HWC 379/HWC 579- Elective: Special Topics in Social Work: Anti-Racist Social Work: Understanding White Fragility and Black Rage
This course creates an avenue to begin a conversation, advancing knowledge as we prepare students to "identify and analyze the nature and extent of structural inequality", highlighted in the School's mission statement. As practitioners and agents of change committed to human rights advocacy and social justice, our ability to make inroads around this racial divide is our inability to have the conversations that matter. From Peggy McIntosh's "Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" discussing privilege, to Ibram Kendi's "How to be an Anti-Racist," and Robin DiAngelo's "White Fragility", much content is offered to advance these conversations.
DiAngelo coined the term “white fragility” in 2011 to describe the defensiveness that white people exhibit when their ideas about race and racism are challenged, especially in what is considered their implication and connection to white supremacy. There is significant literature about the idea of white fragility supported by Critical Race Theory and its focus on the centrality of whiteness and challenging dominant ideology. So, in fact BIPOC persons are angry at the state of the world which appears to allow indiscriminate violence against Black bodies. Additionally White people have displayed an inability to engage in conversations around violence against Black bodies without an expression of negative emotions.
Part of overcoming oppression is first talking about how its structure is embedded in our culture, and reality and not just in the practices that frame police involvement, but how we have been conditioned to feel about one another. In this class we process these embedded, socially constructed messages, and discuss ways to manage our feelings about them en route to active engagement pushing back against these systems.
