“I Am Blacker Than You”

Okonofua, Benjamin Aigbe

doi:10.1177/2158244013499162

Cited by 48 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…URM individuals include those of African-American, Indigenous American, Alaskan/ Hawaiian Native, and Latinx and/or Hispanic heritage (20 USC §1067k); we use the HURM designation to recognize the history of enslavement and active oppression in the United States for these populations. The NCNH group predominantly included Asian/Asian-Americans, but also African immigrants (37).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Suggestions for Improving Invited Speaker Diversity To Reflect Trainee Diversity

Hagan

Pollet

Libertucci

2020

J Microbiol Biol Educ.

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Within the field of biomedical research in the United States, the proportion of underrepresented minorities at the Full Professor level has remained consistently low, even though trainee demographics are becoming more diverse. Underrepresented groups face a complex set of barriers to achieving faculty status, including imposter syndrome, increased performance expectations, and patterns of exclusion. Institutionalized racism and sexism have contributed to these barriers and perpetuated policy that excludes underrepresented minorities. These barriers can contribute to decreased feelings of belonging, which may result in decreased retention of underrepresented minorities. Though some universities have altered their hiring practices to increase the number of underrepresented minorities in the applicant pool, these changes have not been sufficient. Here we argue that departmental invited seminar series can be used to provide trainees with scientific role models and increase their sense of belonging while institutions work towards more inclusive policy. In this study, we investigated the demographics (gender and race) of invited seminar speakers over 5 years to the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Michigan. We also investigated current trainee demographics and compared them to invited speaker demographics to gauge if our trainees were being provided with representation of themselves. We found that invited speaker demographics were skewed towards Caucasian men, and our trainee demographics were not being represented. From these findings, we proposed policy change within the department to address how speakers are being invited with the goal of increasing speaker diversity to better reflect trainee diversity. To facilitate this process, we developed a set of suggestions and a web-based resource that allows scientists, committees, and moderators to identify members of underserved groups. These resources can be easily adapted by other fields or subfields to promote inclusion and diversity at seminar series, conferences, and colloquia.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Suggestions for Improving Invited Speaker Diversity To Reflect Trainee Diversity

Hagan

Pollet

Libertucci

2020

J Microbiol Biol Educ.

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“…The author understands there is an incomprehensibly high level of complexity to the human and social experience. The author also understands there are many places where language, ethnicity, and nationality are the primary means of categorizing people instead of race (Nsamenang, 2013;Okonofua, 2013). However, when situations relate to racial identity, race becomes a more important part of one's identity, which justifies the existence of this and other theories that focus primarily on race (Benjamin, Choi, & Strickland, 2010;Shelton & Sellers, 2000).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Toward Conceptualizing Race and Racial Identity Development Within an Attractor Landscape

Hill

2017

SAGE Open

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Concepts, theories, and findings of race and racial identity development were reviewed and conceptualized into a single model based on principles of complexity and chaos. This article proposes race can be understood as a complex adaptive system and conceptualized as an attractor landscape. In this model, trajectories represent racial identity development or progression through an attractor landscape comprised of racial categories. Although this works well as a conceptual model, the modeling of racial identity development within an attractor landscape is affected by practical constraints related to data collection and many of the same limitations of existing racial identity development theories. The proposed model also creates additional challenges because of its interdisciplinary nature.

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“…The positionality of Black African immigrants in the U.S. cannot be fully understood without situating them in relation to African Americans. Having a better understanding of the dynamics between the two subgroups aids one to understand how the dominant group uses "manipulative deflection" (Okonofua 2013) to reaffirm the overarching hegemonic social order. It also helps one to understand the unique worldview of Black African immigrants and validates the imperative for a Black African immigrant standpoint theory that affirms the heterogeneity of the Black population in the United States.…”

Section: Clash Of Blacknessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Searching for Theoretical Agency: Towards a Black African Immigrant Standpoint Epistemology

TCHOUMI

2020

REA

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This article describes the theoretical construction of a Black African Immigrant Standpoint Epistemology (BAISE). BAISE is an emerging system of thought that seeks and locates the souls of Black African immigrants, re-centers their conceptions of knowledge, and describes their theory of action. Such an epistemology is critical as a tool for Black African immigrants to more effectively express their theoretical agency and construct an alternative form of knowledge that accounts for the totality of their experiences and their social realities. The article first describes the key tenets of several conceptual frameworks that have been appropriated and reconfigured to provide the conceptual foundations of BAISE. These core components are interwoven together to capture the complexity of the experiences and the realities of Black African immigrants and create a tapestry of concepts and knowledges providing the epistemological context for BAISE. Among the many coeval and complementary theories of knowledge available, theories that focus on agency and the construction of realities, on the valorization of previously discredited and discounted epistemological alternatives, as well as on the deconstruction of the positionality of Black African immigrants on the racialized checkerboard and on the re-centering of the marginalized and oppressed lives have seeded the emergence of BAISE. The second major section of this article presents the initial theoretical development of BAISE. The conceptualization process describes how the marginalized status of Black African immigrants shapes their identities and perspectives on the world.

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“I Am Blacker Than You”

Cited by 48 publications

References 43 publications

Suggestions for Improving Invited Speaker Diversity To Reflect Trainee Diversity

Suggestions for Improving Invited Speaker Diversity To Reflect Trainee Diversity

Toward Conceptualizing Race and Racial Identity Development Within an Attractor Landscape

Searching for Theoretical Agency: Towards a Black African Immigrant Standpoint Epistemology

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