Diversity and Inclusion or Tokens? A Qualitative Study of Black Women Academic Nurse Leaders in the United States

Severe under-representation of Black women academic nurse leaders persists in United States higher education, and a major research gap still exists regarding experiences of these leaders, and facilitators of and barriers to their success. Our objective was to examine how race and gender influence how Black women academic nurse leaders’ function in their leadership positions, how they are perceived by their peers, and how their perception of race, gender, class, and power influences diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in the workplace. Critical race theory was used as a guiding theory, and the study design involved narrative inquiry followed by thematic analysis. Four overarching themes with four sub-themes were revealed: (a) Paying a personal price for authenticity, (b) Being the only one is hard even when you are in charge, (c) The illusion of diversity and inclusion while trying to survive, and (d) Focusing on building and sustaining diversity, equity, and inclusion. Implications for nursing education including instituting training for faculty in anti-racist pedagogy and requiring nursing programs to meet inclusivity metrics for approval and accreditation

Building resilience in contemporary nursing practice

YesThe nursing profession is being threatened by staff shortages. Catherine Best explains why building resilience from within the profession is vital to safeguarding its future, by keeping newly qualified nurses in the job and preventing emotional ‘burnout’ across disciplines Resilience in nursing has been critiqued and challenged throughout the nursing literature. Trends in nursing have led to many nurses leaving the profession early in their career, often due to the immense pressures that they work under. There are many opinions on how nurses can develop the resilience needed to maintain professional integrity and continue to provide safe and effective care, while attempting to shoulder the considerable impact of political and professional drivers. This not only leaves nurses exhausted but often without hope. By taking collective action, this article argues that nurses may benefit from sharing ideas and learning from others, and in so doing rekindle hope and a belief that things can change

Togo: Thorny transition and misguided aid at the roots of economic misery

The parliamentary elections of October 2007, the first free Togolese elections since decades, were meant to correct at least partially the rigged presidential elections of 2005. Western donors considered it as a litmus test of despotic African regimes’ propensity to change towards democratization and economic prosperity. They took Togo as model to test their approach of political conditionality of aid, which had been emphasised also as corner stone of the joint EU-Africa strategy. Empirical findings on the linkage between democratization and economic performance are challenged in this paper because of its basic data deficiencies. It is open to question, whether Togo’s expected economic consolidation and growth will be due to democratization of its institutions or to the improved external environment, notably the growing competition between global players for African natural resources

Examining the Social Distance Between Africans and African Americans: The Role of Internalized Racism

African immigrants are continuously migrating to the United States and comprise a major part of the immigrant population. In a recent U.S. Bureau of Census report on foreign-born residents in the United States, African immigrants numbered 364,000 out of 1.6 million foreign-born people of African origin living in the United States (Rong & Brown, 2002). Much of the psychological literature about immigration is framed in terms of issues of adjustment. (Ward & Kennedy, 2001). Despite the growing number of African immigrants and the awareness of incidents of acculturative stress and adjustment difficulties among various immigrant groups, there are limited studies that have examined the adjustment of African groups to racism and racial discrimination in the United States. This study explores the complex and what might be described by some scholars as the somewhat nonexistent relationship between Africans and African Americans within the United States. For the purpose of this discussion the author is hypothesizing that racism plays a prominent role in this dynamic of social distance between Africans and African Americans. An emphasis is placed on internalized racism as a variable in the divide that keeps these two groups with common African ancestry from being able to form a larger sense of community. Separate focus groups were conducted with African American and African participants in an effort to better understand the nature of the relationship between both groups. During focus groups, the origins of prejudice and stereotypes about both groups were discussed, and ways of ameliorating existing social distance was explored. Participants also completed the Modified Nadanolitization Inventory (Taylor, Wilson, & Dobbins 1972), an internalized racism scale that measures the presence of racist beliefs among participants. Results from this study provides information regarding the role of internalized racism which arose from slavery, colonization, racism, discrimination, and white domination, as applied to the hypothesis of social distance in the relationship between Africans and African Americans in the United States. Suggestions for future research studies are also provided

Hybrid Maritime Security Governance and Limited Statehood in the Gulf of Guinea: A Nigerian Case Study

This article attempts to expand the scope of inquiry into “the market for force” as an important area of study in international relations by focusing on the privatization of aspects of maritime security governance in the Gulf of Guinea (GoG) in West Africa and sets out to fill a persistent gap in the study of the privatization of maritime security as part of the normative shift in the global political economy that permits non-state actors to play prominent roles in security provision, particularly in the Gulf of Guinea (GoG) in West Africa. Extant studies erroneously attribute the persistence and escalation of piracy incidents in the subregion to corruption, weak law enforcement, and grievances over high levels of poverty and unsustainable livelihoods that push coastal community members towards maritime criminality. While providing invaluable insights into contemporary piracy and the justification for a hybrid maritime security governance strategy and the transformations in international maritime law, these studies merely analyze the symptoms, rather than a theorization of the paradox that piracy and other maritime crime incidents have escalated at the same time that many GoG states have substantially modernized and, in principle, improved the anti-piracy capacity of national navies

The political economy of international shipping in West Africa

International shipping, as an infrastructure of international trade, is a key source of power in world politics, and for developing countries, it allegedly contributes to their underdevelopment. So, in 1964, they embarked on a vigorous attempt to restructure the liberal regime governing world shipping and to replace it with one that would reflect their developmental aspirations. This attempt culminated in the adoption of the United Nations Convention on a Code of Conduct for Liner Conferences in 1974 which became law in 1983. This quest for a new international maritime order was integral to the larger demand for a new international economic order in the early 1970s.^ After almost 28 years, it has become obvious that developing countries have failed to change the liberal shipping regime. Liberal institutionalists attribute this failure to lack of leadership that is willing to bear the cost of creating a new regime. Neo-Marxists see it as another example of the inability of weak countries to develop within the capitalist system. This study departs from these limited views and argues that developing countries failed to change the international shipping regime essentially because they were confronted with the constraints of late industrialization and the structural changes in world politics at the point when they entered the industry.^ Integrating the late industrialization theory popularized by Alexander Gerschenkron and the structural power theory developed by Susan Strange, this study focuses on those structural and domestic circumstances which have changed, and which have contributed to the failure of this quest for a new international maritime order. West and Central Africa is used as a case study because it was one region that most vigorously sought to enforce the UN Code. Their experiences are then compared with those of four Southeast Asian countries.^ The study finds that structural changes in world shipping which were not anticipated in 1974, intra-regional maritime competition, and the impact of the organizational technology of the state and the responses of the relevant segments of the civil society to this style of political management account for the unravelling of the quest for a new order in world shipping.