Introduction: Researching racism in nursing

In writing this book, we engage with new forms of nursing knowledge which recognise the social, political and historical context in which knowledge and nursing are produced. The authors in this edited book have set themselves the task of examining the influence of race and racial ideologies on disciplinary knowledge and inquiry. To introduce the chapters which follow, this chapter sets out the argument that racism is an ideology rather than a scientific theory and that the scientific theories of race represent human beings and their social relationships in a distorted manner. We start with an historical overview of race and racism, discussing the historical legacy of economic systems and the interplay between agency and social structures which contribute (in our view) to current institutional, structural and cultural racism and its manifestation: i.e. microaggression, indirect and direct forms of racism, intentional and unintentional racism and the effect of structural and institutional racism on patient outcomes. After reviewing briefly theories of race, we outline the history of racism in nursing and midwifery and the key discourses in the field. We will refer to research on racism in nursing and midwifery where appropriate.