Anti-Racist Community Engagement

Anti-Racist Community Engagement: Principles and Practices centers anti-racist community-engaged traditions that BIPOC academics and community members have created through more than a century of collaboration across university and community. It demonstrates both the progress and the work that still needs to be done.

The book is organized around a set of Anti-racist Community Engagement Principles developed by the editors as part of their shared work and dialogue with colleagues regionally and across the country. The significant number of diverse voices that have informed the creation of the principles reveal the groundswell of work underway to center anti-racist values and to pivot away from the traditional, higher education-centric, and “white savior” ways of doing community engagement teaching, research, and practice.

Each chapter in the book introduces a specific example of anti-racist community engagement, with authors providing unique, situated insights into the nature and complexity of the factors at play. This is followed by a “Practice” section where authors reflect on their engagement, and the lessons learned through it, thus leaving readers with detailed insights and roadmaps for adapting or replicating the work. Finally, a “Connections” section places the case and its practices into broader contexts of pedagogical, curricular, institutional, and community change.

There is an open access digital companion to the volume, where authors have shared materials that will help shed further light on their compelling practices, including syllabi, agendas, handouts, worksheets, and additional resources.