Gender identity, sexuality and sexual orientation are often not well understood, creating confusion, prejudice and ignorance among some populations. To change societal views, various individuals and groups have provided education and shared their own personal journeys about gender identity, sexuality and sexual orientation. Although there have been some positive changes for the LGBTTQIA+ population, there is still much to be done to change attitudes, beliefs and values to improve how those who identify as LGBTTQIA+ are accepted and valued within society.

The climate catastrophe and the Covid-19 pandemic have exposed racism as a global public health emergency and determinant of health. The long shadow of colonialism, structural violence and over-policing in settler colonies like Aotearoa New Zealand has accompanied a moral imperative to transform hegemonic and colonial Pākehā institutions. For Māori, this has meant the reassertion of self-determination and decolonisation, and for cultural minorities, a focus on racial justice. This urgent institutional transformation requires the re-examination of health care and its professional and ethical frameworks. Two criticisms of ethics have been articulated in this contemporary context: the first is that hegemonic frameworks centre whiteness and reinscribe it, and the second is that the frameworks fail to take into account or dismantle racism and maintain it through silence around racial justice

Pacific peoples disproportionately experience health and social complexity that contributes to poorer health outcomes compared to those of the total population in New Zealand. The Pacific healthcare workforce plays a critical role in providing health care, influencing service delivery and system design that can reduce health inequities for Pacific communities. Pacific nursing specifically has been recognised as critical in delivering and assisting with the design of culturally appropriate and equitable healthcare services that can positively contribute to addressing these disparities. This chapter will provide insights to deepen nurses’ understanding of Pacific peoples in New Zealand and support reflective practice as part of continued professional development. Culturally safe care enhances the ability to provide clinically safe practice and is a continual process of reflection and applied critical thinking.

Between October 1990 and May 1996 cultural safety was a major and extraordinarily contentious issue. The Nursing Council of New Zealand’s resolution that cultural safety would be part of the requirements for nursing and midwifery education programs might be considered as one of the greatest challenges to face the nursing profession in New Zealand. This chapter provides analysis of why cultural safety was almost lost from the language of nursing. It begins with brief historical perspective on nursing and cultural safety in New Zealand. The important differences between transcultural nursing and cultural safety are discussed, as well as the ensuing public debate that followed cultural safety’s early development.

This chapter addresses systemic challenges and opportunities within the mental health professions related to the inclusion, support, and empowerment of multiply marginalized practitioners, particularly practitioners of color with dis/abilities. In the context of increasing global mental health needs and an insufficiently diverse workforce, the chapter uses Critical Race Theory (CRT), Disability Justice, and Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) to explore how systemic oppression, ableism, and racism are embedded in professional structures, such as training, education, and workplace contexts. Despite these barriers, marginalized practitioners bring vital lived experience and culturally grounded insight that improve client outcomes and enrich the field. The chapter concludes with best practices and guidance for transforming professional cultures to promote equity, belonging, and sustainability in mental health work. It emphasizes the urgency of moving beyond token inclusion toward systemic change that values and supports marginalized identities as assets rather than liabilities.

This chapter employs Latino Critical Race Theory (LatCrit) to examine how anti-immigration policies impact Latina well-being and resistance strategies. Focusing on Arizona’s controversial SB 1070 "show me your papers" law, the authors analyze the intersection of structural violence, racial profiling, and gender within immigrant communities along the dangerous Arizona-Sonoran border corridor. A study of 417 adult Latina immigrants in Arizona examines how acculturation affects personal and familial suffering from police interactions. Results indicate Latinas experienced less emotional trauma than Latinos, with higher acculturation levels acting as a protective factor for both groups. These findings challenge assumptions about immigrant vulnerability and highlight the intersection of gender, cultural adaptation, and state violence. The chapter contextualizes these findings within decades of border militarization policies that have weaponized the Sonoran Desert, practices that perpetuate colonial logics of territorial control and racialized exclusion rooted in centuries of dispossession. The authors argue that LatCrit provides essential tools for understanding how multiple forms of oppression, such as immigration status, language, race, and class, converge to shape Latina experiences. The analysis concludes with recommendations for social work practice, emphasizing cultural humility, policy advocacy, and the integration of bilingual, bicultural approaches to support immigrant communities facing ongoing criminalization and family separation.

Intersectionality looks at the ways different identities intersect with one another. The concept forces us to move beyond a single view of individuals, and to explore how those who sit at the margins of different identities experience different aspects of life. For example, the intersection of race, gender, and nationality can compound the experiences of a Black, female, immigrant in academia. Academia has largely been a "white space,” both in terms of the Eurocentric perspective from which content is taught and the predominantly white faculty and students that occupy campuses. Furthermore, it is a space that few immigrants, especially Black immigrants, occupy. Although Black women in academia are marginalized relative to their white counterparts, adding an immigrant status to those identities increases the level of complexity. The experience of faculty sitting at the intersection of race, gender, and nationality reveals several themes that characterize their unique journey. These themes include: questioning of their qualifications, feeling invisible, having their immigrant journey be misunderstood, variation in the saliency of their identities, simultaneously experiencing privilege and oppression, experiencing intersecting stereotypes, and feelings of isolation. An awareness of these experiences can fuel academic spaces to develop strategies to help members of intersecting minoritized groups thrive in academia.

This chapter situates reflexivity and positionality as central to critical race social work praxis, centering the role of storytelling and counterstorytelling in dismantling dominant narratives. This chapter challenges social work’s historic alignment with neutrality, professionalism, and liberal reform while exposing its entanglement with racism, capitalism, and colonialism. By engaging first-person narratives and counternarratives, the section emphasizes how social workers can critically interrogate power, privilege, and positionality across micro, mezzo, and macro levels of practice. Ultimately, this section invites readers into an ongoing practice of reflexivity, self-disclosure, and communal care, positioning social work as a deeply political and justice-oriented profession.

Intersectionality is an analytical tool that both stands on its own, and is considered a key tenet of critical race theory. This chapter details how intersectionality can serve three roles in social work: it can serve as an important analytic tool for self-reflexivity, a prism through which policy and research can better understand oppression, and a technique through which social workers can develop critical race praxis. Emphasis is placed on the depth of intersectionality, for instance, it is not solely about identity but is about oppression based on complex social identities and positionality. Case examples and illustrations from social work situations are provided.

This chapter explores the complexities of Black/White biracial (BWB) identity through a Critical Race Theory (CRT) framework, highlighting the intersections of white supremacy, anti-Blackness, and colorism in shaping identity formation and belonging. Drawing on personal narrative and existing research, it challenges traditional monoracial frameworks by framing biracial identity as fluid, liminal, and intersectional rather than bifurcated. Key dynamics include racial invalidation, colorism, multiracial microaggressions, and racial homelessness, all of which undermine mental health, belonging, and self-esteem. The chapter emphasizes how BWB individuals must navigate polarized family and community expectations, societal stereotypes, and shifting notions of authenticity, often experiencing both privilege and oppression simultaneously. Implications for social work practice include the need for culturally responsive and critically conscious approaches that affirm biracial identities, organizational policies that dismantle monoracial assumptions, and educational curricula that embed multiracial perspectives into clinical and social work training. By integrating biracial voices and perspectives, the profession advances a critical race praxis that challenges systemic inequities while fostering healing, resilience, and equity for biracial populations.

This chapter introduces critical race praxis as a process-oriented approach for integrating Critical Race Theory (CRT) into social work practice, education, and research. Arguing that prevailing color-evasive frameworks inadequately prepare social workers for antiracist practice, the authors position CRT as a set of analytic tools that deepen understanding of racism as structural, pervasive, and intersectional. They present the Critical Race Praxis Guide, which links reflection questions with implications for practice across the tenets of CRT, including racism as ordinary, race as a social construct, differential racialization, interest convergence, critique of liberalism, intersectionality, and counter-narratives. The guide also emphasizes supporting concepts such as brave space, positionality, and critical reflexivity as essential to antiracist action. Illustrative examples show how practitioners can identify racism within policies, institutions, and everyday practices, and then move toward action that interrupts white supremacy and advances racial justice. In doing so, the chapter provides a flexible and adaptable tool for fostering critical reflection, dialogue, and antiracist interventions across micro, mezzo, and macro levels of practice. Ultimately, the authors encourage social workers to view praxis as a dynamic process of linking reflection and action to build more racially just practice and pedagogy.