Ambivalent White Racial Consciousness: Examining Intersectional Reflection and Complexity in Practitioner Graduate Training

Abstract

Ambivalent White racial consciousness describes a push toward awareness about racial privilege and a simultaneous pull back from this knowledge into a more comfortable stance of denial. Twenty-nine White community members and undergraduate students participated in focus group discussions on race. Results indicated that participants expressed ambivalent racial consciousness when they talked about: what it means to be White, their non-racial identities, oppression, attributions for racial inequality, and interracial interactions. Deconstructing ambivalent White racial consciousness can help trainers identify points of intervention for White graduate student practitioners to critically reflect on the intersections between White racial identity and systemic oppression.

Keywords:

• Ambivalence
• anti-racism
• racial consciousness
• racial identity
• racism
• whiteness

Notes

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the students and community members who participated in this research, and Brandy Nowell, Jennifer Pratt-Hyatt, Tony Boyce, Rachel O’Connor, and William Jellison for assistance in conducting the focus group sessions and supporting with data analysis.

Notes

1 When referring to individuals or a group of people, “White” is capitalized in accordance with APA style guidelines. However, references to concepts such as whiteness and white privilege, guilt, and identity are not capitalized.

2 All of the participants’ names are pseudonyms.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health under grant [1 R03 MH068354-1A1].