Session 2


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Session 2: Socialized into Whiteness

Objectives:

  • To identify and begin to understand the manifestations of internalized racial superiority.
  • To understand how and why “white” was socially constructed.

Reflection:

“We are what we know.  We are, however, also what we do not know.  If what we know about ourselves-our history, our culture, our national identity-is deformed by absences, denials and incompleteness, then our identity-both as individuals and as Americans-is fragmented.”  William Pinar

Check-in

Interactive Exercise:  “A Collage of White Identity”

Looking at the Manifestations of Internalized Racial Superiority

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Family of Origin Stories:

In small groups, share the stories that you created this past week related to your racial socialization.

Large Group Discussion:

•    What were your feelings as you wrote your stories?
•    What did you hear in other people’s stories?
•    Were there commonalities in the stories?
•    How does this speak to the collective experience of whiteness?

Please keep your stories with your folders as we will be returning to them in a later session.

Closing Reflection

“We need help to look at ourselves. We need help to understand how we as a people through history have used others for our own ends.  We need help to understand that our own worth and power is not lost in a just distribution of power.  The emotional weight that racism produces in whites blinds us from a vision of the fundamental changes we must work for and which will, in fact, free us all.” ~ Frances Kendall

Homework:

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Posted in: Cracking the Shell of Whiteness