Lesson 4: Race, Racialisation, and Racism

In the fight for health justice, it is imperative that we all build up an accurate lexicon which allows us to communicate the phenomena that are imposed on us. When defining racism, social scientist David R. Williams defines it as follows:

“Racism is an organized societal system, in which the dominant racial group, based on a hierarchy of human value, categorizes and ranks people into social groups called ‘races’, and uses its power to devalue, disempower, and differentially allocate societal resources and opportunities to groups defined as inferior. As a structured system, racism interacts with other social institutions, such as the political, legal, and economic institutions, shaping the values, policies and practices within these institutions and being re-shaped by them. By creating unequal access to resources and opportunity, racism is a fundamental cause of racial inequities in health.”

There are four conceptualisations to take away:

1. The idea of race was created as a mental vehicle that supports the dominance of White Supremacy. It has been used to create biologically non-existent differentiators between people to justify why some people are designated to be oppressed and why others are designated to profit from that oppression (source). It does mean that our identification as Black or Indigenous or any other race is a construct of White Supremacy. Therefore, for this report, we will use these “race” categorisations to explain the phenomena of racism, not as definitive or personal identifiers.

2. Racism is a deliberate system acting in a dynamic manner with other societal systems e.g. housing, education, labour, criminal justice, that needs to be upheld, fed, and updated for its survival and continuity. Racism will always want to survive, as it is profitable. Therefore, we have to constantly update our education on the different tactics it uses to continue.

3. We have to learn how to dismantle the system, work away from the system, and challenge the system. This is a process that takes constant work and education.

4. We must also consider there are other extensions of “race” that are used to discriminate people gender, sex, sexuality, and class. All of which are concepts that are firmly based in Western conceptualisations. They are not universal. 

We must work together to decolonise our language. We believe it is important to move away from the use of the word “race” in health outcomes as it is an illegitimate concept to “racialisation”.

Racialisation is the process and enactment of racism, which is a key factor in both health and environmental injustice. 

When conducting studies or observing the phenomenon of racialisation in the context of health and environment injustice, we at times  use the categorisations BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Colour) and BAME (Black, Asian, Minority, Ethnic). This is to conduct surveys and to understand distributions. However, they miss the nuances of the different lived experiences within different communities and Peoples within the same racialised group. This is important when looking at health outcomes. A person categorised as Indigenous American raised on a particular reservation will face one set of stressors than those living in cities. We suggest the following.

1. When looking at data we can look at BIPOC and BAME, however, we must recognise the limitations of these terms and include lived experience of various communities and individuals. 

2. When writing about marginalised populations, we must be specific about their racialisation in the context of their particular stressors, experiences, and habitat, which contribute to their health outcomes. 

3. Use the word racialisation instead of race, as race is not a legitimate concept. To be clear race doesn’t exist but racism and its consequences do. 

4. Be specific about how racism contributes to the health and environmental injustice experienced by a marginalised social group.

ERASURE

The erasure of those who are racialised as Black and/or Indigenous comes in two parts.

Their efforts, expertise, contributions and movements are often completely erased or silenced (source, source, source). This is done to the extent that many policy makers, scientists, and NGO’s spend time and money looking to “engage” these communities with health and environmental justice movements, despite their long standing leadership and continual first adoptions. For example, Citizens Advice had a training manual that included a slide called “Barriers to working with BAME communities'', which included deeply concerning racist stereotypes about communities of colour, reducing diverse groups to generalisations about ‘low levels of literacy’ and ‘intrinsically cash-centred cultures’ (source).

Their expertise is ignored and is not validated by established predominantly white led platforms; conferences, studies, forums, and boardrooms (source, source).

EXPECTED RESILIENCE

As a society, we have grown to expect that those who are racialised as Black will always/should always be resilient when facing acute and violent acts of structural racism.

In short we expect “Black suffering” to happen and we expect them to be “ok” or to “find a way out”. This expectation is toxic and detrimental to the health of those racialised as Black (source).

Additionally, some in society have become emotionally desensitised to their suffering. In fact, evidence points towards a gap in empathy for those who are racialised as Black, which, in turn, can influence decision-making and behaviours when it comes to addressing racists policy practices or other systemic decision-making. This results in gaslighting of these communities and extending the injustice.