Abstract
This article discusses the ways that four educators experience the impacts of white supremacy in classroom spaces. We discuss the ways we navigate the tension created when we desire to foster antiracist spaces but are required to work within an academic system that is underpinned by white supremacy. Using tenets of Griot storytelling, we describe our points of origin, provide narrative examples of student interactions, and detail the reflexive lenses through which we processed these interactions. Our narratives specifically seek to center Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) and discuss the ways that our training and education has limited our ability to support them in academic spaces. We conclude with an invitation for the reader to sit with us in this space of tension, and some reflexive questions to consider as we exist in this space together. We hope to offer this as a way to continue dismantling the internalizations of supremacy. We also offer this as an opportunity to move away from the problem-solving mentality often applied to issues of racism in favor of fostering a continued, collective healing from the wounds created for all of us by white supremacist systems.
Highlights
This article discusses the ways that four educators experience the impacts of white supremacy in classroom spaces
Multicultural competence was developed in the mental health field in 1992 (Sue et al, 1992) and is becoming a core part of our training (American Counseling Association, 2014; American Psychological Association [APA], 2017; National Association of Social Work [NASW], 2017)
As we ourselves engage in that critical analysis and consciousness building, we are speaking to these topics in cultural terms: who gets to create and reinforce culture and knowledge in academia generally, and in the mental health and social service professions
Summary
White supremacy is the foundation upon which multicultural competence and training is built. The typically structured instruction format attempts to move away from “tolerating” to “appreciating” and “celebrating difference” (Jay, 2003; Sue et al, 1992), which serves and reinforces established and essentialist beliefs about BIPOC and/or QTBIPOC, their cultural beliefs and practices and relation to health and mental health beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors (Utt, 2018). We ––instructors and others vested in academia–– teach our students and supervisees to perpetuate and maintain systems of oppression (i.e., white supremacy) This informs students’ training, how they interact with clients in practicum and future clinical practice, and maintains disparate health and mental health treatment and outcomes (Pope, 2014). We do not prepare them to disrupt unethical practices ––white supremacy-based psychological theory and interventions–– increasing the risk for psychological harm to students, and future clients, who embody marginalized identities; this includes BIPOC and QTBIPOC (APA, 2017)
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