A Call to Action

Two years ago, during the inception of a new age of racial reckoning in America spurred by health care disparities starkly illustrated by the COVID pandemic and the murder of George Floyd, we presented a series of articles discussing inequities in mental health care in Black and Latinx populations. [...]Isaac et al.. describe the experiences of Black faculty members in academic psychiatry that are causing many to leave promising careers. [...]we ask readers to take heed of a new and fiercely urgent call to action for psychiatry as a profession to address mental health care inequity, advocate for change, and adopt antiracist ideals to better support our patients and peers. 1.

Color Correction : How the Racial Reckoning Exposed Systemic Racism in Journalism

This paper captures the current critical moment in journalism’s history, in which racialized and Indigenous journalists are forcing an unprecedented “reckoning” of the systemic racism enshrined in the ethical canon and normative structure of the fourth estate. It comes as the police killing of George Floyd has triggered a global Black Lives Matter movement demanding justice for people of color;when the COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately ravaged Black, Latino, and Indigenous communities;at a time of profound distrust of mainstream news media;and in an era when news organizations stare down the additional crisis of economic sustainability exacerbated by the pandemic. Racialized journalists have called out their own employers and industry for news content that lacks context, plays to stereotypes, and all too often fails to grasp the lived experiences of non-white people in society. They have pointed out the hypocrisy of journalism’s central ethics—objectivity, balance, public service—that have always privileged white voices over other perspectives. They describe a work environment that fails to take into account their value as journalists, and their insights as First Peoples, or people of color. These are the findings of a content analysis of the op-eds, columns, social media posts, podcasts, and other published media accounts by Indigenous and racialized journalists in the United States and Canada in the six months following George Floyd’s death. This study takes their experiences, concerns, and calls for reform and puts them in the context of previous research on diversity and inclusion in journalism, demonstrating how journalistic practice and ethics are deeply entrenched in white dominance.

CONFRONTING WHITENESS IN SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION THROUGH RACIALIZED STUDENT ACTIVISM

In 2010, a group of racialized doctoral students at an elite university in Canada collectively mobilized against institutional racism within their school of social work. They insisted that their school confront the ways in which White supremacy was embedded within various policies and practices. These early initiatives led to the creation of the Racialized Students’ Network (RSN). Although the RSN has ended, it has produced a new generation of scholars who continue to interrogate Whiteness and White supremacy. It has also offered roadmaps through which newer generations of racialized social work scholars can advance anti-racist and decolonial feminist perspectives within postsecondary social work institutions in Canada. In this article, the authors, who are now tenure-track or tenured professors at Canadian universities, demonstrate the ways in which graduate student anti-racist activisms are a central avenue for confronting Whiteness and institutional racism. Through a collaborative autoethnographic methodology, this article draws from the authors’ personal experiences within the RSN, the group’s source documents, and their collective analysis on how the RSN has informed their ongoing activism. They discuss how their everyday experiences align with current anti-racist struggles and movements to shape their actions and responses in academe. The RSN Model of Racialized Students’ Activism is presented to demonstrate the collective processes the student activists explored to reflect and apply their intersecting identities to support racialized students and address systemic racism.Alternate :En 2010, un groupe d’étudiants racisés, aux études doctorales dans une université canadienne, s’est mobilisé collectivement contre le racisme institutionnel au sein de leur école de travail social. Ces étudiants ont insisté pour que leur école confronte les façons dont la suprématie blanche s’ancrait dans diverses politiques et pratiques. Ces premières initiatives ont conduit à la création du Racialized Students’ Network (RSN). Bien que le RSN n’existe plus, il a donné naissance à une nouvelle génération de chercheurs qui continuent de s’interroger sur la blancheur et la suprématie blanche. Il a également offert des feuilles de route grâce auxquelles les nouvelles générations de chercheurs en travail social racisés peuvent faire progresser les perspectives féministes, antiracistes et décoloniales au sein des programmes de travail social dans les établissements postsecondaires au Canada. Dans cet article, les auteurs, qui sont maintenant professeurs titulaires ou permanents dans des universités canadiennes, démontrent comment les activismes antiracistes des étudiantes et étudiants sont une avenue centrale pour confronter la suprématie blanche et le racisme institutionnel. Grâce à une méthodologie autoethnographique collaborative, cet article s’inspire des expériences personnelles des auteurs au sein du RSN, des documents sources du groupe et de leur analyse collective sur la façon dont le RSN a influencé leur activisme actuel. Ils discutent de la manière dont leurs expériences quotidiennes s’alignent sur les luttes et les mouvements antiracistes actuels pour façonner leurs actions et leurs réponses dans le milieu universitaire. Afin de démontrer les processus collectifs entrepris par les activistes étudiants pour refléter et utiliser leurs identités entrecroisées afin de soutenir les étudiantes et étudiants racisés et confronter le racisme systémique, le modèle d’activisme des étudiantes et étudiantes racisés du RSN est présenté.

Introduction: In These Uncertain Times, Pittsburgh

The issue includes an examination of the history of resistance to the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police, an analysis of mercy as a resistant social value among Black migrants leaving the South in August Wilson's Pittsburgh Play Cycle, and a community-engaged research article offered in support of a reconnection between young Black women and their cultural history in order to enhance maternal health. There is a moving poem that addresses systemic racism and the denial of justice, a living stories analysis of an online writing and performance course that included both police officers and returning citizens, and an interview with a man facing a life sentence in prison, where he offers his perspective on the problems our communities are facing. [...]the issue offers a follow-up to Norman Conti's piece "Stanton Heights," which was published in Kalfou vol. 5, no. 2 (2018), as well as a review of David A. Harris's A City Divided: Race, Fear and the Law in Police Confrontations.

Improving National Public Health Data Collection as an Act of Antiracism

In their study, Aliseda-Alonso et al. compared publicly available surveillance data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)to data on COVID-19 cases and deaths from state and territorial governmental sources;they found that the CDC consistently underreports the cases and deaths of Blacks and Latinos as well as people younger than 65 years. Standardizing data collection and reporting is necessary, but not sufficient, for interoperability-the ability of the US health system's many sectors to easily exchange information to benefit clinical, public health, and research efforts. A wide variety of data sources will be required, including, but not limited to, public health surveillance data, clinical data from public and private health systems, death certificates, claims, and administrative and survey data. The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology has created an Interoperability Standards Advisory process to provide information regarding standards needed for interoperability, although without the authority to require implementation or adoption.7 In a 2020 report, interoperability between health systems in the United States was reported to be improving, albeit slowly;it is concentrated in cities, is highly variable, and is associated with health system size.8 In Iran, Shanbehzadeh et al. consulted the literature and convened experts to create a COVID-19 minimum data set and interoperable reporting framework to support their nation's public health pandemic response.9 Following the implementation of a standardized, interoperable data collection system, states must be held accountable for data reporting.

Guest editorial: Policing in the aftermath of the 2020 protests: Lessons learned and evolving strategies for reform

Statistical evidence from both countries document that this increased public scrutiny of POC, by police, repeatedly occurred in the absence of substantiated criminal activity (Delsol and Shiner, 2015;White and Fradella, 2016) [8], and in the US, was ultimately deemed by state and federal authorities to have produced persistent constitutional violations [9]. According to reports and statistical data released by the New York City Police Department (NYPD), from 1994 to 2000, the deployment of BWP led to unprecedented reductions in crime and substantial improvement in the quality of life experienced by New Yorkers across varying social strata (Bratton and Knobler, 1998;Zimring, 2011) [10]. Though George Floyd was killed in the United States, the papers in this special issue help build our understanding of how intersecting global social dynamics both, internal and external to police agencies, lead to and can lead away from the next incident that will fuel serious calls for sweeping change to the policing profession. In the US, there are no reports of serious police violence against the protestors associated with the Coronavirus protests, but investigations have revealed considerable complaints of police use of force against individuals who engaged in peaceful protests against the killing of Black men, women and children (Amnesty International, 2020) – deaths that extended back several years and with perpetrators that included police officers and civilians claiming to act in a law enforcement capacity [19].

(Im)possible Breathing: On Courage and Criticality in the Ghostly Historical Present

Written in the midst of a courageous collective response to antiblack police brutality in the US, this text tackles the figure of breathing as a performative embodiment of grammar and time through which the ongoingness of racialized breathlessness is articulated, dis-remembered, and dismantled. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, the text seeks to account for repeated and immeasurable (un)breathability in its particular implications in the histories of racial capitalism, and in multiform sites, geographies, and temporalities that underwrite the global present. In this sense, breathing is addressed through its differential and differentiating conditions of possibility induced and regulated by suffocating spatio-temporalities, as a way to attend to the question whether and how the biopolitical contingencies of vulnerability, weariness, and brokenness are taken up as situated knowledges of courage, critical response-ability, and radical political imagination.

COVID-19 REFLECTIONS: A North Carolina Story

The coronavirus pandemic upended everything. In addition to the pandemic, widespread street demonstrations protested systemic racism and pervasive police violence against Blacks. To document this history-making year, the State Archives of North Carolina and the North Carolina Museum of History partnered to launch a rapid response collection called Your Story is North Carolina's Story. The story project cast a wide net to gather first-person accounts through journal writings, photographs, objets d'art, oral reminiscences, yard signs, and other artifacts that reflect the zeitgeist of the times. Here, Williams shares the story she contributed monthly to the story collection from April through the end of the year. She titled the submissions "My Coronavirus World: A Diary."

University Social Responsibility: Challenging Systemic Racism in the Aftermath of George Floyd’s Murder

In this paper, we examine university discretionary interpretation of the 2020 social upheaval that emanated from George Floyd’s murder as an element of university social responsibility (USR) policymaking. The paper addresses two research questions: (a) What are university presidents’ implicit and explicit social justice responses to George Floyd’s death and the idealistic protests of 2020? (b) To what degree are principles of social justice embedded in universities’ intellectual roots and social responsibility? Using a sample of university presidents’ public statements in response to George Floyd’s death and the idealistic protests of 2020, we analyze the response and responsibilities of universities in the struggle for a just society. We cross-check mission statements and strategic plans to corroborate universities’ public statements with their institutional philosophies, mission, and action plans relating to discrimination against racial and ethnic minorities and systemic racism. We use critical discourse analysis and the Voyant Tool to perform a textual analysis of 62 university presidents’ letters and mission statements. They all denounced the dehumanization and inequitable treatment of Black people. An important implication of our work is the sharp difference in the depth and forthrightness of responses by university presidents across university types. Some presidential letters are forthright in their denouncement of the murder of George Floyd and systemic racism, while others were, at best, vague in their approach. Presidential letters disclose their institutions’ priorities, organizational identities, and social responsibility convictions. Overall, mission statements and strategic plans included addressing systemic racism and inequality. While there is no ordered symmetry between presidential narratives and institutional action, we anticipate social responsibility as a core institutional value. We argue for social justice anti-racist platforms as critical dimensions of USR. We call for university milieus that promote a fair and just society among all stakeholders.

Criminal Justice Students’ Perceptions amid George Floyd’s Death and COVID-19: JCJE

This work explores the extent to which the death of George Floyd in May of 2020 and the COVID-19 crisis affected criminal justice students’ perceptions of career commitment and motivations toward public service. A survey was administered to a cohort of criminal justice majors at one Michigan university who were between their junior and senior years, once in the spring semester of 2020, before Floyd’s death and the civil unrest that followed, and again at the end of the 2020 summer semester. The results suggest that career commitment remained unchanged between the two time points, as did the students’ COVID-related attitudes. Contrary to expectations, public service motivation increased (rather than decreased), and this change was significant. The results are more encouraging than might be expected in such a tumultuous time of history, and they may help inform educators about how students view such turmoil relative to their career choice.

Hindsight Beyond 2020

The death of George Floyd in May 2020 seems like a lifetime ago, but since that's a moment we all remember so clearly because we felt it, let's use that as a road sign. See before that you had COVID. The pandemic showed up and whittled away at our general sense of safety. First, it was like a rumor. "The friend of a friend had a cousin who worked with someone who had it." Then it became like a forecast for a snowstorm. In Richmond VA, when it snows (or might snow), people go crazy, and they start buying things. BlackLiq has spent his whole life with no trust in the police. No faith in our government. Watching bullshit be addressed with bullshit, then justified with more bullshit. Not to mention the times we've all been pulled over or harassed by bullshit in uniforms.

Dreaming in Motion: Zoom Excerpts from Black Motion Pictures

Gabrielle Civil, a Black feminist performance artist, and Anna Martine Whitehead, a Black transdisciplinary artist, formulate, exchange, and respond to embodied strategies of creativity and resistance. They discuss Black performance dreams and their own movements as Black performers. Recorded on June 4, 2020, during the coronavirus shutdown and shortly after George Floyd's tragic death, their words have become a time capsule. Their conversation is part of Black Motion Pictures, Civil's interview series with radical Black creatives on Zoom, an internet video conference platform. Time signatures and ellipses from the original Zoom transcript highlight the glitchy strangeness and mediation of the moment.

George Floyd & Anti-Racist Street Art

Dominique reviews George Floyd & Anti-Racist Street Art, an Internet resource available at https://georgefloydstreetart.omeka.net/.

Listen

Harrison-Wilkins reviews Listen by Kyshona Armstrong.

Introduction

Overnight, public and communal installations of children's shoes appeared on the steps of governmental buildings and art galleries across the country. Critical inquiry into climate change and its impacts have taken off as interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary endeavors with activists, artists, and academics scrambling to make sense of what it means to be "living on a damaged planet" (Tsing et al., eds, 2017). Constituting what Chela Sandoval (2000) refers to as a "methodology of the oppressed," "a set of processes, procedures, and technologies for decolonizing the imagination" (68), the cultural forms included in this issue respond to the ways impending global impacts of climate change often lead to universalizing assumptions that promote colonialist power hierarchies and exacerbate, not eradicate, racial inequalities. Whether it is Betsy Huang's (2010) argument that Asian Americans can "retool" the genre, "providing different narratives lenses for revising generic imperatives and epistemologies" (102);Grace Dillon's (2012) observation that "Native slipstream thinking, which has been around for millennia, anticipated recent cutting-edge physics" (4);or Jayna Brown's (2021) assertion that "unburdened by investments in belonging to a system created to exclude [Black people] in the first place, we develop marvelous modes of being in and perceiving the universe" (7), there is a deep tradition of Indigenous scholars and scholars of color who understand how speculative fiction can illuminate the time and place of those who exist out of sync with settler temporality.

It is Time for Organizations to Take a Leap Forward

The co-occurrence of a global pandemic and a worldwide awakening to endemic social injustice and inequality has led to a moment of reckoning for organizations as well as society. Organizations that hope to survive and thrive in this new environment will need to make an enormous change in their policies and practices to accommodate new business models and workforce expectations. This leap-change will need to start with organizational culture. This article proposes a series of actions and strategies that, taken together, will assist organizations in making the necessary leap forward. The strategies start with building a culture of inclusion by using inclusion as the "HOW" to implement organizational change. The strategies include the organization being integrally involved with society and its surrounding community and seeing itself as a key lever for influencing positive change in the community and society.

Adaptability, Agency, and Association to Influence Change: The Report of the 2020-21 AACP Argus Commission

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The 2020-21 AACP Argus Commission was charged to 1) review the 2019-2020 standing committee reports;2) describe the impact of COVID-19 on healthcare delivery with an emphasis on health equity and social justice, 3) identify strategies to work with other health professions associations to advance interprofessional education and practice, and 4) offer recommendations for activities for the Center to Accelerate Pharmacy Practice Transformation and Academic Innovation (CAPT). (Source: 2018-19 Academic Affairs Committee) * Students, faculty, and practitioner educators should work to achieve cultural competence and to deliver culturally competent care as part of their efforts to eliminate disparities and inequalities that exist in the health care delivery system. (Source: Argus Commission 2017-18.) * As educators, researchers, and healthcare professionals, members of the AACP are committed to the principles of diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, justice, and anti-racism and will seek opportunities to eradicate structural and systemic racism to address social determinants of health, diminish health disparities, and promote racial equity. The growing expectation on the part of payers to purchase outcomes instead of services is influencing the entire spectrum of healthcare in the U.S. This is fueling the vertical integration of healthcare both locally (merging of hospitals and outpatient care organizations and the creation of accountable care organizations) and nationally (merging of health insurers, pharmacy benefit managers, community pharmacy chains and specialty pharmacies to create closed drug distribution channels).