Anti-racism Training Using the Biopsychosocial Model: Frederick Douglas' Earthquake, Whirlwind, Storm and Fire

Rochester, New York is home to George Engel and the Biopsychosocial (BPS) model. Rochester was also home to Fredrick Douglas and a stop on the Underground Railroad. More recently, Rochester, New York is also where Daniel Prude died at the hands of the police. In this article, we discuss how our department of family medicine has incorporated race and racism into the BPS model and how we have used it to help primary care trainees become more effective in their work with Black Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) patients.

Conjuring Hands: The Art of Curious Women of Color

The verb “to conjure” is a complex one, for it includes in its standard definition a great range of possible actions or operations, not all of them equivalent, or even compatible. In its most common usage, “to conjure” means to perform an act of magic or to invoke a supernatural force, by casting a spell, say, or performing a particular ritual or rite. But “to conjure” is also to influence, to beg, to command or constrain, to charm, to bewitch, to move or convey, to imagine, to visualize, to call to mind, or to remember. —Rachael DeLue 2012, para 1. When we create with our Brown hands, feminine energy, and full spirits, we conjure. To exist, survive, and thrive in these bodies is a continuous act of conjuring. Our walks conjure. Our smiles conjure. Our tears conjure. Our laughs conjure. Our words conjure. Our artworks are conjurings. We, a Black/Filipina-American woman, a Dominican-American, and a Black-American woman, are guided by our solidarity with one another and all other Black and Brown female identifying persons whose raced and gendered subjectivities exist both inside and outside of colonization, white supremacy, and patriarchy. We bring to life our colored imaginations and curiosities, and share them with the world. We are united by our need for safety, autonomy as beings, dissolution of trauma, and desire to ask, “What would happen if I…?” Imaginative, curious Women of Color (WoC) founded the underground railroad, guided captured Africans and Tainos to the mountains, ignited the Civil Rights Movement, organized laborers and immigrants, birthed the #BlackLivesMatter Movement, conceived the #MeToo Movement, and so much more. Like our kindred counterparts, we have an unrelenting urge to examine, question, wonder, desire, speak to, lead, be curious, and “conjure.” As practicing artists and art educators, our critical arts-based practices are grounded in intersectional feminisms like Womanism, Black Feminist Theory, and Chicana Feminist Theory, which allow us to do these very things.

Negotiating the other: museum exhibition and the construction of heritage in marginalized groups

How heritage messages are conceived and presented at museums, and how people make sense of and debate these messages is an overarching concern of this paper. For the purposes of this report, heritage is defined as the cultural legacy, including tangible and intangible histories and practices, that is handed down from the past within a community, and which is an essential element of an individual's and a community's sense of identity. Museums operate as sites where people experience and learn about their heritage. But a central concern is how these public institutions encompass marginalized groups within this construction of heritage, identity and community. The focal point of those interactions between museums and people is their exhibitions. This essential communicative tool of museums, this media of production and consumption of meaning, is the point of interest for this paper. As the place where the interests of both sides of the communicative exchange converge, exhibitions reveal the tensions within the system, and the process by which changing ideas about heritage and community are negotiated. Exhibits can be seen as texts anchored in the contexts and processes of their production and reception. Or they can be seen as the dialogic space in which a political relationship unfolds. This paper offers insights into how the political nature of communicative practices underlying the production and consumption of museum exhibitions affects the heritage of marginalized groups. How exhibitions come into being - their modes of production - how they communicate as texts and how they are used or read is illuminated, using as a case study a particular museum exhibit about African-Canadians entitled The Underground Railroad: Next Stop Freedom. Developed by the Department of Canadian Heritage to be displayed in Toronto, the exhibit was installed at the Royal Ontario Museum in 2002 and is currently on view at Black Creek Pioneer Village. The research encompasses the circuit of communication as it relates to the conditions surrounding the conceptualizing and negotiation of this exhibition: what is presented, why it is presented, how it is presented, to whom, and how it is received.

Negotiating the other: museum exhibition and the construction of heritage in marginalized groups

How heritage messages are conceived and presented at museums, and how people make sense of and debate these messages is an overarching concern of this paper. For the purposes of this report, heritage is defined as the cultural legacy, including tangible and intangible histories and practices, that is handed down from the past within a community, and which is an essential element of an individual's and a community's sense of identity. Museums operate as sites where people experience and learn about their heritage. But a central concern is how these public institutions encompass marginalized groups within this construction of heritage, identity and community. The focal point of those interactions between museums and people is their exhibitions. This essential communicative tool of museums, this media of production and consumption of meaning, is the point of interest for this paper. As the place where the interests of both sides of the communicative exchange converge, exhibitions reveal the tensions within the system, and the process by which changing ideas about heritage and community are negotiated. Exhibits can be seen as texts anchored in the contexts and processes of their production and reception. Or they can be seen as the dialogic space in which a political relationship unfolds. This paper offers insights into how the political nature of communicative practices underlying the production and consumption of museum exhibitions affects the heritage of marginalized groups. How exhibitions come into being - their modes of production - how they communicate as texts and how they are used or read is illuminated, using as a case study a particular museum exhibit about African-Canadians entitled The Underground Railroad: Next Stop Freedom. Developed by the Department of Canadian Heritage to be displayed in Toronto, the exhibit was installed at the Royal Ontario Museum in 2002 and is currently on view at Black Creek Pioneer Village. The research encompasses the circuit of communication as it relates to the conditions surrounding the conceptualizing and negotiation of this exhibition: what is presented, why it is presented, how it is presented, to whom, and how it is received.

Reimagining Black Freedom – Beyond Place and Time

In this article, the writings of three prolific writers, Canadian Katherine McKittrick, Canadian-Trinidadian Marlene NourbeSe Philips and American Maya Angelou, intersect at the point of Black liberation and form a singular voice where a reimagined freedom can emerge. The piece begins with McKittrick’s research of Black geographies and what Black freedom as a destination looks like, by way of a fixed Underground Railroad journey to settlements like Ontario’s Negro Creek Road. It further interrogates and reverses the power dynamic between the European colonizer and Black settler, by engaging with Philip’s novel, Harriet’s Daughter. Here, teen protagonist, Margaret, changes the rules of her Underground Railroad game, making it possible for anybody to be a slave. Finally, these ideas are connected to Angelou’s autobiographical accounts of racism in the Deep South and her poetic expressions of hope and freedom through her writings, Caged Bird and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.