“Talking about race is exhausting”: social work educators’ experiences teaching about race and racism

ABSTRACT

Understanding the impact of race on the enduring racial disparities and inequities throughout our institutions is a key tenet of social work competency. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to investigate the experiences of undergraduate social work educators (BSWEs) who teach the required diversity course. Participants reported the primary challenges teaching about race and racism were: (1) faculty racial identity and lack of credibility (2) emotional toll of teaching about race. This study has implications concerning educators’ preparation to engage in anti-racist and equitable pedagogy in undergraduate social work education programs.

KEYWORDS:

• Faculty experience
• anti-racist pedagogy
• social justice pedagogy
• critical race theory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Capitalization of terms is not neutral and can denote solidarity in representation. The term “People of Color” highlights the solidarity of Asian, Black, Indigenous, and Latinx, and Multiracial people. Given this, I have chosen to capitalize collective nouns that reference specific groups which have been collectively marginalized and seek sociopolitical unity, and power. In all other instances, the terms utilized are those the authors applied in their work.