Contact Us
Health and Well-Being
Race, Racism, and Internal and External Health
Racism
In his 2025 book, The Science of Racism, Everything You Need to Know but Probably Don’t—Yet, social psychologist Keon West reviews hundreds of scientific studies on race and racism and analyzes the results. His findings confirm what people who live daily with prejudice usually know already: Racism is prevalent in hiring, education, work and business, banking and finance, friendships and relationships, policing and the justice system, and healthcare. It is ubiquitous, affecting “everything, everywhere, all at once.”
Resilience
Decolonial psychological thinking points to the resiliency of marginalization populations in their ability to cope with the stress of racialized marginalization and targeted discrimination. As trauma therapist Renee Linkleter (2014) put it in Decolonizing Trauma Work: Indigenous Stories and Strategies, “Indigenous peoples have protective factors that increase resiliency, including family networks, generational relationships, community support systems, cultural and spiritual resources and a shared collective history that bonds people together and creates a sense of belonging. Humour is also recognized as a demonstration of resilience.” Resilience takes many forms and is often somatic in nature, according to decolonial therapist Dr. Jennifer Mullan (2023) in Decolonizing Therapy: Oppression, Historical Trauma, and Politicizing Your Practice.
Excerpt from West’s (2025) review of the literature on healthcare:
“In 2020, Wisniewski and Walker called 804 randomly selected US doctors’ offices while pretending to be White, Black, or Hispanic. Despite presenting the same information (other than race), they found that the supposedly Black and Hispanic callers were more frequently asked about their insurance status. Furthermore, despite having the same insurance status, the Black and Hispanic callers were offered appointments further in the future, making them wait longer than otherwise equivalent White callers. In 2007, Green and colleagues tested 287 medical professionals on their levels of explicit anti-Black bias, implicit anti-Black bias, and their recommended treatment for myocardial infarction for particular patients. … Doctors with higher levels of implicit anti-Black bias [were] less likely to offer Black patients—but not White patients—thrombolytic therapy (that is, the life-saving treatment) for their myocardial infarctions (that is, the deadly condition). In a similar study conducted in 2004, Gilligan and colleagues found that prostate-specific antigen tests were less likely to be used on Black men than White men. This pattern leads to a higher incidence of potentially deadly advanced prostate cancer among Black men.”
Research
The ARPC advances research, policy, pedagogy, and praxis that celebrates resiliency and promotes restorative justice and healing from race-based trauma. We recognize the embodied nature of both and commit to catalyzing any research, promoting any policy, and supporting any pedagogy or praxis that exposes or undermines the biases that harm minoritized people and ethically compromise their detractors. We support holistic well-being outside of the academy and within.
Thus we are proud to report on the start of our cross-cultural dialog circle research, led by our doctoral research fellow, David Trachtenberg, MS. The research questions for his study are:
- How does the introduction of mind–body awareness practices; restorative justice community building practices; and mindful listening skills in a university setting impact the ability of college students to engage in dialoging across cultural difference in groups?
- How does the introduction of mind–body awareness practices; restorative justice community building practices; and mindful listening skills in a university setting impact the ability of college students to navigate uncomfortable emotions that arise within dialoging-across-difference groups?
Mr. Trachtenberg has a long and distinguished career as a group facilitator of restorative justice. In his work with the ARPC, he is currently gathering research participants, designing the study, and preparing it for university review-board approval. He will report on the study at the ARPC’s April 8 colloquium and post its results at the end of the spring semester. Save the dates!
