Black in the Classroom: Teaching Anti-Oppressive Practice in White Spaces

ABSTRACT

In 2019, three Black social work instructors simultaneously taught a required anti-oppressive practice (AOP) course to a cohort of undergraduate social work students. Through collective autoethnography (CAE), we sought to deepen our understanding of our experience within the classroom and how our identity as Black women was negotiated within the space. We used personal narrative essays and data from three autoethnographic conversations as the basis of our analysis. Three overarching themes emerged from the data and are discussed throughout the article: vulnerability and precarity, disembodiment from Black identity, and neutrality and objectivity. This study has special implications for Black female social work instructors teaching AOP. Its findings are relevant in determining how to dismantle anti-Black racism in social work education and practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Black social work instructors
• anti-oppressive pedagogy
• collective autoethnography
• black identity
• anti-black racism

Disclosure statement

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