Waking ourselves for the benefit of all.
Radical Anti-Bias Education
CE Track Participant Page
Welcome! This page is for registrants in our 2023 summer training, "Radical Anti-Bias Education: Cultivating True Comrades in Struggle," who are taking the NASW CE Track.
This page will include all content on the general participant page along with additional CE track specific study materials and logistical information. Please do not share this page with anyone not registered for the course.
Homework:
CE TRACK PARTICIPANT SURVEY LINK & INSTRUCTIONS:
In order to receive your credits for the training, please fill out the survey here.
PLEASE NOTE: there is a question in the survey about whether or not the training fulfilled the learning objectives for the program. For your ease in considering your answer to this question, you can find those learning objectives (as expressed in the promotional materials) here.
Congratulations! :) We will email certificates of completion in batches as those survey results come in.
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Homework: Homework materials for all sessions will be posted below. Please allow 2-3 hours for homework per session. We ask that everyone engage with the study materials prior to each session. Please note that homework for session one will be posted on this page by July 2, 2023, two weeks prior to the start of the training.
Recordings: While sessions must be attended live to obtain CE credit, recordings of each live session (including the CE track specific session) will be made available 2-3 days after it takes place. Links to these recordings will be posted at the top of the homework assignment for the corresponding session. Recordings, along with the participant page as a whole, will remain accessible through November 6, 2023 (three months after our final live session). After this, study materials will be e-mailed to you as a PDF and session recordings will no longer be available.
Have you visited the Logistics Page for the Training? Please allow 20 minutes to review this page and take the action steps outlined within it prior to the training. Applications for your personal zoom login must be submitted by the end of the day Saturday, July 15, in order to participate in the first live session (applications are approved manually, not instantly).
Supplementary CE Track-Specific Session: In addition to attending the three main sessions, participants doing the Social Work CE track must attend the CE Track-Specific session taking place on Sunday, July 30th from 4:00pm-6:15pm EST. This additional session, like all main sessions, must be attended live to obtain CE credit. The same zoom login you use to attend main live sessions of the training should be used to attend this offering. This supplementary CE session will be led by Lynda Davis, longtime social worker, racial justice activist, and White Awake participant.
Requirements for Obtaining CE Credit: This program is Approved by the National Association of Social Workers (Approval # 886890411-3521) for 8 continuing education contact hours.
Requirements to receive these credit hours include:
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Live Attendance of all four sessions live (three main sessions plus one supplementary CE specific session.)
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Completion of the participant survey for the training (see link and instructions for this above.)
While not required for NASW credit hours, we hope that you will also complete the assigned homework materials before each live session in order make the most of your enrollment in the training.
After attending live sessions and completing the training survey, you will receive a certificate from White Awake verifying the CE credits that you obtained from us. We ask that you complete the survey for the course no later than Sep 1, 2023, in order for us to fulfill our obligations to NASW promptly.
For your later reference, all training materials will remain available on your participant page through November 6, 2023.
Follow up Resources from Lynda:
Organizations and Resources for Social Workers - compiled for the group by your social work track facilitator, Lynda Davis, LCSW-C
Session One: Introduction & A Radical Approach to Anti-Bias Education
Session Recording: View Here
Chat Log: View Here
Presentation Content: David's Slides
Study Materials
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Excommunicate Me from the Church of Social Justice (7-15 min read)
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Matewan “Union Speech” – clip from 1987 film (6 min watch). Note: The term “dago” is a pejorative for Italians, who were recent immigrants during the historical period of the Matewan Massacre.
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Why I Quit the Klan – C.P Ellis narrative collected by Studs Terkel in 1980 (20-30 minute read)
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Shared Foundations - Sarah Ngu (10-15 min read)
Optional background reading: If you’re very new to some of the topics covered in this training, or if you haven’t taken a course with us before, here are some optional, background study materials that you might want to review:
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Our Analysis – Eleanor Hancock (10-15 min read)
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Roots Deeper than Whiteness: Remembering who we are for the well-being of all – David Dean (30-40 min read). If you would prefer, feel free to listen to the audio version of this article instead.
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Birth of a White Nation – Jacqueline Battalora (36 min watch)
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Understanding Antisemitism as Ruling Class Strategy – Excerpts from Essays by April Rosenblum and Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (10-15 min read)
Additional CE Track Study Materials
In addition to materials above, we ask that participants on the CE Track also read:
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Social Service or Social Change? - Paul Kivel | Please read the first two pages in their entirety; on page three please read the first section, "Getting Ahead or Getting Together?" (20-25 min read).
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A guide to radical social work - Vasilios Ioakimidis (7-10 min read)
CE Reflection Questions:
After reading Kivel’s “Social Service or Social Change” & Ioakimidis’s “Guide to Radical Social Work”, consider the following:
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What are the core arguments that you are taking away from these two pieces when you look at them together?
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Do you see a relationship between the focus they both bring to social context and how bias could be shaped and/or could influence social work practice in a way that harms client individuals and communities?
After spending time with the general homework assignments for session one, please consider the following:
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Do you see any characteristics of dogmatic, social justice cultural trends in social work today?
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Considering the Matewan Union Speech, Why I Quit the Klan, and Shared Foundations, can you imagine what a solidarity focused approach to social work might look like? How might this type of a focus dispel bias? And how might bias get in the way of this type of focus?
Supplemental Book for Social Work CE Track:
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Reisch, Michael and Janice Andrews. The Road Not Taken: A History of Radical Social Work in the United States. Routledge, 2002
The Road Not Taken: A History of Radical Social Work in the United States is an excellent general companion to the work we will be covering within the SW CE Track. Short selections will be included as enrichment material in the second session of the training. Homework for the SW CE Track includes a wide variety of materials. Reading recommended selections from this book are minor and not a requirement for completion of the track.
Session Two: Histories of Race and Class Bias
Session Recording: View Here
Chat Log: View Here
Presentation Content: David's Slides
Study Materials
Anti-Black Racism, the Minstrel Show, and the Making of Whiteness – Chris Crass (pages 22-25 / 8-10 min read)
Using Dog Whistles to Undermine Government – Video from Ian Haney López (2 min watch). If you're interested, click here for more from Haney López's Race-Class Academy. Note: In session one we critiqued liberalism for not going far enough to meet people's economic needs. In this video Haney López uses the term in the positive because, when compared to right wing government, it calls for a more sizable social safety net. This was particularly true prior to the 1980s before Reagan successfully shifted all of mainstream politics to the right.
Anti-Asian Racism Creates Inequality for All – Excerpt from an Essay by Viet Thanh Nguyen (5 min read)
Invisibility is the Modern form of Racism Against Native Americans – Rebecca Nagle (5 min read)
Excerpt from MLK’s 1965 Speech in Montgomery, AL, about how Jim Crow was a tool explicitly (and effectively) designed to destroy the multiracial Populist movement that flourished briefly in the late 1800s (4 min read).
What the media gets wrong about the Trump supporter caricature – Krystal Ball & Saagar Enjeti interview George Goehl of People’s Action (9 min watch)
Jack Metzgar | WA Handout - selections from various works by Jack Metzgar (10-15 min) / Please do not publicly or privately share White Awake handouts. We encourage sharing of the original sources only. Ty!
Elizabeth Catte | WA Handout - selections from various interviews with Elizabeth Catte (8-10 min read) / Please do not publicly or privately share White Awake handouts. We encourage sharing of the original sources only. Ty!
We need to reclaim populism from the right. It has a long, proud leftwing history – selection from The People, No: A Brief History of Anti-Populism, by Thomas Frank (10-15 minute read)
Cycle of Socialization Image – Bobbie Harro (5 minute read)
CE Track Study Materials:
Two short, 2020 statements from NASW:
CE Reflection Questions for Session Two:
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What stands out to you from the histories of bias that you read for this session? And do you see any relationships between any of these histories? Is so, what relationships do you see?
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How do you feel about bias within social work practice generally? What bias’s do you feel inhibit you in your professional work? What bias do you feel effect or inhibit the organization or workplace you are a part of? Could understanding any of these histories help shift bias in yourself or others?
Optional CE Study Materials | Selections from The Road Not Taken:
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pgs 28-32: “Radical Social Work & the Labor Movement” (supplement to our focus on class & class bias)
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pgs 54-56: “Civil Rights” (focus on social workers and civil rights in the 1920’s; strong supplement to our focus on racism and racial bias; notice the contrast between between strictly segregated, & individualistically oriented moralism, of the YMCA and the interracial cooperation & activism promoted by the YWCA)
Activity: View Full Assignment
Assignment Summary: This week, in addition to your study materials, we are including an embodied activity for you to do — a solidarity meditation. This meditation is intended to be a reflection on the vast web of interconnections we have with other humans in a far reaching social and economic network. In the face of our society's manufactured divisions, this practice is meant to draw our mind and spirit to the potential of building the comradeship and collective power required to transform our world. Click here to read the full assignment.
CE-Specific Session | Taking Place July 30
Session Recording: View Here
Study Materials
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Socially-Engineered Trauma and a New Social Work Pedagogy: Socioeducation as a Critical Foundation of Social Work Practice – Wendy Shaia, David Avruch, Katherine Green & Geenen Godsey.
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The SHARP Framework Practitioner Reflection Journal – Wendy Shaia. Please journal about/reflect on prompts in this document as they relate to a client of your choosing that you have or have had in the past. As you do so, you'll reflect on your client's experiences of structural oppression and how your own identity and biases could impact your work with them.
Session Three: Next Steps for Taking Action
Session Recording: View Here
Chat Log: View Here
Study Materials
Saviors, Allies and Comrades – David Dean (9 min watch)
Race-Class: A Winning Electoral Narrative – Demos Action (5-7 min read)
An Interview with Heather McGee - Bad Faith Podcast (watch/listen to first 10 mins)
If Progressives Don’t Try to Win Over Rural Areas, Guess Who Will - George Goehl (8-10 min read)
Reply to Misled Worker - Article from 1930 in the Southern Worker, the CPUSA’s weekly newspaper in the South. Written by James S. Allen, the paper’s editor. Read original text (includes newspaper masthead). Or read our transcribed version (10-15 min).
White Anti-Racism Must Be Based in Solidarity, Not Altruism - Jesse Myerson (15-18 min read).
“Learning How to Listen - Michigan” – a podcast by People’s Action (Read episode description and listen from the 8:50 mark until the end, 20 min listen)
Cycle of Liberation Image - Bobbie Harro. Please reflect on the cycle described here when doing the activity below and thinking about your own journey in the work of social change (5 min read).
CE Track Study Materials
Building a Political Agenda for Social Work - Filipe Duarte (7-10 minute)
Identifying and Challenging Social Work Students' Biases - Elizabeth A. Wahler (15-20 min read) / Please read the introduction, then skip down to “Teaching Method to Identify and Challenge Biases” on page 1063 and read to the end.
CE Reflection Questions:
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Reading Wahler’s paper on how to identify and challenge bias in the context of educating social work students, what stands out to you?
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Considering this, and other work we’ve done in this training, what strategies do you feel would be most helpful to you (in your personal practice, or within the context of a workplace or organizational culture) to shed unhelpful bias and be able to approach the individuals and communities you serve from a place of solidarity & respect?
Activity: View Full Assignment
Assignment Summary: The activities portion of this week's homework consists of a personal assessment to reflect on how you will apply the work of this training to your professional practice. Click here to read the full assignment.