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This chapter examines the goals and outcomes of intergroup dialogue through the evaluation of a dialogue program between city and suburban high school students located in Syracuse, NY. The Community Wide Dialogue to End Racism, Improve Race Relations and Begin Racial Healing (CWD) organizers share with a wide range of conflict theorists and practitioners the impulse to bring citizens together to talk about complex social conflicts. Two of the main goals of this program, to build participants’ understandings of institutional racism and white privilege, are examined here. Drawing on in-depth interviews with a small sample of dialogue participants, a framework is developed for categorizing participant awareness and understanding of institutional racism and white privilege. The analysis suggests that relatively modest levels of understanding of both concepts should be anticipated from participants both before and after completion of a dialogue of this type. While dramatic changes resulting from the dialogue are not found, the data indicate that the dialogue does have demonstrable impacts on the ways participants think and talk about institutional racism and white privilege. The central challenges faced by participants in understanding the concepts, specifically ability to personalize white privilege and capacity to adopt structural ways of thinking about institutional racism, are identified and described. This research helps to clarify the range of outcomes we can feasibly expect when bringing citizens together to talk about social conflicts by providing a qualitative framework for measuring awareness and understanding of white privilege and institutional racism.

Anti-racism has been practiced in various ways, with varying degrees of effectiveness. This chapter engages with the body of scholarship that focuses on approaches aimed at promoting anti-racist actions, policies and social change. It discusses some of the main anti-racism strategies that have been deployed across different countries and examines anti-racism practices in interpersonal, intergroup and community settings. These approaches encompass civil rights campaigns, legislative and policy interventions, affirmative action, diversity and inclusion training, prejudice reduction, intergroup contact, organisational development and holistic anti-racism approaches. Some anti-racism practices and policies, such as awareness campaigns, social marketing and diversity training, also extend to digital platforms, with social media and multimedia networks deployed to broaden the reach and impact of anti-racist endeavours. This chapter specifically engages with local anti-racism movements and draws principles for broader implementation of anti-racism policy and practice. It concludes with a brief discussion of the effectiveness of contemporary anti-racism approaches.

Racism occurs in many ways and varies across countries, evolving and adapting to sociocultural history, as well as contemporary economic, political and technological changes. This chapter discusses the multilevel dimensions of racism and its diverse manifestations across multiracial societies. It examines how different aspects of racism are mediated interpersonally, and embedded in institutions, social structures and processes, that produce and sustain racial inequities in power, resources and lived experiences. Furthermore, this chapter explores the direct and indirect ways racism is expressed in online and offline platforms and details its impacts on various groups based on their intersecting social and cultural identities. Targets of racism are those who primarily bear the adverse effects. However, racism also affects its perpetrators in many ways, including by limiting their social relations and attachments, and by imposing social and economic costs. This chapter thus analyses the many aspects of racism both from targets and perpetrators' perspectives.

There are racial differences in policing and treatment when people are stopped for the same crimes, and scholars have long documented and expressed concern regarding the police’s reactions to Black men. In this paper, we argue that racism is the root cause of police-involved killings of unarmed Black men. Utilizing several contemporary examples, we articulate the ways racism operates through cultural forces and institutional mechanisms to illustrate how this phenomenon lies at the intersection of public safety and public health. Thus, we begin by defining racism and describing how it is gendered to move the notion that the victims of police involved shootings overwhelmingly tend to be Black men from the margins of the explanation of the patterns to the center. Next, we discuss how the police have been used to promote public safety and public health throughout US history. We conclude by describing common explanations for contemporary police-involved shootings of unarmed Black males and why those arguments are flawed. Reframing the phenomena as gendered racism is critical for identifying points of intervention. Because neither intent nor purpose is a prerequisite of the ways that racism affects public safety and public health, the differential impact of policies and programs along racial lines is sufficient for racism to be a useful way to frame this pattern of outcomes. Incorporating gender into this framing of racism introduces that ways that Black men have been viewed, stereotyped, and treated implicitly in institutional practices and explicitly in institutional policies.

This chapter suggests that social justice for African Americans during the era of Obama presidency will advance less from what Mr. Obama does and more from what social scientists and others do. President Obama is not expected to provide much leadership on this issue for at least four reasons. First, presidents and other high-level elected officials do not tend to make policy without strong public advocacies for such policies. Second, Mr. Obama has put forth a universal rather than a targeted approach to dealing with issues concerning African Americans. Third, he is unlikely to use his bully pulpit to advance social justice for African Americans because he has been reluctant to use the bully pulpit to advance his major legislative agenda. And fourth, the Obama administration has made a habit of fumbling on teachable moments about race. See the missteps in the Henry Louis Gates affair, and the timidity in the Shirley Sherrod and the Van Jones affairs.

This concluding chapter summarises the main themes and topics discussed in this book, synthesising the key issues facing contemporary anti-racism efforts. It reflects on a possible anti-racist future(s) in a context of greater sociocultural affiliations and more interconnected local and global environments. Ideas about race and ethnicity have adapted, and racial hierarchies, structures and processes continuously shape the way social groups engage, interact and live with difference. This raises questions regarding the enduring influence of race and racism. What will the state of multiracial societies be in the evolving digital economy that has transformed the structural and institutional environment affecting everyday life? What kind of an anti-racist future can be imagined that will contribute to ensuring greater social equity? This chapter ponders on a range of possibilities to chart directions towards an anti-racist future that fosters increased intercultural understanding for relational engagements across difference. It draws conclusions and lessons for an anti-racist future and lays out some directions for future research.

This chapter discusses the experiences of black men who encounter the phenomena of a mental health diagnosis, detention and death in a forensic setting in England. Although there are black women with mental health issues who have also died in forensic settings, the occurrence is significantly higher for men who become demonised as ‘Big, Black, Bad and dangerous’. The author discusses the historical over representation of mental ill health amongst black people in the general community and the plethora or reasons attributed to this. The author then discusses the various points of entry into the criminal justice system, where black men with mental health issues are over represented. The author explores some inquiries into the deaths of black men in custody and the recommendations that were subsequently made, which successive governments have failed to act upon. The author argues that the term ‘Institutional Racism’ is insufficient to explain this phenomenon; and offers her own theoretical interpretation which is a combination of systemic racism influenced by post-colonial conceptualisation

Recent research into the nature and impact of racial discrimination directed at Aboriginal Australian children and youth has revealed how such a stressor can negatively impact upon varying physical health, emotional well-being and education outcomes. Despite the strength of these findings for identifying need for action, such research has been largely limited by either a lack of consideration as to the potentially complex nature of racism targeting Aboriginal Australians or alternatively offering little in identifying sources of resiliency for Aboriginal Australian students. It is the purpose of this investigation to identify the voices of high-achieving Aboriginal Australian post-graduate students with regard to their experiences of racism, how they may have coped with racism and their advice to future generations of Aboriginal youth.

A series of in-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with seven Aboriginal Australian PhD students within an Australian University. The interviews were designed to capture the perceptions, experiences and coping strategies used when faced with racism. The data was carefully and repeatedly scrutinized for emerging themes that were shared by the majority of participants.

Numerous themes emerged with issues pertaining to the veracity of racism and conceptualizations of racism across historical/cross-generational, contemporary, verbal, physical, institutional, cultural, political, electronic, personal, reverse/internalized and collective/group dimensions. In addition, the negative impact of racism was identified, but more importantly, a series of interrelated positive coping responses (e.g. externalization of racism, social support) were voiced.

The implications of these results attest to the need to understand the many faces of racism that may still be experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders today. In addition, the coping strategies identified may be seen as valuable agents of resiliency for future generations of Aboriginal youth.

The aim of my chapter is to draw on conceptualisations of sexism, racism, epistemology of white ignorance and critical race theorists’ critiques of white feminism to examine critical management studies (CMS) practices. The purpose of the chapter is to acknowledge the contribution of CMS feminists and look to how we can go beyond current practices to include antiracism in our feminisms. In particular, I show how sexism, racism and white ignorance are collectively produced in CMS and operate through mundane, and avoidable, organisational and pedagogical processes. I respond to the editors’ call for chapters by offering a practical politics through the idea of a killjoy manifesto, taking inspiration from the writings of Sara Ahmed. An important part of is that is for white feminism in CMS to attend to critiques from racially minoritised academics, activists and workers. Whilst challenging, I hope the chapter provides practical and theoretical resources and encouragement.