Pages: 320 Price: $49.95 ISBN: 978-0-471-77997-1
This collection of articles provides a fascinating insight into front-edge concerns about racism and transcultural issues in both health and education settings in the USA. While offering very limited insight into the international literature on race and racism outside the USA, the collection has stimulating ideas and explorations to offer to an international audience. After reading it closely, one can see that this volume will become essential reading within its own country for its powerful, incisive insights into racism and racialised issues. It contains bold, insightful analysis into progressive and innovative approaches. The editors and authors of this book have courage and use that courage to explore how power operates in institutions and systems in educational and health settings in the USA.
Like all good, solid work on injustice, it is not a comforting or easy read. Readers should be prepared to be confronted and challenged by every author in the collection. That discomfort and unease are the tools to break new ground in the struggle for social justice. It is to the credit of the authors and editors that they disrupt and discomfort the reader as they confront us with issues of injustice and equity and inspire us to read on to consider, reflect—and take anti-oppressive action in our professional practice.
The book is readable and approachable, but readers should be prepared to consider complex ideas, models and theories and be ready to do the emotional labour necessary. Likewise there is some impact on readers within the professions who are called upon passionately to continue to advocate for social change and social justice in already busy and demanding careers. This is what Sachs has called "transformative professionalism" (Sachs, 2003) and others have positioned as anti-discriminatory and anti-oppressive professional practice (Papadopoulos, 2006)
A strength of the collection is its diversity and wealth of insight from many viewpoints. For example, most of the authors attempt to define racism and most of them come up with intriguing differences in their definitions and understanding of the core organising principle of racism; the role and focus of the individual, culture, institution and/or system; the impacts of racism on individuals, cultures and systems; and the historical and socio-political contexts.
Most of the chapters are oriented to exploration of issues, strategies and theories, thus building conceptual frameworks, but a few report on research into racism and community responses to racism. The introductory chapters do an excellent job of succinctly scoping the complex landscape of race studies, making brief but essential reference to key issues such as trans-generational trauma, critical whiteness studies, overt and subtle manifestations of racism and its impact on both perpetrators and targets. Other chapters address a wide range of issues such as whiteness and white privilege; institutional racism in health and in education; links between poverty and racism and between hetero-sexism and race; community healing; developing cultural competence in the education of professionals; specific ethnic groups such as whites and minorities such as African-, Hispanic- and Latino-Americans.
A glaring gap in the collection though is the absence of insight into and position and voice for Indigenous peoples—Native Americans. This is the one failure of an otherwise integrated and full-ranging coverage of the north American experience of race, racism, ethnicity and multiculturalism. It is always difficult for an international audience to understand two things of academic literature from the USA—why the infrequent attention to its own indigenous peoples concerns when discussing culture and race and why American academics and practitioners pay so little attention to international literature and global perspectives. Unfortunately, this collection is as guilty of those two omissions as other work out of the USA. Readers in countries which are experiencing authentic reconciliation efforts with their indigenous peoples—e.g. South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, Canada—are often puzzled by the absence of such a popular movement in the USA but that lack may explain why indigenous perspectives are often absent or under-represented in USA collections and anthologies about race, racism and culture.
We need future researchers and writers to examine racism within the professions and society in a broader economic, socio-political and global context—as has been started by other North American authors (e.g. Anyon, 2005). And as Ponterotto and Pederson (1993) have argued, we need interdisciplinary perspectives to understand the nature of racism and appropriate, effective interventions for the professions.
Constantine and Sue have done an impressive, inspiring job of addressing the issues for the professions and drawing in thoughtful and incisive articles from authors who courageously take on racism. A commonality of each of the many authors and the two editors is the inspiration we can draw from their determination and commitment to address difficult, complex and highly contemporary issues in race relations. This book deserves not just a domestic, but also an international audience and to be recognised for its contribution to a global dialogue and the global solidarity we find in anti-racist efforts. It deserves a readership which encompasses all the professions, but also all people with a passion for radical transformation towards social justice.
References
Anyon, J. (2005). Radical possibilities: Public policy, urban education and a new social movement. New York: Routledge.
Papadopoulos, I. (ed). (2006). Transcultural health and social care: Development of culturally competent practitioners. Edinburgh: Elsevier.
Ponterotto, JG and Pedersen, PB. (1993). Preventing prejudice: A guide for counsellors and educators. Newbury Park: Sage.
Sachs, J. (2003). The activist teaching profession. Buckingham, U.K.: Open University Press.
MSU is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer