Commentary: Can Critical Race Theory Enhance the Field of Public Health? A Student’s Perspective

Cross, Rebekah Israel

doi:10.18865/ed.28.s1.267

Cited by 21 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Critical race theory (CRT) [ 13 ] informed the development of these “interpersonal” activities and includes an emphasis on institutional racism within US society and the intersection between race and power. By refuting tenets of colorblind ideology and integrating historical analyses, the CRT approach encourages behaviors that eliminate (not just document) racial equities [ 14 ]. We believe that the interpersonal awareness activities lead to more culturally aware mentoring behaviors.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Culturally aware mentorship: Lasting impacts of a novel intervention on academic administrators and faculty

et al. 2020

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National efforts to address the diversity dilemma in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) often emphasize increasing numbers of historically underrepresented (HU) students and faculty, but fall short in instituting concrete changes for inclusion and belonging. Therefore, increasing the pool of senior faculty who wish to become guides and advocates for emerging scientists from HU populations is an essential step toward creating new pathways for their career advancement. As a step toward achieving this goal, we created a novel eight-hour intervention on Culturally Aware Mentoring (CAM), a program of the National Research Mentoring Network (NRMN) targeted to faculty and administrators. A previous report of surveys at the end of the CAM sessions revealed substantial awareness and knowledge gains, with participants expressing intentions to use and implement new skills they had learned. In this paper, we provide the results of our thematic analysis of qualitative interviews with academic administrators and faculty, 18–24 months after participation in CAM. Interviews were designed to determine: 1) What changes in self-perceptions and interactions occurred as a result of participation in CAM? 2) What specific components of CAM are associated with changes in individual beliefs and practices? 3) How did participants actively make changes after the CAM workshop? 4) What barriers or challenges do participants encounter after the CAM intervention? The results demonstrate the lasting influences of CAM on participants’ awareness of cultural differences, their assumptions about and approaches toward interactions with colleagues and students, and their efforts to change their behaviors to promote inclusive practices in their mentoring and teaching of HU students in STEM. Our findings provide evidence that CAM can be incorporated into existing mentor training programs designed to improve the confidence and capacity of senior research faculty mentors to make culturally-informed, scholar-centered decisions to more deliberately recognize and respond to cultural differences within their mentoring and collegial relationships.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Culturally aware mentorship: Lasting impacts of a novel intervention on academic administrators and faculty

et al. 2020

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“…This article echoes the call from critical race theorists, social science, and public health scholars that meaningful interventions must address the racialized social structures that perpetuate racism, and not simply make gestures toward equity (Bonilla Silva, 1997; Cross, 2018; Ford & Airhihenbuwa, 2010). What is more, we argue that empirical engagement with social equity initiatives must examine the limits of these programs, which are often so narrowly targeted and limited in scope that they are unable to address the deeper social inequalities that structure their possibility.…”

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confidence: 83%

“Bounded Equity: The Limits of Economic Models of Social Justice in Cannabis Legislation”

Hendy

Mauri

Creary

2023

Contemporary Drug Problems

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Social equity provisions in cannabis legislation are premised on the hope that the profit generated around adult-use cannabis can be leveraged to ameliorate the damage done by racially biased enforcement of prohibition in black and brown communities. As such, they encapsulate an attempt to reconcile the history of racism in the enforcement of cannabis law through its new future as a profit generating commodity. These programs are gaining traction, but with minimal empirical examination. The development and implementation of these programs raises a number of questions in need of study that we outline in this paper. We argue that Creary’s concept of bounded justice—which critiques the inherent limitations of social justice projects that ignore structural forms of social exclusion—can provide a framework for critical understanding of the limitations of such programs, ethnographically grounded empirical research, and a framework for evaluating the justice impacts of legislation. Specifically, we argue that in order to interrogate the possibilities for social justice projects around cannabis, we must address equity at a deeper level by working with communities to investigate hyper-localized and historical factors that have influenced systems and structures.

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“…The conversations we had amongst ourselves or with leadership may not be as easy in other spaces where scholars of color may feel isolated and disparaged for discussing racism (Museus & Park, 2015). Finally, we recognize that this work would not be possible without the countless efforts of the students who advocated before us (Cross, 2018). Therefore, in honor of their labor, we share our reflections so that they may be of service to our graduate student colleagues on their academic journeys.…”

Section: Keeping It Real: the Labor Of Institutional Changementioning

confidence: 98%

Doctoral Students as Agents for Change: Shaping Our Public Health Training Environment

McSorley

Manalo-Pedro

Bacong

2021

Pedagogy in Health Promotion

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This reflective article describes how we, a trio of doctoral students, applied critical pedagogical approaches to identify gaps in our public health training, reflect on the value of our lived experiences and ancestral histories, and take action toward advancing change within our School of Public Health. Additionally, we argue that our future effectiveness in leading systemic change toward health justice requires our public health training institutions to deliver course content that addresses racism and other systemic forms of oppression, largely responsible for reproducing health inequities. We also reflect upon how our efforts to find spaces in which to critically engage with content related to social and structural determinants of health transformed into a collaborative learning opportunity that has served to strengthen our skills as public health researchers, advocates, and future educators. We conclude by calling upon our schools of public health to take the lead in preparing the public health workforce of tomorrow for the challenges of addressing systemic causes of health inequities. Our goal is to share our experiences so that graduate students across public health training institutions may look to this piece as a concrete example of how we can shape our schools of public health to meet our needs.

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Commentary: Can Critical Race Theory Enhance the Field of Public Health? A Student’s Perspective

Cited by 21 publications

References 13 publications

Culturally aware mentorship: Lasting impacts of a novel intervention on academic administrators and faculty

Culturally aware mentorship: Lasting impacts of a novel intervention on academic administrators and faculty

“Bounded Equity: The Limits of Economic Models of Social Justice in Cannabis Legislation”

Doctoral Students as Agents for Change: Shaping Our Public Health Training Environment

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