Session: Disrupting Colonial Hierarchies of Knowledge on Race & Gender: Survivance and Healing Among Pilipinx Americans (Society for Social Work and Research 28th Annual Conference - Recentering & Democratizing Knowledge: The Next 30 Years of Social Work Science)

Background: As tools of coloniality, existing social work research and practice have disenfranchised the global majority, including Pilipinx. In a content analysis (n=1,690) of four peer-reviewed social work journals between 2005-2015, only 14 articles proposed an intervention with Asian, Pacific Islander, and Desi Americans (APIDAs). Pilipinx Americans (PAs), the third largest APIDA subgroup, are disproportionately understudied, despite increased risk for suicidality and depression, and lower rates of help-seeking behavior. This symposium generates knowledge about historic and contemporary oppression endured and survived by PAs. PAs' resiliency is utilized as a heuristic for evidence-based interventions (EBIs) in addressing interlocking marginalizations experienced by PAs including forced cultural acceptance in the abolishment of stereotypical narratives of PAs involving disease and dysfunction, and race-based trauma.

Methods: Drawing on decolonial, anti-oppressive, and indigenist frameworks, this symposium examines how oppression distorts cultural continuity and hinders PA mental health and well-being. Each study uses a unique method (integrative systematic review, correlational analysis, and narrative analysis) to democratize social work knowledge and inform culturally-responsive practice, for PAs and other historically marginalized groups. Collectively, the studies disrupt homogeneity of PA experiences, illuminating PAs' distinct experiences of oppression.

Results: Paper one examines how colonial mentality (CM), a contemporary condition of internalized racism rooted in colonization, manifests and relates to bio-psycho-social-spiritual well-being. Results indicate that CM is manifested by cultural discontinuity, indebtedness to colonizers, and lateral violence. The study also links CM with mental health, assimilation, family conflict, and spirituality. Paper two examines the relationship between experienced gendered racial microaggressions (GRM) and psychological distress (PD) among Filipina/x/o American Women (FAW). Results indicated GRM predicted PD among FAW, and FAW who reported high frequencies of experienced GRM with high levels of associated stress, reported higher levels of PD. In effect, FAWs' processing and reaction to GRM, manifested as PD, is most compatible with racial trauma. Paper three shifts the focus from colonial harm to elements of culture that survived colonization and form the basis for resurgence. Survivance is leveraged as a site for expanding wellness constructs and, in so doing, healing harmful legacies of colonization and race-based trauma.

Conclusions: This symposium clearly articulates the relationships between various forms of oppression, disparate mental health outcomes, and cultural pathways of healing. Research implications include how to engage and collaborate with PAs to address their mental health needs, including proactively interrupting persistent harms by co-developing and implementing innovative, culturally-embedded EBIs. In 2021, the National Association of Social Workers expressed a renewed commitment to developing anti-racist training for social workers as an attempt to redress social work's harmful history of colluding with white supremacy. This symposium calls for continued review and amendment of existing policies to ensure this commitment is upheld. In particular, authors advocate for the integration of cultural studies into the social work curriculum as it tends to gloss over APIDA populations. Some scholars argue that this practice of curricular exclusion is a form of "psychological and physical violence" contributing to the invisibility of PAs.