Author ORCID Identifier
Date Available
4-24-2024
Year of Publication
2022
Degree Name
Doctor of Social Work (DSW)
Abstract
Racism continues to plague the United States and White people hold a key element to ending racism by adopting anti-racism practices in their professional and personal lives. This capstone on the findings of a comprehensive systematic literature review, examines empirically-based anti-racism interventions and practices that social work teachers and community educators can utilize in anti-racism courses and workshops for White students and community members. The final results yielded 29 peer-reviewed, qualitative/quantitative research studies within the years of 2003-2021 that can be broken down into six anti-racism intervention categories: class/educational groups, teaching methods, Implicit Association Test (IAT) usage, pro-Black stories/perspectives, interracial dialogue sessions, and meditation.
To deal with racism, White people need to see themselves as being responsible for challenging White privilege and supremacy. White people are socially conditioned into racism and do not realize that they have these racist thoughts. It is not their fault that they have racist tendencies. They were not born racist because it was socially ingrained and conditioned into them so that it feels normal. However, it is the responsibility of the White community to begin the anti-racism mindset adoption process.
Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Social Learning Theory (SLT) show how White people are conditioned to racism while Critical Action Learning (CAL) and Cognitive Behavior Theory (CBT) show one way to reverse it. Social work educators and community teachers should incorporate these theories into their courses and training to give a fresh perspective to the White community regarding their role in how racism was ingrained into themselves and the system, and to show one way to de-condition it. Letting the White community know that they did not individually cause their ingrained racist thoughts and feelings of White supremacy could help take down their guard of accepting the reality of racism and taking on the ownership of fixing it.
Practical implications will be discussed for social work educators and community teachers for the implementation of these anti-racism practices and techniques within curricula. This includes how to create an anti-racism course using the six anti-racism intervention categories. Discussions will also include how anti-racism practices can be infused into all MSW courses to have the entire MSW student body develop a more anti-racist mindset. Finally, participants will learn how the six anti-racism categories can be used in a two-day workshop for professional development and/or at the start of MSW coursework.
Recommended Citation
Cornell, Dennis, "TEACHING ANTI-RACISM PRACTICES TO WHITE SOCIAL WORK STUDENTS AND COMMUNITY MEMBERS" (2022). DSW Capstone Projects. 14.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/csw_grad_reports/14
