RACISM

Racism

[Name of the Institute]

Racism

Article 1)

The article under analysis is “When is a bystander not a bystander? A typology of the roles of bystanders in workplace bullying” by Megan Paull published in Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources. In spite of the potential for bystander intervention to have an impact on everyday and other forms of racism, there has been insufficient research on this topic. There is little indication in the literature of the extent to which individuals engage in bystander anti-racism when witnessing an incident of racism (Wagner, 2008).

One exception is Hyers' (2007) examination of women's responses to anti-Black racism, anti-Semitism, heterosexism, and sexism. Hyers (2007) recruited 98 female participants from a university (and its surrounding community) in the Northeast United States. Participants were asked to record their experiences of discrimination over a 1-week period. The author found that while 75% of participants considered an assertive response (“making some outwardly visible sign of dissatisfaction” [p. 4]), only 40% actually made one. A subsequent study by Hyers (2010), albeit focused on heterosexism, found that respondents considered an assertive response in two-thirds of incidents, but only acted on them in about half of the incidents. In a study of interpersonal violence, Banyard (2008) asked 389 undergraduate university students about their engagement in a range of bystander behaviors (51 behaviors in total). Participants were asked to indicate how many of these behaviors they had engaged in over the past 2 months. One of the statements pertained to bystander anti-racism, and Banyard found that 47% of participants indicated that they had spoken up against racist jokes in the past 2 months (p. 90).

Turning briefly to the literature on bystander interventions in school bullying, Aboud and Joong (2008) interviewed 50 children in either third or sixth grade at a primary school in Montreal, Canada, about bullying incidents and found most bystanders did not help. In 44% of race-based bullying incidents at school, some or all of the bystanders did nothing (either watched or left the scene), and in a further 25% of incidents, they encouraged the bully. Respondents intervened against the bullying in only 30% of incidents.

The literature cited in this article on prevalence of bystander anti-racism suggests that there is a proportion of potentially active bystanders who are inhibited from taking action for various reasons that we return to below, and this is a largely untapped resource for anti-racism action. What is clear, however, is that we currently lack robust data on the prevalence of bystander anti-racism and of stated preparedness to take such action. Also missing is a clear understanding of how the prevalence of bystander anti-racism varies across different settings, as well as by the form and overtness of the racism in question.

If bystander anti-racism is to become a key component of anti-racist social policy, productive outcomes of bystander anti-racism must be demonstrated. This section reviews the literature on the possible outcomes of bystander anti-racism for a range of different social actors and highlights areas where further research is ...