Amplifying Silenced Voices: A Critical Reflection on Challenges Facing Occupational Therapy Academics With Multiple Minoritized Identities.

Abstract

The issues faced by racialized; female; immigrant; and two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning, intersex, and asexual/agender + (2SLGBTQIA+) occupational therapy academics and practitioners highlight the overlapping systems of oppression due to their multiple minoritized identities (MMIs). Through critical reflection, the authors bring to light how oppressive occupational therapy structures and processes continue to sustain Othering within the profession, including the paradox of occupational justice. The authors caution that ignoring issues faced by occupational therapy academics with MMIs might end in tragic intersectionality. Positionality Statement: Natasha Smet identifies as an immigrant queer woman of color, scholar, and practitioner who was born and raised in South Africa during the Apartheid era when laws were enforced to segregate people solely on the basis of race. Although Apartheid ended in 1994, her experiential knowledge of systemic racism, overt discrimination, and oppression continued as a survivor of educational and academic workplace violence and abuse in the United States. Her lived experience of oppression continues to be her catalyst to disrupt white supremacy across academic institutional settings. Jeffrey John Andrion is a racialized, straight, cisgender, immigrant male academic who was born and raised in the Philippines. Although he is an immigrant settler of Canada, he is also a descendant of former colonizees in his native home country. With experiential knowledge of racialization and Othering, he grew up with the terms resistance and oppression. In this column, we define Othering as "the process whereby an individual or groups of people attribute negative characteristics to other individuals or groups of people that set them apart as representing that which is opposite to them" (Rohleder, 2014, p. 1306).