Research Justice: A racial justice approach to research

Racism is the underlying condition of the lived experiences of those of us who identify and/or are read socially as people of color. However, mainstream academic research practices into how racism impacts and marginalizes communities and how to achieve equity are often exploitative and unjust; communities that are most deeply impacted are excluded from opportunities to lead research that is about them. Against this backdrop, this presentation presents research findings and calls to action by communities of color living in Washington County (Oregon, USA) described in the Coalition of Communities of Color's (CCC) Leading With Race: Research Justice in Washington County report. Specifically, we ask: How do communities experience housing instability? How do communities use parks and recreation? How are we impacted by climate change? These experiences are continuously dismissed as anecdotal, while at the same time, policy practitioners remain puzzled about why policies are not having the desired equity impact. This session will present a vision and implementation of research justice in Washington County that is based on the premise that research practices intended to produce knowledge of lived experiences of communities of color should be just and equitable to achieve the racial equity we seek in the region.

Understanding microaggression in psycho-social community intervention

The Integral Intervention with Victims of Crime Project has developed a Social Community Approach which led us to address the beginnings of violence cycle. Participants were poor youth and children from Puerto Rican and Dominican Republic families. The work team identified a racial/ethnic conflict in the community which required attention to enable community organization efforts to be successful. In this study children and youth participated in the translation and adaptation of the Nadal (2011). Racial and Ethnic Microaggression Scale (REMS). Microaggression are subtle statements and behaviors that unconsciously communicate denigrating messages (Nadal, 2018). Literature suggests that it is the beginning in a chain of violence practice which is unnoticeably and therefore unattended, contributing to future interpersonal violence (Nadal, 2018). While the REMS address microaggression from the victim perspective, a scale from the perspective of aggressor is under development. Results are used in psychoeducational group interventions as part of the activities of Building Nonviolent Communities (BNC). The community discussion of the scales results were used to initiate actions towards prosocial and equality community relationships. The psychometric results of the scales and their application as part of the BNC will be presented.

Preserving Refugee Cultural Integrity: Understanding Peer Support Systems using Life Story Narrative

Refugees are in need of humanizing approaches to community integration that promote healthy levels of independence and connection to the cultural worldview and practices of home communities. There is a challenge, however, with how our current aid systems for refugee resettlement work with refugees. For example, refugee resettlement agency approaches to integration usually focus aid on an individual basis where adaptation and survival involves evermore sustained dependency on those agencies. These services take the place of other possible community-level type approaches designed to promote coordinated self-care within the affected community where deeper communal bonds exist. Instead, a host culture dominates with complex and “none-reachable” profit-making institutions that suffocate home culture practices. It is within this context that we must then attend to the social dysfunctionality that occurs beyond an interpersonal stress-adaptation-growth dynamic and clarifies why research is challenged in understanding a more successful experience of refugee cultural integration. This session presents findings based on lived experience shared in form of narrative story that reaffirms the importance of intercultural competency, social support, and empathy as core elements of positive interaction. Findings suggest the need to provide a platform to create future initiatives grounded in these elements as others engage in intercultural transitions and develop migrant-host relationships. In addition, we will discuss the roles of refugee peer-to-peer support systems and analyses how life story narrative methodology can help refugees reconfigure broken identity.
Questions to be explored include:
- How can we design refugee transition experiences that support cultural authenticity and developing a more holistic sense of social balance?
- What is the value of maintaining refugee cultural integrity?
- What ways do refugee peers play a role in preserving indigenous cultural values and practices?
- How are refugees supported in this process across cultural contexts and in varying cultural spaces internationally?

This paper investigates various approaches to histories of present-day intergenerational trauma experienced by Australian Indigenous peoples. Current and long-standing practices of child removal and incarceration of Indigenous peoples are provided as evidence of past and present sources of distress.
Focussed in Victoria, the paper argues that intergenerational trauma, not unlike the ‘psy’ concept of post-traumatic stress disorder, is related to the war and the taking of land, and subsequent methods of white rule over Indigenous Australians. However, Indigenous peoples’ experience of intergenerational trauma is also distinguished from PTSD by ‘regimes of welfare’ in the present, beginning with the mission system and continuing through governmental attempts to break up Indigenous family life, culture, and sense of community, whose affects may then be passed to subsequent generations. Present welfare regimes also have quite distinguishing features in their return of all responsibility for present problems to the agency of individuals.
The paper reviews the construction of segregated children’s institutions and moves by the State to resist demands for Aboriginal rights. Techniques of ‘governing the soul’ in present day welfare policy have been trialled in Indigenous communities and extended to non-Indigenous peoples through other kinds of encampments established in their image.