Immersive Virtual Experiences for Fostering Structural Competence Among White Students and Non-Black Students of Color

Smart innovation, systems and technologies · 2025-01-01

Exploring racism in immersive virtual reality: Understanding the effects on awareness and engagement with social and racial inequities.

Technology Mind and Behavior · 2025-01-01 · 1 citations

Immersive virtual reality (IVR) may support meaning-making and learning related to race and racism. The present study explored the use of IVR in supporting awareness and engagement of systemic social and racial inequity in a White, liberal student sample (N = 95). Students were randomly assigned to a control condition (inactive, no-IVR) or treatment condition (IVR experience of racism from the perspective of a Black, male avatar). Social and racial awareness (systems justification, colorblindness) and engagement (empathy, intergroup anxiety) were assessed at three time points: Time 1 (Pre), Time 2 (Post, 2 weeks after Time 1 and immediately following the IVR experience), and Time 3 (Delayed—14 weeks after Time 2, following an anti-racism course completed by all participants). Compared to the control group, participants in the treatment condition reported a greater awareness of structural inequities in society and greater dispositional empathy at Time 2 (Post). At Time 3 (Delayed), following a 14-week anti-racism course completed by all participants, the differences observed between conditions at Time 2 (Post) were no longer statistically significant. Additional within-group analyses revealed delayed Time 3 (Delayed) effects for the control and treatment conditions. The study findings suggest that IVR can effectively enhance social and racial awareness in a sample of White, liberal students.

Radical and Untethered: The Health Benefits of Imagination in Virtual Reality for Black Youth

2024-12-05

Abstract The imagination is a powerful social and revolutionary force. In the following discussion, we consider the health benefits of imagination and the role of immersive virtual experiences, such as virtual reality (VR), in facilitating imagination, particularly for Black youth. The paramount focus on understanding and attenuating threats that digital media pose to health should be complemented by research examining ways digital media may enrich the lives of young people. Immersive technologies have the potential to fundamentally change the ways we observe, learn, think, engage, and imagine. We provide an overview and critique of racial embodiment in VR and the sparse empirical literature linking health, medicine, and imagination. The concepts of radical and untethered imagination are also introduced as distinct imaginary processes that may promote health and be facilitated through the use of VR. Recommendations for future research linking imagination and health are also provided.

Telehealth “Verzuz” Radical Telehealing: Reimagining Social Media as Virtual Healing Spaces for Black Communities

Social Media + Society · 2024-10-01 · 3 citations

Evidence suggests that the conception of “mental health,” as well as Western health care models, needs to be reimagined to better reflect the unique care needs of Black people. Within these systems, Black people are more likely to experience secondary victimization and retraumatization. Despite these systemic failings, Black people often find ways to manage self-care, wellness, and healing. Within the context of dueling pandemics (COVID-19 and racial injustice), Black people turned to social media applications to develop community-led, culturally-congruent care models. This study aims to explore the ways Black people experienced virtual engagements on social media during the dueling pandemics. This exploratory study employed a six-phase thematic analysis approach, while utilizing publicly available textual data (Instagram comments) from two key social media engagements targeting Black audiences. Prominent themes gleaned from this analysis elucidate the healing and therapeutic value of these virtual gatherings. These include: (1) Expression of Gratitude and Appreciation, (2) Necessity, (3) Timeliness, (4) Accessibility, (5) Emotional and Spiritual Impact of the Virtual Space, (6) Ancestral and Culturally-Grounded Healing Practices, (7) Reprieve within the Virtual Space, and (8) Community and Collectivism. Our analysis reveals that when elaborating on their experience participating in two key social media engagements targeting Black audiences, attendees’ responses reflect key aspects of empirically-grounded, culturally-congruent care models for Black people (i.e., radical healing). We contend our findings demonstrate the unique ways social media applications might be more intentionally leveraged to create culturally-congruent care for Black people.

The impact of racism on Black American mental health

The Lancet Psychiatry · 2023-12-13 · 29 citations

Narratives of Uprooting Anti-Black Racism in Higher Education: Developing a Power, Race, Oppression, and Privilege Framework in Social Work

Smith College Studies in Social Work · 2023-10-02 · 3 citations

Social work is in a crucial position to reshape its current teachings centering dominant culture's practices focused on white supremacist theoretical frameworks. Rethinking the social work curriculum requires decolonizing the way we teach and practice, not as a metaphor, but as a concerted effort to incorporate anti-racist and liberation-based ideologies with an emphasis on centering the voices of Black people, folks Indigenous to the Americas, and non-Black People of Color. Through the narratives of students, faculty, and alumni, we highlight our stories in creating, evaluating, and maintaining a course on decolonizing social work education at a predominantly white institution (PWI). We provide an overview of a collaborative effort to create and develop the power, race, oppression, and privilege (PROP) framework. Through the eyes of the PROP Collective, included here are: the history and content of the Foundations of Social Work/Decolonizing Social Work (DSW) course or the "PROP class," student activism, course suffusion, teaching and learning methodologies, and yearly reflections toward improvement, facilitator support, and ongoing multidisciplinary collaborative effort to improve the course.

Exploring Perceptions of Structural Racism in Housing Valuation through 3D Visualizations

2023-10-26

This research, formatted as an exploratory study, attempted to investigate perceptions concerning the consequences of redlining and structural racism in housing valuation via three-dimensional (3D) visualization models. Unity3D and Mapbox SDK for Unity were used to visualize two neighborhoods in the Bronx County of New York; single or multiple dimensions of visualization to represent both racial differences and the presence of condominiums in the respective neighborhoods were used. Thirty-three respondents participated in a user study to capture perceptions of seventeen visualizations, and responses generally favored the use of multiple dimensions of congruent visualizations. This work attempts to encourage future development of 3D visualization techniques to stimulate interactive understanding of structural racism.

The Racial Projects of White Social Work Students

Advances in Social Work · 2022-11-08 · 5 citations

Despite a theoretical shift toward anti-racism, racial projects within social work assert public positions against structural racism, while upholding mechanisms that perpetuate its existence. Analyzing the perceptions and intentions of incoming white liberal social work students is necessary for any effort to deconstruct racial projects in the social work profession. The sample used in the present study is composed of a white (n = 139), mostly liberal-identified (84%) group of incoming first year MSW students. Students were asked to provide open-ended responses to a vignette about a Black mother engaging with Child Protective Services (CPS). The vignette was designed to assess structural analysis and decision-making in response to real-world examples of racism and anti-Blackness. The study employed semantic thematic analysis to describe the ways social work students make meaning of the vignette and how this process informs their proposed actions. Students varied significantly on the level of analysis they provided in response to the vignette. The analysis examines patterns of racial projects across 3 main response categories: 1) Descriptive, 2) Analytical, and 3) Action. This analysis is important for informing pedagogical innovations aimed at training anti-racist and anti-oppressive social workers.

Race and nonrace-specific attributions of discrimination: Implications for major depressive disorder among African American, Black Caribbean, and White adults.

American Journal of Orthopsychiatry · 2022-01-01 · 3 citations

The discrimination and health literature has not clearly resolved whether race-based experiences with discrimination are meaningfully distinct from other forms of unfair treatment or whether race-based experiences affect racial and ethnic minorities differently than non-Hispanic Whites. This study compared the effects of racial and nonrace-specific discrimination on lifetime risk for major depressive disorder (MDD) using data from the National Survey of American Life (NSAL), a nationally representative sample of African Americans, Caribbean Blacks, and non-Hispanic Whites (N = 6,082). Discrimination was defined in two ways: (a) nonrace-specific (any experience of discrimination regardless of the attribution) and (b) racial (discrimination attributed to a race-related reason such as race or skin color), which allowed for an assessment of any unique effects of racial discrimination on MDD risk for each ethnic group. Nonrace-specific discrimination was associated with increased MDD risk among both African Americans and non-Hispanic Whites. However, race-specific discrimination was associated with increased MDD risk for African Americans and Black Caribbeans, but not non-Hispanic Whites. These findings suggest that nonrace-specific discrimination measures-used commonly in the existing literature-may obscure unique associations between racial discrimination and depression; race-related discrimination may have uniquely detrimental consequences for MDD risk among Black people (e.g., African Americans and Black Caribbeans). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

NSF Science and Technology Center (STC) Learning the Earth with Artificial Intelligence and Physics (LEAP) Strategic and Implementation Plan 2021-2026 (Version 1, April 28, 2022)

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2022-04-28

LEAP's Strategic Plan articulates the Center's vision, mission, values, and goals. LEAP’s Strategic Plan will serve as a guide for setting priorities, allocating resources, assessing capabilities, and identifying needs to define the new discipline of Climate Data Science over the next five years.<br> <br> LEAP's Strategic Plan will be updated and versioned on a periodic basis. The current version is V1, dated April 28, 2022.