The difference in the Black student experience at an HBCU versus a PWI 

Introduction

This study focuses on the Black student experience at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) compared to Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs) with an emphasis on feelings of racial cohesion and/or dissonance with one’s racial community. For the purposes of this paper, racial cohesion refers to how one’s racial identity affects one’s desire to engage, uplift, and associate with that racial identity. Racial dissonance, on the other hand, describes those who have a weak or negative connection to one’s own racial community. The two terms are not mutually exclusive, but they provide important context about the differences in the Black experience at both types of post-secondary education institutions. The study includes further analysis regarding how Black students feel about academic engagement, civic participation, and their levels of racism-related stress within each university setting. Given current attitudes about affirmative action and a rise in racially charged incidents, like racially offensive parties and rioting, on college campuses, this research provides important findings for institutions of higher education to consider as they attempt to foster communities of inclusion for their students. 

Dr. Keisha L. Bentley-Edwards is an Associate Professor of General Internal Medicine and the Associate Director of Research/Director of the Health Equity Working Group at the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University. Dr. Collette Chapman-Hilliard is an Associate Professor in the Department of Counseling and Human Development Services at the University of Georgia. Both Dr. Bentley-Edwards and Dr. Chapman-Hilliard focus on how racism can affect the psychology, development, and mental health of members of the African diaspora, among other topics. Led by their interdisciplinary backgrounds, the authors review literature from psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics, and many different disciplines. 

Methods and Findings

The researchers had the following research questions for this study: 

•  Are there differences between racial cohesion and racial dissonance among Black students at HBCUs and PWIs?
• Are there differences in racism stress, school engagement, and civic engagement between Black students at HBCUs and PWIs? How do these variables relate to racial cohesion and dissonance?
• To what degree are prior racial (neighborhood, school, and social) interactions related to racial cohesion and dissonance for Black students, and are their differences based on college context? Does racial cohesion and dissonance moderate the relationship between prior racial interactions and racism stress?

To address their research questions, the authors conducted an online survey of Black postsecondary students. 242 Black students from 102 colleges and universities took the survey, with about 49 percent of respondents attending HBCUs and 51 percent attending PWIs. The sample was mainly high-achieving (3.0 or greater GPA) undergraduate students. 76 percent of the sample were women, and 24 percent were men. The survey included multiple components, including a Racial Cohesion Questionnaire (RCQ) focused on measuring the behaviors and emotions that develop towards one’s racial community, a Black Racial Dissonance Inventory (BRDI) that determines the degree of racial hostility one may have towards those of their own race, and the Index of Race Related Stress – Brief which quantified the experiences of racism and race-related stress an individual has experienced.  After conducting the survey, the authors outlined descriptive statistics, like the mean and standard deviation for each questionnaire and index. The authors also conducted a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) for the effects of being a member of a PWI vs. a member of an HBCU on racial cohesion and racial dissonance, school & civic engagement, pre-college racial interactions, and racism stress. The ANOVA model, which shows whether two populations are distinctly different to a statistically significant degree, helped to illuminate key differences between Black students at PWIs and Black students at HBCUs. Following the descriptive statistical analysis, the authors used regression models to determine whether controlling for attendance at an HBCU, PWI, and other variables affected the relationship between racism stress and white social interactions. 

There are several key findings from their survey, including meaningful correlations between variables that illuminate important patterns between Black feelings about their race and attending an HBCU vs. PWI: 

• Feelings of racial cohesion were higher for Black HBCU students. For racial dissonance, there were no statistically significant differences among students. 
• Feelings of racial stress were higher for Black students at PWIs. On the Index of Race Related Stress Brief, used by the authors to test racial stress, students at PWIs indicated higher levels of racial stress as well as higher levels of institutional and individual racism. 
• Black students at HBCUs were more likely to have had more pre-college interactions with those of their own race, and Black students at PWIs were more likely to have had pre-college interactions with white individuals. Furthermore, pre-college interactions with your own race had a positive correlation with racial cohesion, which implies that having pre-college interactions with your own race can lead Black students to feel more engaged and supportive of the Black community. 
• Students who engage in community-based activities (e.g., clubs, extracurricular activities, etc.) or are focused on social commitment do better academically and have a better experience at college. In general, civic engagement and involvement in non-academic activities seem to be highlighted with many variables of perceived cultural congruence and acceptance. 

Conclusions

The conclusions of this study identify a necessity for strategies that address the specific needs of Black students depending on what type of college or university they attend. The authors make a compelling case for the difference in feelings of racial cohesion and stress that Black students can have at HBCUs vs. PWIs. As educators and administrators think through the best ways to support Black students and all racially minoritized students, this research illuminates how important it is to understand how those students fit into the broader university population from a demographic perspective. To increase the success of Black students in college, consideration of their feelings of racial cohesion and their level of stress intake is crucial. 

How affinity groups can promote equity in the political process

Introduction

This study is about the usefulness of enclaves or affinity groups, in public forums and political processes. Specifically, the authors focus on the value of enclaves of people with “similarly marginalized perspectives or social locations” as opposed to shared racial or ethnic identities. While the authors acknowledge these categorizations can often overlap, they believe that shared preferences/social locations affinity groupings can develop more productive, diverse, and actionable discussions compared to affinity groups based on shared racial or ethnic identity.  The goal of affinity groups, according to the authors, is to help participants understand their values and beliefs and translate them into policy preferences via public engagement settings. When conducted correctly, this paper asserts that disempowered groups could be better served by the integration of affinity groups in political decision-making. Furthermore, the study delves deeply into a specific case: Facing Racism in a Diverse Nation, a guide for public dialogue created by the organization Everyday Democracy for facilitation across the United States. 

Author Carolyn Abdullah is a writer of Facing Racism and a Senior Director at Everyday Democracy. Christopher F. Karpowitz is the Co-Director of the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy and Professor of Political Science at Brigham Young University. Finally, Chad Raphael is a Professor at Santa Clara University and a scholar of political and environmental communication. Together, the three authors approach the issue of enclave formation and implementation from a multifaceted lens, acknowledging both the strengths and weaknesses of this approach for policy making. 

Methods and Findings

The authors offer concrete ways that organizers can implement enclaves in political processes, such as forums like Deliberative Polls, Consensus Conferences, and Citizens Assemblies by reviewing existing literature and multiple cases from domestic and international contexts. The study centers three types of disempowered groups as most likely to benefit from affinity groups. (1) Politically disempowered groups – or individuals who have been formally excluded from political systems (e.g., denied voting rights), (2) situationally disempowered groups – or individuals who are broadly disadvantaged due to their current environment and resources (e.g., youth), and (3) deliberately disempowered groups – or individuals who are less likely to engage in dialogue due to the structures that make debate inaccessible to them (e.g., people with less education or income, immigrants conversing in their second tongue). To make claims about affinity groups, the authors begin by reviewing existing literature on how affinity groups of politically, situationally, and deliberately disempowered individuals can improve public discourse and decision-making.   

• First, affinity groups have been shown to help increase inclusive recruiting practices. If more like-minded and similarly situated individuals are attending an event, there is a snowball effect, increasing the chances that other like-minded individuals will feel more encouraged to attend and address their needs.
• Similarly, affinity groups address fears of being tokenized, since attendees are aware there will be other individuals at an event with their shared interests and perspectives.
• Finally, integrating affinity groups into a public forum can raise the quality of discourse and the legitimacy of an event overall. Multiple studies show that affinity groups can help fight the ‘false consensus effect,’ the idea that all members of a group agree on a key issue. Participants in affinity groups are more likely to accept arguments for- or against- a particular issue if presented by an individual with whom they share some sort of kinship or allegiance. 

In the study, the authors focus on one specific effective example of how affinity groups can be organized and implemented: Facing Racism in a Diverse Nation and Dialogue for Affinity Groups, two guides created by the organization, Everyday Democracy. The guides detail how to administer small group decisions, over several two-hour sessions, to foster discussions about racism and inequities. The authors identified several key findings to inform enclave group facilitation: 

• The affinity sessions encouraged self-reflection about social location and identity. Facilitators made sure to allow individuals to attend groups in which they felt they belonged. This created an environment that allowed for multiple different framings of an identity or issue. For example, groups may not have agreed on the definition of racism or discrimination, but were still encouraged to talk about both topics as well as  their personal experiences. 
• The affinity sessions contained broad questions that provided flexibility in how individuals wanted to respond to each prompt. This strategy helped participants to engage with the commonalities and differences within their affinity group and allowed space to discuss current and historical  issues related to racism in society.
• The affinity sessions helped prepare individuals for the larger group discussions that followed. The initial affinity sessions dealt with diverse topics in a friendly environment; therefore, when participants rejoined the broader group, they were armed with strategies to more effectively discuss racism and an appreciation for the value of different viewpoints.

Finally, the authors highlight how the nuanced and innovative ideas that are developed in affinity groups make them a unique solution to public problems. The importance of affinity groups, when discussing relational issues like racism, cannot be understated. Affinity groups have a special role to play, especially when other alternatives fail.

Conclusions

The study concludes by addressing the goals of affinity groups and offering key recommendations for practitioners that are considering conducting groups for the purposes of public engagement. The authors demonstrate that affinity groups within broader democratic processes are crucial to enhance the participation of minoritized individuals in public spaces. If well-executed, individuals that have been disempowered can engage in a process that will empower them, help them view political spaces as welcoming, and encourage them to have a voice in policy making. Lastly, they encourage practitioners to consider how the deliberation process is administered, the types of actions the group may undertake, and the audience for the affinity group when developing the process for affinity group creation. Furthermore, when and how the inclusion and integration of the affinity group into a larger democratic process occurs is crucial to the success of the affinity group. 

For further research, the authors encourage more review of successful affinity group facilitation and creative research designs that can further tease out what makes affinity groups effective in fostering dialogue. 

Understanding how whiteness-at-work ideologies and practices can negatively affect academic advisors of color and students of color 

Introduction

As a front-line resource for students, academic advising plays an essential role in student success at universities and can be a determinant of success at the beginning of a student’s career. This study investigates whiteness (in the form of ideologies, behaviors, attitudes, and attributes) as a pervasive presence in academic advising that deeply disadvantages students of color. It argues that when “whiteness-at-work” permeates into academic advising, it obscures academic advisors’ individual and professional responsibility to work toward dismantling whiteness to better serve students in an anti-racist manner. 

Furthermore, this study provides a theoretical framework for understanding whiteness in academic advising and provides concrete suggestions for academic advisors to move towards anti-racist advising practices. Because the field of whiteness in academic advising is underresearched, this study plays an important role in further examining white power structures within higher education. 

Geneva L. Sarcedo is an academic advisor in the School of Education and Human Development and First-Year Experience and Ethnic Studies instructor at University of Colorado Denver. Her qualitative research centers race, whiteness, and marginalized student success in higher education. Geneva is a multiracial Black, Puerto Rican, and Native Hawaiian ciswoman. As a first-generation college graduate from a lower socioeconomic background, Geneva brought her own, personal lived experience into the research process. Her approach aligns with the use of critical race methodology, which focuses on amplifying the experiences of marginalized voices in education to challenge normative white power structures.

Methods and Findings

Sarcedo relies on the paradox of “whiteness-at-work” (Yoon, 2012) to lay the groundwork for the study. Whiteness-at-work refers to the discourse and behaviors that are intended to address the harms of whiteness, but practically do nothing, often even perpetuating the behaviors of whiteness. The study then uses Composite Counterstory (CCS) in the tradition of Critical Race Theory to create a theoretical framework for whiteness-at-work in academic advising. Counterstorytelling emphasizes marginalized student and educator stories in order to combat current white narratives, which are biased in their nature. 

Sarcedo relies on auto-ethnographic experiences as an academic advisor and professional of color in addition to informal accounts from social media, personal advising notes not protected by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), and advisor meeting minutes. In order to analyze these sources, Sarcedo performed an inductive analysis; this process involved creating analytical units called codes, grouping those codes into larger categories, and developing themes based on the codes and categories. The analysis was conducted using Dedoose, a computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software. Two additional academic advisors of color worked as peer reviewers. 

Through the CCS framework, Sarcedo recounts the story of Issa, an academic advisor of color, and her meetings with two students in the same class: Becky (white, female) and Ty (Black, non-binary). Sarcedo’s analysis yields five types of behaviors connected to whiteness-at-work present within academic advising: 

Nice counselor syndrome
Scenario: In the CSS story in the study, Issa chooses a more neutral response to Becky’s use of derogatory and deficit-based language, instead of directly naming “the whiteness and deficit-based thinking it represents”.

• Takeaway: Nice counselor syndrome describes the tendency to choose niceness, wrapped up in false notions of professionalism, over addressing bad behavior and systemic issues. Sarcedo proposes that in order to circumvent whiteness-at-work, counselors must name whiteness in interactions and directly address problematic behaviors with students. 

Advice-taking and -giving behaviors 

Scenario: In the CSS story, Becky acknowledges but dismisses Issa’s suggestion to attend a white ally workshop. Issa adjusts to Becky’s dismissal and provides alternative suggestions to Becky as opposed to reiterating the importance of the workshop.

• Takeaway: Students and advisors only giving and receiving advice that is rooted in whiteness or endorsed by white voices will only serve to reify whiteness. Sarcedo suggests that advisors should resist these behaviors and advocate for a culture within their university that uplifts the expertise of administrators and teachers of color. 

Course recommendations
Scenario: In the CSS, Issa practiced this correctly by recommending ethnic studies classes to Ty.

• Takeaway: When advisors rely solely on a prescriptive list of courses, their course recommendations can become a function of whiteness-at-work. If course options that do not reinforce whiteness are available, Sarcedo recommends advisors share these options with students and actively encourage enrollment. 

Enacting an enforcer role

Scenario: In this case, Ty asks Issa about filing a formal complaint against a white professor who exhibited problematic and racially-charged behavior. Issa provided recommendations to Ty, but also underscored the limitations and disadvantages of the process.

• Takeaway: Whiteness-at-work can manifest in advisors enforcing university policy without interrogating how it amplifies whiteness. Similar to Issa’s delivery to Ty, Sarcedo recommends that advisors have a strong knowledge base on how procedures and policies may perpetuate white norms and ideologies, and that they are able to articulate this insight directly to their students, and especially students of color.  

A misplaced ethic of care
Scenario: During her academic advising session, Issa describes to Ty the importance of self-care but does not explicitly name whiteness-at-work as the main cause of harm. 

• Takeaway: Sarcedo emphasizes the importance for students and advisors to exercise self-care as they operate within a system that disadvantages and harms them. A misplaced ethic of care implies that people of color require extra grit to be successful, without acknowledging the system of white supremacy at large.

Conclusions

A theoretical exploration is just the beginning of understanding whiteness-at-work within academic advising. Sarcedo advocates for future empirical research into the topic. 

The study concludes that academic advisors cannot disrupt whiteness-at-work without clear procedures in their advising practices, alignment around the institution’s mission, and the support of their administration. “Overall, institutions must take up the call to disrupt whiteness and white supremacy without placing the onus on its staff, faculty, or students to do this work in isolation without institutional support.”

Sarcedo suggests the following steps for institutions of higher education to address whiteness-at-work within academic advising moving forward: 

1. Write and publicize an explicit directive to work on dismantling systemic racism in policies and procedures.
2. Implement policies and outline concrete steps to make college campuses welcoming to students of color.
3. Administrators and university leadership must undertake the burden of dismantling whiteness and white supremacy without delegating the work to staff, faculty, or students alone. 

Organizational Strategies for Addressing Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care

Introduction

This study seeks to understand the best ways to address racial and ethnic disparities within healthcare institutions, with a particular focus on organization management. The study draws upon learnings from the Disparities Solution Center at Massachusetts General Hospital and specifically references data produced from the Disparities Leadership Program (DLP) that began in 2007. The DLP helped illuminate patterns in leadership in healthcare institutions and how leaders view eliminating disparities in healthcare. Ultimately, the study identifies common barriers and potential solutions to helping healthcare institutions begin the work of achieving health equity within their respective organizations. This study is noteworthy because while there is a wealth of research on health equity, there needs to be more research on how organizational change management can spearhead or hinder the progress of addressing those inequities.

Joseph Betancourt, MD, MPH, is the Senior Vice President of Equity and Community Health at Massachusetts GeneralHospital (MGH) and the founder, senior advisor, and faculty Director of the Disparities Solutions Center (DSC) at MGH Betancourt. He also served on the leadership team of the MGHCenter for Diversity and Inclusion. Aswita Tan-McGrory, Karey S. Kenst, and Thuy Hoai Phan all serve in various roles on the Disparities Solutions Center team at Massachusetts General Hospital. Lenny Lopez is the Chief of Hospital Medicine and an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. 

Methods and Findings

The study uses survey data from nine cohorts of participants in the DLP. Each cohort consists of multiple health organizations. Each organization sends teams of 1-9 people to participate in the program, which includes a trip to Boston, Massachusetts, Santa Monica, California, and various remote activities throughout the year. Teams can be made up of a variety of different members within an organization and are not necessarily consistent in size or makeup throughout each cohort. The unit of analysis for this study is the survey completed by each organization’s team at the end of the program. Responses from organizations that were not hospitals or health-focused centers were excluded from this study. In the end, 97 organizations, which equates to roughly 119 surveys and 269 individual participants, were used for the qualitative analysis. A sequential grounded theory approach was used to analyze the data; three authors read the survey responses separately and identified the main patterns. Then, the authors discussed the main patterns or ‘domains’ they found in the data collectively. This process was repeated on small samples of the data until all domains were identified. Using the agreed-upon domains, two authors manually coded all survey responses. After completing the analysis, five major domains were identified: 

1. Know Who to Involve. This domain focused on engaging the correct leadership members in any process involving equity or changing organizational processes. 
2. Shape Organizational Culture. How an organization decides to prioritize addressing disparities, their cultural awareness that disparities exist in their workplace, and their knowledge about how to reduce disparities were all included in this domain. 
3. Create Urgency and a Vision and Make the Rational and Emotional Case. This domain focused on communications strategies and message framing that could add urgency to the case for implementing equity-related efforts. 
4. Engage your organization and your audience. An organization’s ability to identify all relevant internal and external stakeholders was an important domain for organizations participating in the DLP. There was a particular focus on engaging with Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) patient communities for those healthcare organizations that serve those patient populations.   
5. Harness the power of a collaborative network:  It is essential that the process by which equity-focused solutions are developed and implemented is collaborative and draws upon the collective knowledge of the entire organization. Sharing ideas, resources, and strategies was crucial for organizations participating in the DLP.

Conclusions

The authors highlight two important observations across all of their findings regarding addressing racial disparities in healthcare institutions. First, there was strong evidence to suggest that healthcare organizations already understand what racial and ethnic disparities are present in their organizations and what needs to be done to eliminate them. Second, the real barriers lie in getting leadership buy-in and organizational prioritization toward fixing these disparities. The authors offer some specific strategies and advice to best tackle these issues within the framing of the five domains listed above:

1. Many survey respondents mentioned both Executive “Champions,” who lead the effort for broader leadership buy-in, and midlevel and frontline staff members, who implement the strategy to address inequities, were critical components in creating a strategy that can help develop momentum among organizational leadership. 
2. Survey respondents proclaimed that they successfully addressed disparities once they linked disparities work with other initiatives or priorities that were already occurring. 
3. Benchmarking or numerically quantifying disparities work was crucial for creating organizational urgency and vision. It is helpful to do this in conjunction with communication strategies that are developed clearly and concisely. 
4. Engaging organizations by sharing your vision early in the strategic process was beneficial in terms of developing internal and external partnerships. Furthermore, leveraging awards or recognition achieved for disparities work helped to continue momentum. 
5. Lastly, organizations that were successful in reducing racial and ethnic disparities by the end of the program highlighted their use of diverse and collaborative coalitions that were able to anticipate changing environments, provide general networking and peer support, and encourage divergent points of view to address health disparities more effectively.

These recommendations are crucial for the future of the healthcare field, especially as the sector continues to lack clarity regarding the future of nationwide healthcare efforts like the Affordable Care Act. In the wake of governmental uncertainty, healthcare institutions themselves must work towards transforming their institutional responses to racial and ethnic disparities. Organizational change management strategies should be a core part of that discussion, and this study illustrates how effective they can be in conversations around disparities reduction specifically. The DLP and the specific recommendations in this study serve as a springboard to further the discussion around disparity reduction within healthcare institutions. 

Reflecting on Early Principal Hiring Practices to Develop an Inclusive Process that Supports equity

Introduction

This study examines early principal hiring practices (EPHPs) and considers how they may disrupt or perpetuate racial inequity and exclusion in principalship. The authors define EPHPs as activities and processes that begin with job descriptions and include recruitment, collecting application materials, candidate screening, and written criteria used during the process. The authors focus particularly on the hiring practices of Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) candidates to better understand how EPHPs have functioned within the historical framework of racism in the hiring of principals. The study uses Quantitative Criticalism (QuantCrit) as a framework, which provides a fundamentally critical lens, and focuses on disrupting white logic and analyzing data with a focus on racism and social justice. The term “white logic” refers to white supremacy in data analysis — specifically the idea that there is eternal objectivity among the views of elite white researchers and academics. This study aims to address the problematic educational environment in the United States where 53% of students in public schools are BIPOC while only 22% of principals and 10% of superintendents are BIPOC. While there are a series of empirical studies on labor market mechanisms that can cause inequitable promotion practices, very little research exists on the hiring process itself. 

Dr. Amy Luelle Reynolds is a Professor in the Department of Counseling, School and Educational Psychology at the University of Buffalo Graduate School of Education. Her primary research focus is on multicultural competence and training in counseling psychology and higher education. Dr. Lolita A. Tabron is an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in the Morgridge College of Education at the University of Denver. Dr. Tabron’s research explored how leadership practice and statistical data can positively transform educational systems or reproduce systemic racism and educational inequalities.

Methods and Findings

The data used for this study was a subset of data collected from an exploratory, survey-based study of principal hiring practices among K-12 districts (Reynolds, 2020). This dataset includes 240 districts from a stratified random sample of 1,000 districts in the United States. For the purposes of this study, the dataset included responses to 47 survey items that were relevant to the definition of EPHPs. After limiting the scope of the survey items, the authors used survey weights to produce estimates that represented the target population. By combining the QuantCrit framework, existing literature, and multiple reviews of the data, Reynolds and Tabron created the EPHP Equity Continuum, a framework which categorizes EPHPs into three descriptive levels: 

1. Suppressing: all EPHPs that are likely to reproduce exclusionary hiring practices and systems for BIPOC candidates were coded in this level. 
2. Reproducing: EPHPs that do not actively hinder an equitable process themselves, but fail to advance progress toward a more inclusive hiring system are considered in this level.  
3. Diversifying: EPHPs that could potentially generate a diverse pipeline for hiring principals in the future were placed in this level.

On average, most districts used about 23 EPHPs across all three levels. When disaggregated for each level, the authors find some troubling patterns with regard to hiring practices among the dataset. The following suppressing EPHPs were common practice:

•  About one-third of the districts did not revise or write a new job description (JD) for their most recent vacancy 
•  More than half of the districts did not use explicit written hiring criteria throughout the hiring process.

Furthermore, the majority of districts used other suppressing EPHPs, like  letters of recommendation,  senior-level staff at the screening stage, and word-of-mouth recruitment tactics. Many districts used the following reproducing EPHPs:

• Using a resume and cover letter as initial application materials
• Posting all vacancies on the district website
• Using  a regional geographic area —as opposed to local — for their recruitment search. 

Only a small number of diversifying EPHPs were used by the  districts in the sample. Mainly, schools based their decision on district needs assessments and recruited candidates from across the state. After analyzing different descriptive levels across the survey responses, it was clear that districts’ EPHPs failed to change longstanding patterns of discrimination in principal hiring. 

Conclusions

Reynolds and Tabron make several valuable conclusions that also serve as critical policy recommendations for school leadership moving forward. First, using explicit written criteria is crucial in creating a level playing field within EPHPs. Notably, 61% of districts in the study did not use explicitly written criteria, and in the absence of that, candidate lists can become subjective and overly reliant on social networks. Second, districts should value racial diversity  as well as a commitment to social justice in leadership. 87% of districts considered prior leadership experience to be the most important factor for hiring, while 31% considered a commitment to social justice and equity an important factor. This also means that hiring more principals who look like the students and community they represent should be prioritized. In conclusion, this study provides strong evidence that school districts should reconsider their hiring processes and develop more inclusive, stronger hiring systems that are based on supporting principals and reducing systems of marginalization. 

Racial Health Disparities in the US and the Potential Role of Reparations 

Introduction

This cohort study aims to identify, address and quantify the relationship between longevity ( “all cause mortality”) and wealth as it relates to Black individuals versus white individuals. Furthermore, the study then models how reparations payments to the black community could potentially affect the longevity ( “all cause mortality”) gap between Blacks and whites. The study adds to the currently growing academic literature about reparations payments and their potential effect on the well-being of the Black community. By further exploring the direct connection between reparations and health outcomes, the authors attempt to specifically describe the role of monetary resources in determining  health inequities across racial groups. 

Many of the authors of this study, including Dr. Kathryn Himmelstein, Dr. Michelle Morse, and Dr. Bram P. Wispelwey are research fellows or instructors at Harvard’s School of Medicine. They are joined by various other practitioners and professors in the field of Health Policy like Dr. Mary T. Bassett, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health and Dr. Atheendar S. Venkataramani from the UPenn School of Medicine. Dr. Jourdyn A. Lawrence and Dr. Jaquelyn L. Jahn from the Drexel School of Public Health also co-authored the report and both have a focus on race and health inequity. Lastly, William A. Darity, Jr, is a professor of Public Policy and African-American studies at Duke University. Dr. Darity’s book, “From Here to Equality” makes the case for reparations as a way to close the racial wealth gap. 

Methods and Findings

This first part of this study evaluated data from the HRS – Health Retirement Study, which has been conducted at the University of Michigan via survey collection from respondents every two years, since 1992. The wealth component of HRS was an input variable, in addition to many other variables such as income, race, education level, sex, marital status and others. As an outcome variable, longevity was calculated month and year of death from postmortem interviews with the Family and the National Death Index. For the reparations modeling portion of the study, $840,900 was distributed to each participating Black household, and was calculated by the mean 2019 household wealth gap between white and Black families. 

The findings suggest that when reparations payments were distributed to Black households, the gap in median longevity curtailed from 4 years to 1.4 years. The results were even stronger, -0.1 years (Black longevity exceeding white longevity) in models that excluded income and educational attainment. The results of this study suggest that Black middle-aged and older adults have a median longevity that is 4 years shorter than their white counterparts. Additionally, the study emphasized that financial reparations —transferring payments to Black US residents— have significant health benefits for the Black community. 

Five Weibull survival models were conducted that adjusted for different variables within each model. There were some key similarities and differences among the models: 

• In all models, being male was associated with greater likelihood of mortality. In addition, being married or partnered was associated with lower rates of mortality.  
• When adjusting for wealth, the racial longevity gap between Blacks and whites was removed entirely. In all other models that did not adjust for wealth but adjusted for income or educational attainment, there was still a significantly higher likelihood of death for Black participants over white participants.  
• Overall, the hazard of death decreased with each higher wealth decile; however, the largest decreases in hazard of death occurred within changes in the bottom 7 deciles of wealth compared to changes in the higher deciles of wealth. 

Conclusions

While reparations alone do not reduce all the structural determinants of health outcomes, this research study shows reparations intervention produces an improved, meaningful effect on the longevity of Black people in the US. This change reveals other multiple causes, which includes increasing access to healthcare, removing economic stress caused by chronic illness, and boosting neighborhood and community-level resources that support long term health. It is important to note that this study only focuses on the association between wealth and mortality and not on causal implication that wealth may have upon health outcomes. Most importantly, this study provides reliable data on the relationship between racial, economic, and health inequalities to advance the public health case for reparations in the U.S. 

The Importance of Antiracist Training in School Leadership

Introduction

Schools around the world have started to grapple more acutely with racism due to the changing needs of an increasingly racially diverse and integrated student population, as well as in response to  urgent calls for educational reform. These calls particularly urge educational reforms that include  to  developing and growing an antiracist curriculum and trainings. In this study, Miller makes the case that schools in England should direct significant resources, time, and attention to better understanding the needs and racial diversity of their student and staff communities. Additionally, Miller calls for the implementation of antiracist training for school leaders and teachers. This study challenges historical educational norms to shy away from engaging school leaders on topics of institutional racism, and in turn argues schools will continue to struggle navigating the topic of race if they do not implement new practices and procedures to support antiracist training. 

Paul Miller, Ph.D., is Head of the School of Education and Professor of Educational Leadership and Social Justice at the University of Greenwich in London, England. His qualitative research focuses on teacher career progression, the practice of school leadership, and teacher migration and identity.

Methods and Findings

After conducting a thorough review of the existing literature on the importance of antiracist leadership in schools, training, and development, Miller uses an ecological model of professional development to illustrate how school leadership can develop a language and practice of race consciousness. Miller concludes school leaders in particular have a uniquely powerful position to affect change due to:

1. Influence and Power: They influence race relations in their institutions due to the specific position and influence of their roles as classroom educators, and are able to resolve direct interpersonal student conflicts and implement new policies and strategies.
2. Multiplier Effect: Once engaged, teachers of all backgrounds can secure buy-in from other stakeholders and create a ‘multiplier effect’ to encourage their peers to undertake the same antiracism learning and training. When school leaders are equipped with the language, fluency, and confidence,  they have a higher propensity of engaging in conversations centered on race and racism in other institutional spaces outside of the school.  

Miller also contends that there are specific factors that should motivate schools to integrate race into their leadership and professional development programs:

1. Staff Confidence and Retention: Staff members that are confident in the area of race and racism are more likely to notice incidents of interpersonal racism when they occur, engage with the topic directly and effectively, and support one another through the difficulty of learning and engaging with topics on race and racism. Furthermore, this process can improve retention as staff members of color are more likely to remain in environments where they feel included. 
2. Student Demographics and School Culture: As globalization and migration continue to affect England, schools must understand how to serve their students of racially and ethnically diverse backgrounds and provide a curriculum that engages with the reality of racism that many students face, as well as the histories of  their own cultural identities. School leaders must be educated on how to acknowledge and respect cultures and ethnicities in their educational discourse, and reflect this in their teaching. 

Lastly, Miller suggests that an ecological model of professional development provides a blueprint for school leaders to learn antiracist language. Such a  model focuses on attributes, skills, and knowledge that allow school leaders to reflect on their personal beliefs, learn problem-solving, social judgment skills, and awareness of the obstacles that racially marginalized communities face. After learning and internalizing these modules, the leaders are then better equipped to interrogate their own schools and institutions, and to identify which issue areas are critical to reduce racism and improve race consciousness. 

For school leaders to be effective, they need to mandate a thorough examination of implicit bias within their institutions, focused on the management, culture, and messaging of the institution itself. Additionally, these leaders must establish clear requirements in funding, goals, and tracking around racial equity initiatives; this includes hiring consultants, one-on-one trainers, and increasing staff capacity. 

Conclusions

In order to successfully undertake antiracism training school leaders need to commit to learning in more depth about the history and impact of structural racism, and listen to the lived experiences of minoritized racial communities within their institutions. Ultimately, implementation of an ecological model and success of an antiracism training hinge upon each individual school leader. Without a will there is no way, even under the best circumstances. Miller implores the British educational community to take up the need for antiracism education seriously, and to apply these guidelines and suggestions in earnest to meet the demands of a racially diverse British student body.

Inquiry-Based Intervention as a tool for advancing racial equity in faculty hiring

Introduction

Many White-serving educational institutions focus on colorblind or race neutral policies to advance racial equity in faculty hiring. This approach has led to inequitable hiring practices and a lack of racially minoritized faculty. This study aims to interrogate how professors can rethink their organizational culture to advance racial equity in the hiring process. The study focuses on how a culture of niceness throughout the hiring process creates sharp inequities in hiring outcomes. In addition, the study explores methods professors can use to overcome challenges to advancing racial equity in hiring by examining the effectiveness of inquiry-based interventions, race-conscious language, and storytelling as mechanisms of change. A case study approach was used to collect qualitative data about faculty at a private, religious affiliated 4-year university over a 10-month period. Working with the faculty at Valley Oaks University (VOU) — a pseudonym that was created to ensure anonymity — Liera discovered meaningful ways to tackle the issue of engaging in meaningful and honest conversations around faculty hiring. This research has important implications for the future of racial equity and faculty hiring cultures at White-serving educational institutions. 

Methods and Findings

Liera used a case study approach involving observations and interviews to examine a group of faculty (called the “evidence team”). In conjunction with researchers at California’s Center for Urban Education (CUE), Liera led seven professional development workshops to evaluate and question campus culture and values via inquiry-based intervention. This intervention method provided opportunities for the group of faculty to collectively understand and interrogate their campus culture to identify solutions for hiring more racially minoritized professors.  

• The group consisted of 17 professors: 10 White, 4 Latinx, 2 Black, and 1 Asian. Only 11 professors were interviewed in addition to participating in team meetings. 
• Text Analysis Software, NVivo 11 was used to analyze field notes and provide a consistent comparative approach for interview transcripts, reflection memos, and analytic memos. Liera did two cycles of coding and compared codes in both instances. 
• Liera used the CHAT (Cultural History Activity Theory) framework  to categorize codes into activities and develop analytical questions that focused on faculty learning and development beyond only descriptions of activities. 

Liera found patterns and opportunities for growth on three levels: intrapersonal, interpersonal, and institutional. Almost all levels interact with the “culture of niceness” at the university, which prioritizes comfort and the status quo over changing the experiences of racially minoritized professors. A key reason the study was fruitful was because it enabled professors to identify inner contradictions in their personal behavior and then apply that thinking to the culture and institution as a whole. 

From the intrapersonal perspective, Liera highlights the theme of “Maintaining a Culture of Niceness,” which was identified as a root challenge to beginning honest conversations around racism at the University. In these exercises, the evidence team defined what racial equity and inquiry meant to them and established rules for having difficult conversations. Through this process most evidence team members recognized that the religious affiliation of the school played a large role in the culture of niceness. Secondly, there was an acknowledgement that this culture made it particularly difficult to have confrontational and honest conversations about race and hiring faculty of color.

Disrupting a culture of niceness focused on the experiences of racially minoritized faculty, which in turn, shaped the agency of the White faculty on the evidence team. Many White faculty had to engage with feelings of the racially-minoritized faculty in a way they had not done before. This engagement laid the groundwork for discussing the issues of racial equity within the faculty hiring process. Another of Liera’s findings from observing the evidence team was the organizational changes the team made to adjust the culture and hiring process for racially minoritized faculty. The evidence team agreed to use equity-minded language, include other members of the organization (staff, administration) in the hiring process, and focus on specific actions they could take to move beyond the culture of niceness. Many evidence team members were eager to redesign job descriptions and other university templates to include more equity-mind language. In addition, they suggested implicit bias training for all members of the faculty search committee. 

Conclusions

Faculty hiring requires a race-conscious focus and cannot be race neutral. Inquiry-based interventions that focus on institutional and individual reflection are crucial to helping faculty understand their own internal biases and general culture of any school or university. It also helps to create race-conscious language that facilitates interrogation of culture and positionality. Once faculty have generated new thoughts from this process, they are more likely to find tangible ways to change their templates, search committee guidelines, and more. Ultimately, in order to change policy, senior administrators and multiple faculty must be involved. 

Participants in this study overcame many challenges connected to the practice of identifying inner contradictions first and then applying that same lens to the institution as a whole. Following this reflection, many faculty and administrators were willing to actively engage with that process. Both White and racially minoritized faculty engaged in this process, which created two interacting activities to help facilitate group growth. This inquiry-based methodology is emotionally-driven and relies on individuals sharing their personal experiences with racism. A key contribution from this research centers around the power of equity-minded inquiry and personal stories of racism as vehicles for achieving policy change in faculty hiring. 

Linking Race and Organizational Theory to better understand organizations

Introduction

This study marries racial and organizational theory to better understand how racialized organizations limit personal agency of racially minoritized groups.  Under a new theory of racialized organizations, the study tackles how organizations themselves reproduce racialized structures and patterns independent of conscious coordination of individuals. This new theory illuminates trends in resource allocation, depicts the true power of whiteness in an organization, and reveals how every process and procedure can be linked to race. Beyond the identification of trends and findings, this theory also offers  opportunities to combat patterns in racialized organizations in addition to spotlighting areas for further research. 

This study is important because it connects race and organizational theory as both theories have traditionally operated independently of one other. Without understanding how racism and organizations are fundamentally intertwined, we, as a society, neglect the fact that organizational formation was partially created on the basis of excluding racially minoritized groups and should be analyzed as such. 

The author of the study, Victor Ray is the F. Wendell Miller Associate Professor of Sociology and Criminology and African American Studies at the University of Iowa. His work applies Critical Race Theory to classic sociological questions. He has been published in Sociological Theory, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Journal of Marriage and Family, and Contexts.

Methods and Findings

In order to effectively create a theory of racialized organizations, Ray focuses heavily on two models of understanding mechanisms that produce racial inequity: Jung’s (2015) Reformulation of Bonilla-Silva’s (1997) Racialized Social System Theory and Sewell’s (1992) notion of Dual Structures. 

• Within the three levels of analysis of Race and Ethnicity (Individual Level – Micro, Organizational Level – Meso, and Institutional Level – Macro), this study focused on the meso-level in order to assess the multiple mechanisms that reproduce inequality organizationally. These mechanisms include how organizations are formed, hierarchies within organizations, and processes that guide organizational functions. 
• The dual social structures used from Sewell’s study are schemas and resources. Schemas refer to unconscious assumptions or an “unwritten rulebook.” Resources are anything used to gain, enhance or maintain social position. Schemas and resources together are durable structures that underpin organizations. Furthermore, they both help to create, perpetuate, and grow racial structures and segregation within organizations. 

Schemas, Rules and Resources, and Racial Ideology all relate to one another allowing us to understand racial structures as schema-resource couplings at the meso-level. The racial etiquette of Jim Crow, for example, was a schema of racial subordination expressed through social interaction. When these schemas are connected to rules and resources, like specific state laws in the South and sharecropping practices, they become durable structures. Racial structures become institutionalized (macro-level), when they are replicated across many organizational forms. Using this model of racial structure helps explain the mechanisms that recreate racial inequality independent of any conscious discriminatory intent. Furthermore, Ray describes the growth and development of these ”novel mechanisms” as organic externalities that form from working in racialized organizations. A good example of the emergence of a novel mechanism is the development of private schools during the post-Brown v. Board era as a way to express the schema of segregation via allocating organizational resources in new ways.  When using these frameworks of study, Ray finds racialized organizations (1) directly affect the agency of racial groups, (2) distribute resources unequally, (3) treat whiteness, in and of itself, as a credential, and (4) decouple certain formal processes and procedures from organizational practices in an inherently racialized way.  These findings are unique in that current race scholarship lacks a theoretical way to explain these mechanisms without individual conscious coordination.

Conclusions

First and foremost, the author suggests that we should no longer assume that organizations are race-neutral and instead assume that discrimination, racial divisions, and inequality are foundational to any racialized organization. This directly affects the fields of race research and organizational research and asks them to fundamentally reexamine their goals and scope. This reframing should help researchers put greater  emphasis on how organizations react to changes in policy that increase or decrease the agency of racially minoritized groups as opposed to whether or not this is the case. For example, instead of trying to prove hiring discrimination exists, consider it a general organizational process and examine how to combat it within that framework. 

Ray also recommends research focused on the credentialing of whiteness and white emotional reactions to organizational change.  From a policy perspective, this research challenges us to understand what policies and practices whites carry with them into the workplace and which of those policies remain in strong use today. Once we view organizations as fundamentally racialized there are a host of questions that open up about continuity and change to the existing racial order. Ray references immigration policy, organizational reliance on the state, and social movements as vehicles to begin to enact organizational change.