Critical Reflections on This Historical Moment for Community-engaged and Participatory Research

Abstract

) pandemic starkly exposed, once again, the depth of the racial and social inequities in morbidity and mortality across individuals and communities. It reified systemic racism, with ongoing police shootings further highlighting the deeply entrenched anti-Black racism and how little has changed since the first slave patrols evolved into our system of policing. It further exposed the support for policing from a system of justice that effectively sustains racial separation accompanied by inequality of access to services. Social biases are further evident in the consistency of data by group regarding racial profiling and traffic stops, involvement with the legal system and incarceration rates. Although racism touches every group at some point in time, its genesis in the United States validated Native American genocide and African chattel slavery. As Native Indians were relegated to reservations, slaves remained a visible part of everyday America. Visibility has produced an embedding of anti-Black racism into our laws, policies, practices, history and media, resulting in a massive imbalance in the distribution of community level life and health affirming resources and opportunities. Confrontations regarding rights and the potential for silencing populations most adversely impacted once again occupies the public conscience. Current legislated actions to restrict voting rights, to censor and/or ban books from schools and libraries that address race and gender orientation and identity differences, and debates about academic freedom and first amendment rights in institutions of higher learning and the media, resonate with post reconstruction action to rescind the rights of freed Black Americans to citizenship through repressive Black Codes/Jim Crow laws. 1,2 As we chart a way forward, the proactive response of many communities of color during COVID and the response to the brutal police murder of George Floyd, among so many other often unarmed Black people, remind us of the central role of community engagement for raising awareness and for collaboratively addressing the needs and priorities of our most marginalized.