Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism

SUMMARY

This paper presents a literature review of social work programs' distance education evaluation studies with an emphasis on the strengths distance education programs offer to students relative to standard programs. The authors discuss quality issues in relation to teaching and learning in distance education programs with a panel of distance learners who will discuss their experiences.     

Racism and Anti‐Racism in Families: Insights from Performativity Theory

Possibilities for anti‐racism within the spaces of family life have not yet been contemplated in any depth in the extant anti‐racism literature. To address this, the first section of this paper demonstrates that families are a potentially critical site for anti‐racism, reviewing a large body of evidence demonstrating the key role families play in socialisation processes and in the development of racial attitudes. I also look at what can be gleaned from the literature on interethnic intimacy. The second section turns to the possibilities for anti‐racism within families, suggesting that too little is known about how members of families negotiate instances of racism, or the strategies used to restage or subvert racist discourses and practices within the family. The potential for anti‐racist performances to challenge expressions of racism in families has largely been overlooked in the international literature. I argue that the framework of performativity has utility for analysing responses to racism in families. Performativity theories conceptualise individual acts/utterances of racism and anti‐racism as enacting broader cultural values and structures. Viewing racism in families through theories of performativity directs us to consider how racist speech can be disrupted or strategically rejected and, hence, identify possibilities for anti‐racism.     

Racial Formation Theory and Systemic Racism in Hip‐Hop Fans’ Perceptions

This work contributes empirical research to racial formation theory (RFT) and systemic racism (SR), demonstrating how these theories complement each other. There are few practical applications of these theories. This research examines RFT and SR from the perspective of hip‐hop fans. I qualitatively examine how 23 nonblack women articulate the relationships of race, class, and gender through discussion of hip‐hop music and videos that accompany it. Findings suggest that hip‐hop is a site of racial formation. Participants spoke from a color‐blind perspective and white racial frame so that they perpetuated ideals of systemic racism theory.     

Racism: A Short History

Eclecticism in social work has been criticised because interventions may be based on theories that have incompatible basic assumptions. The author offers a structural analysis of theories informing social work practice, according to each theory's basic assumptions about the nature of human society as either conflict or consensus, and human behaviour as a product of either free will or determinism. Four basic paradigms of practice in social work are created as quadrants within a circle and labelled, respectively, as the functionalist, existentialist, humanist and structuralist paradigms. The structure is then modified to establish a fifth ‘heuristic paradigm’ as an inner circle. The author suggests that heuristic paradigm theories are those that best accommodate the paradoxical coexistence of free will and determinism, and also conflict and consensus. Heuristic practice is therefore not seen simply as intuitive eclecticism, but an active and reflective use of various theories as ‘heuristic tools’ to shape practice interventions and thereby build practice wisdom.     

Racism:

The problem of attracting minority group students in social work is but one aspect of the larger social problem of racism. This paper therefore defines racism, its influence on the social and psychological processes associated with career identification and selection, and its influence on interpersonal relationships. As a way of illustrating the effects of racism, case studies describing common problems experienced by minority students who decide to enter social work programs are presented. The paper closes with a set of broad recommendations that should enable social work educators to retain minority group students.     

The Concept of Oppression and the Development of a Social Theory of Disability

In this paper it is argued that a social theory of disability can best be developed through the use of the concept of oppression. This concept is outlined, and special emphasis is placed on the importance of the social origins of impairment in such an analysis. The ways in which this approach would utilise data gathered from other theoretical perspectives is indicated. General features of a theory of disability as oppression are specified.     

Legitimation of Oppression: Response and Reflexivity

The basic question addressed in this article is why people in inferior and devalued strata submit to oppression. It is my thesis that the legitimation of oppression is one of the key issues for subordinate people and that the study of the creation and processes of legitimation among such groups will shed light on the phenomenon of human obedience or of resistance to oppressive rule. The core of the study consists of (1) the development of a model of the legitimation process and (2) the use of examples from the experiences of oppressed groups to illustrate dimensions of this process.     

Redefining Racism: A Deviance/Responsibility Intervention Model

This paper considers a unique and direct approach to combating racism. The objective is to make racism deviant behavior. The authors believe that racism needs to be made as unnacceptable as drinking and driving or cigarette smoking. An intervention that considers the macro, meso, and micro level is discussed.     

Dimensions of Oppression: theorising the embodied subject

This paper argues that a critical study of disability needs to examine how disability is subjectivity experienced, both at a conscious and an unconscious level, as well as having an appreciation of disabling social policies and structures. I begin by identifying the reasons why many social model theorists have not, in the past, seen the analysis of 'experience' as being relevant to our understanding of disability. I adopt an interdisciplinary approach (that is, one that recognises the importance of biological, social, relational and unconscious levels of analysis) in the study of two specific groups of people; those with learning difficulties and those with sickle cell anaemia. I focus particularly on the role of modern medicine within a disablist society in this attempt to demonstrate that bodily, emotional and social differences are mutually constitutive.     

Elder Abuse and Oppression: Voices of Marginalized Elders

The voices of elderly people from marginalized groups are rarely solicited, and the relationship between elder maltreatment and belonging to an oppressed group has not been adequately investigated. This article reviews the literature on oppression and elder abuse and describes findings from the secondary analysis of data from focus group discussions on elder abuse held with marginalized older adults and (quasi)professionals caring for them in two Canadian cities. Participants identified that increased vulnerability to elder abuse was related to oppression experienced as a consequence of ageism, sexism, ableism/ disability, racism, heterosexism/homophobia, classism, and various intersecting types of oppression.     

Race: The Mythic Root of Racism

The term "race" was introduced into science two and a half centuries ago as an arbitrary convenience to describe geographic groupings of humans. These ad hoc racial taxonomies were seized upon, however, as "scientific" justification for slavery and other forms of social, political, and economic oppression. Over the last fifty years, geneticists and biologists have quietly abandoned race as a scientific concept, leaving the general public unaware that racial categories, associated only with culturally selected, physically superficial characteristics, are social rather than genetic. As a result, most individuals remain "racist" in the sense of predicating interaction on racial assignments thought to reflect deep physiological differences. Some of these are conventionally recognized "mean racists." The remainder, however, could well be considered "kind racists," for their seeming benign tolerance defines limits to integration, and their unreflective perpetuation of the enabling belief of racism, that races exist physiologically, serves as a wellspring for mean racism during social crises. Many societies are thus much more racist than they appear. Since the belief that others are physically distinct tends to extend social distance and exacerbate hostility, analysts of social conflict ignore this pool of hidden racism at their peril.     

American Racism: Implications for Social Work

The opportunity to conduct research into an area of personal disability provides the graduate student additional maturation and increased self-realization. The student is thereby able to contribute significantly to the corporate knowledge of the disability through integration of past personal experience with the knowledge and techniques gained through professional education.     

Political Oppression,Social Change and the Family: A View from South Africa

The obvious continuities between the political and the personal, the public and the private, dominate South African life in a way which may not be familiar to those in the Australian context. South African clinical work with families, much of it in the form of mediated interventions, cannot but operate at the edges of our definitions of both what a family is and what it means to be a mental health worker. In this article I argue that thinking broadly about politics and about our work is essential in the service of developing family and personal growth.     

Deconstructing Categories: The Exposure of Silent Racism

Although racism remains an enduring social problem in the United States, few white people see themselves as racist. In an effort to study this paradox, the research discussed here explores racism among those in the “not racist” category. Eight focus groups were conducted in which twenty‐five well‐meaning white women talked openly about racism; subsequently, the women kept journals to record their thoughts on racism. Findings indicate that silent racism pervades the “not racist” category. “Silent racism” refers to negative thoughts and attitudes regarding African Americans and other people of color on the part of white people, including those who see themselves and are generally seen by others as not racist. An apparent implication of silent racism inhabiting the “not racist” category is that the historical construction racist/not racist is no longer meaningful. Moreover, data show that the “not racist” category itself produces latent effects that serve to maintain the racial status quo. I propose replacing the oppositional either/or categories with a continuum that accurately reflects racism in the United States today.