Pathway Model 1: Institutional Racism

Background

Lauri Andress, Ph.D., MPH, JD

As founding Chair of the IDC the need for a pathway model came to me at the end of our first year in 2019-2020. We were discussing many kinds of recommendations, activities, and solutions. I kept saying and thinking that we should consider these activities as “hearts and mind” work versus policy change. I felt that we needed something visual to provide a way to explain the “why” of the work and/or the rationale to support strategies we were utilizing.

I did not have time or the needed inspiration to develop the model at that point.

An example of a visual is a pathway model. I use pathways models in a lot of my research to explore the origins, causes, and solutions to problems. I think of these models as “ground truthing,” or reality testing, including deductive and inductive reasoning. In the case of deductive, testing out specific instances in the model to see if the model can accommodate that instance. The pathway model may also reflect inductive reasoning, putting general, specific truths together to see if a conclusion may be reached.

Now in 2020-2021, we are launching an evolving, inaugural pathway model for the IDC Committee. We expect to use it to explain the ideas, concepts, causes, issues, and solutions around which we center our work.

With this model we expect to provide a visual rationale for (1) the data or evidence collected in the form of the stories; (2) the Committee recommendations; and (3) most significantly, the problem to be solved.

First, we should consider the problem that IDC has presented on the right side of the model in comparison to the problem(s) as presented by the Institution. In the policy process, it is said that the framing, presentation, and statement of the problem determines the breadth and depth of the solutions. The groups that are dominant in that exercise, control the board and can eliminate some solutions while highlighting other solutions.

For example, what solutions dominate if the problem is as stated below versus the alternative that is also described (opposite sides of the continuum)?

We have not historically hired BIPOC faculty - or - we need competent BIPOC faculty?

Women faculty need to speak up, be confident - or - we need to stop favoritism, bullying, discrimination, and harassment?

Description

The Puzzle/Problem

So the puzzle or problem to be solved in this model is located on the far right. It is harm, named as discrimination and described as loss of opportunities and resources.

Causes of the Puzzle/Problem

The causes of the problem are meant to be traced by working backwards across the model from right to left. Thus the first attribution made to the cause of the problem is stigmatized social status, which, in the case of the U.S., means race and ethnicity.

Note that the box labeled as stigma is located in the middle of the diagram and stretches across the model. This box also includes hatred and inhumane treatment. The reason for including all three responses to group differences in this box labeled stigma is to demonstrate that this feature of the system endures over time and that the nature of the stigma changes with time. In the 19th century, the inhumane treatment as slave labor dominated, and stigma was needed to justify the use of human bodies for capitalistic gains.

Microaggressions and Institutional Racism

The model proposes that since the civil rights movement and the advent of laws and regulations that made equality compulsory, stigmatization, or responses to group differences, takes the form of less obvious actions that include microaggressions and institutional racism. Interestingly, the extralegal killings of Black and Brown people by law enforcement could be considered a continuation of inhumane treatment reminiscent of slavery and the post civil war lynchings, where Blacks were treated as as less than human. It is important to note that the model has a temporal element.

Root Causes

Next, additional attributions or root causes of the problem of discrimination (loss of opportunities and resources) are presented on the far left. They are (1) societal values and (2) historical factors. Societal values (e.g., the cultural toolkit is another pathway model that I use) include ideas, values, ideology, beliefs, and cognitive models that act as silent, subconscious guides to understanding “differences” between groups. Historical factors relevant to U.S. history are defined primarily as slavery.

Note that historical factors are disputed in our society, as some say institutional racism ended because slavery ended. Slavery, in this case, is defined as institutional racism. There may also be some confusion with systemic racism. In either case, these ideas are incorrect and inconsistent with the definition of institutional and systemic racism.

Manifestation of Racism over Time

And so (again) if we accept the temporal element stretching across the model at the bottom, stigma and hatred continue across time and take the form in the present as microaggressions plus institutional racism in the form of policies, rules, and regulations [top and bottom boxes of the model]. Here, institutional racism works in an automatic, unquestioning, relentless way - distributing (withholding) resources and opportunities (the problem on the right of the model ) in an unjust, unfair, inequitable manner.

There are four other elements worth noting about this model:

Denial of Racism

Denial of racism by BIPOC people is listed in a box between institutional racism and loss of opportunities and resources. This box is meant to question whether racism still occurs if a BIPOC person does not believe that it occurs. The model theorizes that the answer is yes. Simply because someone does not believe that racism occurs, does not mean that they don’t experience the loss of opportunities and resources. It may possibly mean that the person does not sense racism emotionally, cognitively, or physically (see box labeled trauma). It is also worth noting that this kind of denial of racism calms White fears of their responsibility for racist acts and supports common ideas that racism would not exist if BIPOC people “got over it” and moved forward.

Trauma

Next, we should examine the box labeled trauma in the middle of the model. This represents the newest clinical and public health research that posits that the trauma experienced from racism gets under the skin, literally. Today we believe that groups experience racism in and upon their bodies in the form of trauma transmitted through the central nervous system in a fight or flight response that is triggered relentlessly by everyday, ongoing experiences of racism acted out over time and across generations. Further, this physical trauma impacts the population’s sense of being, notions of resiliency, security, and competency or self-efficacy.

Last, this model is high functioning, meaning it has a combination of three important characteristics: resilience, adaptivity, and hierarchy.

Resilience

Resilience is a measure of a system’s ability to survive and persist, even in the face of great pressure to change. Using, for example, the civil war or the civil rights movement. Resilience is high if there is a variable environment and the system can bounce or spring back into shape after being pressed or stretched.

Adaptivity

Adaptivity, or self-organization, refers to a system’s capacity to make and remake its own structure simpler or more complex, to diversify and evolve in response to external pressures.

Hierarchy

Hierarchy refers to arrangements of subsystems to facilitate the system’s functioning, so that if any part stops functioning, the system may keep going. The hierarchical operations make it a tough system to stop.

Conclusion

In this model and our work as the Inclusion and Diversity Committee, we think that strategies such as books, education, awareness, speakers, training, dialogue, and presentations all become “hearts and minds” work addressing the need to understand historical factors, societal beliefs, and/or stop microaggressions.

On the other hand, policy changes are meant to address institutional racism and mitigate or correct discrimination defined as loss of opportunities and resources.

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