#Resist: Utilizing Racial Justice Teach-ins to Challenge Anti-Black Racism

ABSTRACT

Across the United States, racist, hate-filled rhetoric, attitudes, and behaviors are daily occurrences. Events like officer-involved shootings of unarmed Black men, women, and non-binary individuals, along with the increase in white supremacist and nationalist groups, have cumulatively created a climate of fear and mistrust. This fear and mistrust are exacerbated when police officers operate with impunity in predominantly Black communities and constitutional rights to peaceful protest are being maligned as unpatriotic or denied through violence. In response to these and related events, a BSW program, situated within a predominantly white rural setting in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, developed and implemented a racial justice teach-in grounded in critical race and postcolonial theories. The goals of the teach-ins are to provide experiential educational activities, opportunities for in-depth discussion beyond the classroom, and exposure to anti-racist practice tools in order to help students identify, and combat, racial injustice and white supremacy. This article will explore the social work department’s development and implementation of racial justice teach-ins as a supplemental opportunity for faculty to more meaningfully demonstrate their commitment to diversity and difference in the BSW program and to support the department’s goal of incorporating anti-racist practice throughout both the implicit and explicit curriculum.

KEYWORDS:

• BSW education
• racial justice teach-in
• anti-black racism
• white supremacy
• critical theories & praxis

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to recognize all social work faculty who have been instrumental to the formation and implementation of the Racial Justice Teach-Ins. The work is collaborative so names are in alphabetical order: Andrea Barrick, Dara Bergel Bourassa, Jennifer A. Clements, Liz Fisher, Marita Flagler, Deborah Jacobs, Charlene Lane, and Michael Lyman.

Disclosure statement

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