Finding Hope in Meaningful Steps Against Racism in Nursing

Since the summer of 2020, a national movement has grown in the United States to combat the egregious racism that infects our country. As recounted in an earlier editorial (Thomas, 2020), this movement began after the grisly murder of a Black man (George Floyd) perpetrated by white police. Millions of people (of every color) who had never before taken to the streets to protest racism began to do so—all over the world. White people, in particular, began to truly grapple with our privilege of belonging to a dominant caste (see Wilkerson, 2020, for comparison of the structural racism in America to the caste system of India). Determined to take actions that would contribute, at least in a small way, to a less racist society, I began with introspection and educating myself. As a White woman, I have experienced discrimination on the basis of gender (and more recently, on the basis of age), but I never had to face the pure hatred evoked by skin color that is so eloquently described by many people of color.

Among the many revelatory classic and contemporary books I have read over the past 2 years were Derrick Bell’s Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism (1992/2018), Ruth Frankenberg’s White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness (1993), Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me (2015), and Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility (2018). I have drawn from these works in teaching my university classes and in my writing. Sometimes I have also sat in silence, dwelling with the anger, horror, and shame that they evoked. Sometimes I wonder if we are making any progress as a nation when White supremacist groups still attract followers rabid enough to engage in an insurrection in the Capitol. Words of Lady Bird Johnson, describing the 1967 tide of “a nasty, racist, anti-liberal authoritarian impulse consuming the country” (cited in Sweig, 2021, p. 302) seem as accurate today as in 1967.

But today, I focus solely on racism in the profession of nursing. A doctoral colloquium at my university (described in part in Thomas, 2022), provided contemporary examples of racism within nursing. Black doctoral students reported that racism is still prevalent in clinical settings, including overt forms (such as calling them the “n” word and refusing their care) and microaggressions such as presuming they must be janitorial or housekeeping staff. The newly published report Racism in Nursing (National Commission to Address Racism in Nursing, 2022) amply documents the history of racism and its deleterious consequences for all nurses of color, including Latinos, Filipinos, Native Americans, and other minorities. In the past, racism prevented some people of color from even accessing nursing education, and substantial racism in the work environment continues to affect their well-being today.

Therefore, it is truly historic that the American Nurses Association (ANA) voted unanimously at its June 2022 meeting to adopt a Racial Reckoning Statement acknowledging both acts of omission and acts of commission that perpetuated systemic racism (ANA, 2022). Forgiveness was asked for past harms such as purposefully excluding Black nurses from the organization and failing to be responsive to Hispanic Nurses, forcing them to form their own separate organization.

ANA voiced commitment to a journey of reckoning and reconciliation that will take time. I find hope in this historic move. It is a meaningful step that can be emulated by other influential organizations in other countries. Racism in nursing is, of course, not confined to the United States.