Gender, race, and class in organizational contexts

Raced and risky subjects: The interplay of racial and managerial ideologies as an expression of "colorblind" racism

Contemporary manifestations of race are dynamic and elusive in the forms and shapes they take. "Colourblind" racism is effective at drawing on seemingly objective and race-neutral discourses to obfuscate racialized forms of structural exclusion. Framed by Critical Race Theory and Critical Narrative Analysis this paper presents an example from the Australian context that examines the relationships between a grassroots initiative developed by creatives from the African diaspora and two not-for-profit human services organizations, to illustrate how ideologies of race are enacted and obscured by managerialist ideologies and discourses of risk. Specifically, it shows how harmful dominant cultural narratives of deficit and danger transforms racialized Africans in Australia into "risky subjects." In a managerialist organization, risk must be controlled, and thus risk becomes the rationality for the control of racialized and risky subjects. Resistance to control by those subjects produces forms of organizational defensiveness that are mobilized through managerialist discourses and practices that work to structurally exclude. These findings illustrate the ways ideologies of race work alongside and through other ideological discourses and practices which render racialized dynamics of oppression race-neutral.

Then and now: A 50-year retrospective thematic analysis of Society for Community Research and Action presidential addresses

The Society for Community Research and Action (SCRA) is the primary professional home for community psychologists in the United States and increasingly around the world. Since the formation of the American Psychological Association Division 27: Community Psychology in 1966, now SCRA, 54 people have served in the Presidential role. Presidential leaders' annual addresses both reflect the current state of the field and have the ability to shape the future of both SCRA as an organization and community psychology as a discipline given their positions as leaders. This commentary explores the trajectory of SCRA as an organization via 33 available presidential addresses, 28 of which were published in the American Journal of Community Psychology (AJCP). Using thematic analysis and drawing on both dialectical and life cycle organizational processes, three periods of SCRA and community psychology more broadly were identified: defining community psychology, applying community psychology, and re-imagining community psychology. Themes speak to tensions between the ideals of the society and the work of the society. We conclude by offering a series of questions for consideration as SCRA positions itself for the future.

Mobilizing bystanders to address microaggressions in the workplace: The case for a systems-change approach to Getting A (Collective) GRIP

Microaggressions present significant barriers to the entry and advancement of individuals from marginalized groups within the workplace. Their ubiquity, coupled with their harmful impact, creates an urgent need for organizations to mitigate them to foster truly equitable and inclusive work environments. In this paper, we present a bystander-focused approach to address this particular form of workplace bias. Informed by the empirical literature and grounded in socioecological principles, we underscore the importance of a systems-change approach to the development and implementation of any bystander program. We describe ways to incorporate social-ecological sensibilities into the substance of the training itself by outlining our "Get A (Collective) GRIP" framework. This framework emphasizes the need for active bystanders to employ an ecological scan that includes Assessing what happened, determining one's Goals for intervening, considering the Relationships among those involved in the incident (target/s, transgressor/s, and witness/es), taking into account the Institutional context in which the incident occurs, and being attuned to structural issues and Power dynamics within the context. Finding ways to address microaggressions that embody systemic analyses has transformative potential for the workplace and doing so through activating bystanders to alter local social norms is an area that has tremendous promise in this regard.

Challenging gender perspective in the community to promote well-being and health

The community is an excellent potential arena in which to challenge gender perspective and change power structures in society because of its pivotal role in socializing gender and shaping social context. The community influences the availability of positive and negative role models, the accessibility of specific settings, the ease with which relationships are formed, and a variety of emotions and attitudes. The literature shows that paying attention to gender equity affects numerous indicators of community well-being. Attention to gender equity makes communities more competent, which creates human and social capital that enables community well-being. We will examine the role of gender not only as a social construction but also as a context to create a healthy setting in the community and to promote the health and wellness of gender perspectives in the scientific domain, which seems resistant to change.

The role of attitudes toward White privilege and religious beliefs in predicting social justice interest and commitment

The current study examines links among attitudes toward White privilege, religious beliefs, and social justice interest and commitment for White Christian students. Two distinct patterns of results emerged from a path analysis of 500 White Christian students. First, a willingness to confront White privilege was positively associated with the sanctification of social justice (i.e., attributing spiritual significance to working for social justice) and both were positively associated with social justice interest and commitment. Second, awareness of White privilege was negatively associated with religious conservatism, and religious conservatism was negatively associated with social justice interest. These patterns show that White privilege attitudes directly (i.e., willingness to confront White privilege) and indirectly (i.e., awareness of White privilege through religious conservatism) predicted social justice interest and commitment. Moreover, religious beliefs demonstrated opposite patterns of association with social justice interest and commitment such that the sanctification of social justice positively predicted social justice interest and commitment whereas religious conservatism negatively predicted social justice interest. Overall, findings demonstrate direct and indirect links between White privilege attitudes, religious beliefs, and social justice interest and commitment. Limitations and implications for future community psychology research and collaboration also are discussed.

Making daddies into fathers: community-based fatherhood programs and the construction of masculinities for low-income African American men

In this analysis, we explore how low-income African American fathers build understandings of successful manhood in the context of community-based responsible fatherhood programs. Drawing on life history interviews with 75 men in Illinois and Indiana, we explore men's attempts to fulfill normative expectations of fatherhood while living in communities with limited resources. We examine the efforts of community-based fatherhood programs to shape alternative African American masculinities through facilitation of personal turning points and "breaks with the past," use of social support and institutional interventions, and the reframing of provision as a priority of successful fatherhood. We refer to Connell's hegemonic masculinity framework (Connell in Masculinities, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1995) and discuss how both men and programs borrow from hegemonic and street masculinities to develop alternative approaches to paternal involvement for marginalized men.

Participatory organizational change in community-based health and human services: from tokenism to political engagement

Community psychologists have long worked with community-based human service organizations to build participatory processes. These efforts largely aim at building participatory practices within the current individual-wellness paradigm of human services. To address collective wellness, human service organizations need to challenge their current paradigm, attend to the social justice needs of community, and engage community participation in a new way, and in doing so become more openly political. We use qualitative interviews, focus groups, organizational documents, and participant observation to present a comparative case study of two organizations involved in such a process through an action research project aimed at transforming the organizations' managerial and practice paradigm from one based on first-order, ameliorative change to one that promotes second-order, transformative change via strength-based approaches, primary prevention, empowerment and participation, and focuses on changing community conditions. Four participatory tensions or dialectics are discussed: passive versus active participation, partners versus clients, surplus powerlessness versus collective efficacy, and reflection/learning versus action/doing.

How the powerful decide: access to research participation by those at the margins

How do those in power decide to include and exclude those at the margins from community life? We used simulated review of research vignettes to examine how researchers and members of Institutional Review Boards make decisions concerning the research participation of adults with and without intellectual disabilities. Results indicate that decision-makers are influenced by the disability status of the sample, characteristics of the research in which they are engaged, and their attitudes toward the research participation of adults with intellectual disabilities as well as their own relationship to the research process. For example, decision-makers may create situations that limit the self-determination of adults with intellectual disabilities and adults without disabilities within the research context, particularly when the research poses some risk of harm to participants. Implications for theory, action and research are explored.

Bringing community psychology home: the leadership, community and values initiative

Workplaces are amongst the most influential settings in the lives of adults and community psychologists have long been interested how to foster environments that are empowering, provide a sense of community, and support diversity. Yet, despite the fact that many community psychologists work in academic settings, there is a dearth of research that examines universities as work environments, both for faculty and staff members. This paper presents a case study of an initiative at the University of Washington, the Leadership, Community, and Values Initiative that is used a collaborative process to assess the workplace environment and effect positive changes. It is hoped that a description of key aspects of the assessment and efforts toward workplace improvement will serve as a call to community psychologists to turn more of their attention to an important setting that affects many of us, and virtually all of our students.

Realities and myths of safety issues for community researchers working in a marginalized African American community

Community psychologists often conduct research in collaboration with marginalized communities in which safety is an issue. However, we rarely talk about what specific safety issues we experience and how we deal with them. Our story describes the realities and myths of neighborhood safety that were experienced in a low-income African American neighborhood of Chicago, while collaborating on a project designed to increase access to the Internet to obtain health information. We examine both the challenges experienced and our responses in the context of a community intervention planned, implemented, and evaluated by a partnership team composed of various stakeholders. Critical lessons such as the importance of building on community strengths and the need to be aware of our own biases are discussed.

Reflections on the evaluation of a Cambodian youth dance program

Evaluating a youth program whose goals are to provide instruction in Cambodian dance, increase awareness and pride in Cambodian culture, promote healthy behaviors, and create linkages within the community has been a challenge. A primary source of conflict was incorporating evaluation methods that were required of all funded programs with our own specifically tailored measures. One of our concerns was that the required tools were not culturally appropriate for our participants. Our experiences reinforce the importance of forming partnerships that embrace principles of respect, equity, and empowerment among all involved before establishing a research agenda. The choices we made and did not make contributed to our struggles and frustration and also to the insight that was gained. Our analysis examines the importance of clear communication, cultural awareness, tailoring evaluation, and meaningful participation. We believe that the lessons we learned will help facilitate the conduct of culturally sensitive community-based research.

Where do we belong? Urban adolescents' struggle for place and voice

Through a telling of key events in the history of the "Teen Action Center" (TAC), a drop-in youth center located in downtown "Unionville," this story demonstrates how 'youth' is an important diversity category. The community conflict highlighted in this story centers around the 1997 arrest of TAC's Executive Director and two youth leaders (all Puerto Rican) because a small group of Latino and African-American youth was smoking cigarettes on the sidewalk in front of the Center. This conflict brings into focus divergent views on where Unionville's youth of color belong in the city, both physically and figuratively. The lessons learned in this story have wide application as Unionville, and other cities undergoing demographic transformation and economic decline, are likely to continue to experience these types of clashes, where the dominant paradigm of economic development overrides the realities, rights, and interests of marginalized groups.

Listening to diversity stories: principles for practice in community research and action

Three broad Diversity Principles for Community Research and Action are described and offered as community psychology's contribution to the growing literature on multicultural competence in psychology. The principles are applicable to multiple dimensions of diversity including race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, disability, and social class. The diversity principles are illustrated with examples from the twenty-two diversity stories in the AJCP Special Issue on Diversity Stories in Community Research and Action. Each of the three diversity principles (Community Culture, Community Context, and Self-in-Community) are associated with a fundamental assumption, a process emphasis (descriptive, analytic, and reflective), a core question to engage, an orienting stance (informed compassion, contextualized understanding, and empowered humility), and three areas of focus. Taken together, the principles suggest the value of the overarching stance of connected disruption. It is suggested that applying the principles to community work in diverse settings will facilitate the process of bridging differences and enhance the relevance and effectiveness of our work.

On the edge of diversity: bringing African Americans and Latinos together in a neighborhood group

This article describes challenges we encountered when organizing a group of African Americans and Latinos in a community where ethnic tensions had been normative. We relate how the first author, a Caucasian with a university affiliation, entered this diverse community and employed ethnographic methods in an attempt to understand it. The ethnography provides a context for the principal challenge we encountered: ensuring that the group had ethnic balance. Focusing on the group's first meeting, we describe the uncertainty of whether our work would be helpful or harmful to the community. We conclude with reflections on the gaps between science and practice in diverse communities; the utility and limits of ethnography; the multiple ecological levels of influence on the community; dilemmas around a White male taking proactive stances while trying to empower a group consisting mostly of women of color; and the influence of values we brought to the community.

Conceptualizing and assessing heterosexism in high schools: a setting-level approach

Heterosexism is defined as a setting-level process that systematically privileges heterosexuality relative to homosexuality, based on the assumption that heterosexuality, as well as heterosexual power and privilege are the norm and the ideal. The many ways heterosexism is manifest in the physical-architectural, program-policy, suprapersonal, and social features of high schools are described followed by a proposal for a comprehensive assessment strategy. Strategies used in previous research are reviewed in terms of what is assessed, how it is assessed, and how it is analyzed. The author advocates for more comprehensive assessments and for school-level analyses to enable comparisons between schools, facilitate research on the effects of heterosexism, and provide a basis for evaluating interventions. Additional issues include reliability and validity, links between heterosexism and other forms of oppression, heterosexism in other contexts or at other levels, and implications for theory and practice in community psychology.

A multiple case study of rape victim advocates' self-care routines: the influence of organizational context

This study assumes that rape victim advocates who provide community outreach services to victimized women must adjust to a heightened awareness of sexual violence to do their jobs. Using qualitative methodology, this multiple case study explored rape victim advocates' strategies for incorporating repeated exposure to sexual assault into their daily lives as well as ways that organizations can support such endeavors. Findings suggest that advocates' self-care routines draw upon various personal resources (i.e., cognitive, physical, social, spiritual, verbal), and serve 2 roles for coping with rape-related pain: (a) cathartic releasing of traumatic material, and (b) improving capacity to integrate the traumatic material into one's life. Additionally, over 20 organizational characteristics that workers perceive to be supportive (e.g., weekly meetings, flexible hours) were identified. Nonparametric and categorical statistical analyses were used to analyze the relationship between organizational support and self-care routines, finding that advocates working in organizations with higher levels of support utilize more strategies that are integrative in nature. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Promotion of social change: a conceptual framework

This paper argues for the need to advance promotion efforts and proposes a conceptual framework for promotion of social change. A brief review is presented of traditional frameworks for the prevention of mental and social disorders and the promotion of wellness and social competencies, with attention to the ways in which promotion of social change extends and departs from these frameworks. In a framework for promoting social change, we advocate for promoting dynamic processes within systems, rather than outcomes within individuals. Systems are viewed as flexible and capable of facilitating multiple adaptive pathways for individuals and groups. Promoting social change also involves careful attention to critical analysis, values, language, and contextual processes. Examples are discussed throughout to illustrate how these principles have been used in the past and can be implemented in future efforts to promote social change.

The spirit of community psychology. 2001 Seymour B. Sarason Award Address

Community psychology as a field may have lost some of its original spirit; a spirit dominant at the founding of the field. Spirit is a difficult concept to discuss since it is a concept beyond usual discourse in psychology as a denotative, measurable and verifiable concept. Taking the lead from William James, Spirit, however elusive, is most essential to a sense of self. I offer three suggestions to enhance and to make our individual and collective spirit more vital: (1) Continuing education in the history of community psychology; (2) Creating time to share stories about our work; (3) Creating safe settings to enlarge our spirit. These ideas are offered as pragmatic suggestions to enable us to create more coherence between our personal and professional selves.

Overcoming inequality in schooling: a call to action for community psychology

Community psychology, indeed psychology as a discipline, has been largely absent from the table of school reform. Schools are critical socializing forces in society and serve as the one institution through which the full diversity of our child population passes. At the start of the 21st century, despite successive waves of legislation, the goals of the civil rights struggle for equality in educational opportunity have yet to be achieved. Negative self-fulfilling prophecies, reflected at individual, interpersonal, institutional, and societal levels, play a critical role in creating and perpetuating unequal opportunities to learn. Such effects as well as pathways for preventive intervention are best understood through ecological lenses. Our field must commit a greater share of resources to collaborative and systemic change for a broader learning so that all children, regardless of their differences, have continuing and nonstigmatized opportunities to develop into competent adults.

Increasing access and building equity into mental health services: an examination of the potential for change

This article explores the use of mental health care services by ethnoracial people in Canada and distinguishes between the reasons for underutilization of services by ethnoracial groups and the barriers which prevent ethnoracial groups from accessing services. Research focusing on Canadian race relations is reviewed to reveal how they are paralleled in the functioning of mainstream mental health care organizations. Existing policies and attitudes are then considered in relation to how they support or impede interventions to increase accessibility to services. Finally, frameworks for organizational change based on multiculturalism and anti-racism are presented, and the advantages and disadvantages of both are articulated.

A history of women and feminist perspectives in community psychology

Using an historical framework, we document and assess efforts to include women, women's issues, and feminism in community psychology and in the Society for Community Research and Action (SCRA). Initiatives of the SCRA Task Force/Committee on Women are traced from its inception to present. We also chronicle the dilemmas and difficulties of moving toward a feminist community psychology. The history is divided into five phases. Each phase is described in terms of women's involvement in the field and efforts to integrate feminist content into research and practice of the field. Reflections on the qualities of contexts that have both supported and inhibited inclusion are identified. We look to this history to try to understand the observation that while women have been increasingly visible in leadership roles and women's professional development has been encouraged, less progress has been made toward building a feminist community psychology.

Making a difference: the social ecology of social transformation

A multidisciplinary and multilevel framework for social transformation is proposed, encompassing four foundational goals: capacity-building, group empowerment, relational community-building, and culture-challenge. Intervention approaches related to each goal are presented at the setting, geographic community, and societal levels. Four exemplars of social transformation work are then discussed: the Accelerated Schools Project, Meyerhoff Program, ManKind Project, and women's movement. These examples illustrate the synergistic relationship among the four transformational goals, within and across levels of analysis, which is at the heart of the social transformation process. The paper concludes with three challenges to guide our efforts as we enter the new century: (1) to move social transformation to the center of our consciousness as a field; (2) to articulate jointly with allied disciplines, organizations, and citizen groups an encompassing, multidisciplinary, and multilevel framework for social transformation; and (3) to do the above with heart, soul, and humility.