From racialized think-pieces toward anti-racist praxis in our science, education, and practice

The process of evaluating and understanding occupation as something people want or are obligated to do and its impact on health and survival is as old as the occupational therapy profession (Johnson & Dickie, 2019). However, from 1917 to 1991, occupational therapists more often conceptualized occupation through its utility in practice rather than as a sociological phenomenon in and of itself (Hammell, 2009a), and as a consequence, neglected examination of the racialized context through which it developed (Grenier, 2020). This orientation fostered a knowledge base rooted in Whiteness—a privileged exclusionary category generally based on having White skin and the accumulation of social, economic, and political power (Christian, 2018)—and was consistently only interested in the benefits of occupation. Simultaneously, founders utilized these benefits in order to carve out political power to capitalize on evolving health systems (Calhoun, 2020; Yerxa, 1993). Occupational science was born from this knowledge base and a need to gain traction and power as an emerging basic science in the academy, and subsequently, enable a more efficacious practice within medical and therapeutic fields (Yerxa, 1990). Early occupational scientists, therefore, would have found little utility in turning a critical eye toward the founding construct of the discipline as a potential locus for injustice, especially in relation to racism (Clark et al., 1991; Yerxa, 2000).