Civil Rights Movement, Affirmative Action, the emergence of multiculturalism in our schools, and shifting demographic trends in the United States have allIed to significant changes of societal norms involving prejudice toward out-group members. Consequently, the nature and 457
Racism: A Capital Punishment/ The Effects of Racism on Physical and Mental Health
Being a member of a racial group that has been historically traumatized, victimized and stigmatized can adversely affect one’s health through devaluation, restrictions and limitations that smother the human spirit and cripple the human body. Racism is a ‘life sentence’ of morbidity imposed upon its victims through the lethal ideology of inferiority encapsulated in negative stereotypes accepted as truth by society’s dominant group. We examine the correlation between ‘race’ and ‘race consciousness’, as well as the correlation between internalized, perceived racism and mental and physical health. Findings suggest that our understanding of this relationship is contingent upon identifying racism, identifying the mechanism by which it operates, and mobilizing the will to action.
Prejudice and Racism: Internalized Racism
Prejudice and racism are often time used interchangeably to imply unfair treatment based on race and phenotype. While prejudice and racism have considerable overlap, the former denotes mental/cognitive categorizations leading to the latter: discriminatory behavior. It is widely accepted that all societies and cultures have been plagued with the pernicious effects of prejudice attitudes and discriminatory behavior, namely racism. Sociology and psychology offer various theories and frameworks to describe, understand and explain the collective social factors and individual mental mechanisms that mediate prejudice and racism, respectively. It is no secret that the effects of prejudice attitudes and racist behavior leave lasting psychological and societal damage: division, social conflict, violence, death and systemic injustices as a nation. There is no magic, overnight cure to this social ill. There are, however, interventions both at the individual (psychological) and group (sociological) level that if implemented, have been shown efficacious to reduce prejudice and racism. The aim of this review is to highlight three sociological perspectives: functionalism, conflict theory and symbolic interactionism to describe and explain prejudice and racism. Secondly, a discussion on the roles of family, church and community in attenuating racism will be detailed. Lastly, the psychological theories of prejudice, social psychology and the contact hypothesis will be considered to elucidate the psychological factors that underlie prejudice and present a possible intervention to reduce prejudice and racism.
Racism and prejudice: An Australian psychological society position paper
Australian Psychologist, 1998
I racism and prejudice as they are expressed at every level of society from government policy to the intrapersonal sphere. It draws on evidence arising from social, developmental, clinical, and community psychology. The mental health system is used as an exemplar to analyse the operation of institutionalised racism, and some observations are made about the past, present, and potential future roles of psychological research and practice in relation to race and racism. The paper concludes with a series of recommendations about ways to reduce racism and prejudice at all levels of society.
Pathological Racism, Chronic Racism & Targeted Universalism
2021
Race and law scholars almost uniformly prefer antisubordination to anticlassification as the best way to understand and adjudicate racism. In this short Essay, we explore whether the antisubordination framework is sufficiently capacious to meet our present demands for racial justice. We argue that the antisubordination approach relies on a particular conception of racism, which we call pathological racism, that limits its capacity for addressing the fundamental restructuring that racial justice requires. We suggest, in a manner that might be viewed as counterintuitive, that targeted universalist remedies might be more effective to address long term racial inequality but might also be the more radical approach to addressing racial discrimination.