Racism in occupational therapy: “It’s part of who we are . . .”
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Since the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, statements of positionality in relation to racism, territorial acknowledgements, and proclamations against systemic racism have become more common.This is a good thing.Positioning in relation to racism matters.Yet such statements too often lack social, historical, and political context, lack analysis of root causes of racism, and rarely move toward actions.They risk becoming mere performances.In this editorial, we contextualize the positions from which we write about racism, in Eastern Canada, to show the ways colonial racism is inseparable from the construction of nations, cultures, and institutions.Drawing on the anti-racism commitments of numerous occupational therapy organizations, we examine evidence for and impacts of racism within occupational therapy, and we generate ideas for action. Positioning ourselves in a nation built on colonial racismWe write today from Mi'kma'ki, territory the Mi'kmaq have lived in and cared for since time immemorial.The First Peoples of this place, never "gave it up," never "lost" it to the victors as the spoils of war.Rather they signed Treaties of Peace and Friendship with the British Crown in 1725, 1729, 1749, 1779, with both sides agreeing to live in harmony, respecting the rights of the other.Also in 1749 (when not signing friendship treaties) Governor Edward Cornwallis, representing the British Crown, signed a declaration offering a £25 bounty for any Mi'kmaw scalp, an even higher price for Mi'kmaq brought in alive (women and children were worth a bit less).That decree was rescinded, then reissued in 1756 by Governor Charles Lawrence, and has never been repealed (Paul, 2006;Tattrie, 2013).One of us is a Mi'kmaw woman.Presumably, the rest of us could turn her in, somewhere, and claim the bounty.This forested land was gradually cleared, while the British and French fought for sovereignty.During their first 150 years in Mi'kma'ki, the French-heritage Acadians formed alliances with Mi'kmaw friends and neighbors.When they refused to sign loyalty to the British Crown, they were expelled, mostly to the United States during the Expulsion of the Acadians 1755-1764.The lands they had Racism in occupational therapy: "It's part of who we are . .."
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.014 | 0.055 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.006 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.012 | 0.008 |
| Open science | 0.005 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.028 | 0.041 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 0.005 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".