Uprooting (Our) Whiteness

Citations Over TimeTop 11% of 2021 papers

Abstract

Social work education reinforces hegemonic Whiteness through pedagogies and practices that rely on an entitlement to and harvesting of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color’s lived experiences for the purpose of its tacit audience: White students. Despite this exploitative and harmful reliance on objectified lived experiences, White students continue to lack critical understanding of their racial positionality and connections to racism. Uprooting Whiteness requires sitting with what it means for White people to be “a White problem.” Drawing on the work of Yancy, we (group co-facilitators; our dean of diversity, equity, and inclusion; and three MSW student participants) describe the creation, organization, facilitation, and experiences of the first year of the Space for Uprooting Whiteness—a biweekly space where White social work students examine and uproot their relationship to White supremacy and domination. We argue for White social workers to take collective responsibility for racism in and beyond our institutions—requiring interrogation of our everyday practices and their (inter)dependence with and on systems of domination. This paper ends with three experiential narratives from student participants in the space and implications of critical intragroup dialogic pedagogy among White students in social work education and beyond.

Related Papers

• → Beyond White Privilege: Toward White Supremacy and Settler Colonialism in Mathematics Education(2017)9 cited
• → Discriminatory policy among the undergraduate students towards racism and white privilege in America(2014)6 cited
• → Light Supremacy vis-à-vis Non-White Immigrants as Racism in the 21st Century: A Question of Color(2016)3 cited
• → A Nation Built on the Hierarchy of Race A Practical Guide to Beating White Supremacy(2008)
• LibGuides: Systemic Racism, White Privilege, and Police Brutality: White Privilege and/or White Supremacy(2020)