Narratives of Uprooting Anti-Black Racism in Higher Education: Developing a Power, Race, Oppression, and Privilege Framework in Social Work

Abstract

Social work is in a crucial position to reshape its current teachings centering dominant culture’s practices focused on white supremacist theoretical frameworks. Rethinking the social work curriculum requires decolonizing the way we teach and practice, not as a metaphor, but as a concerted effort to incorporate anti-racist and liberation-based ideologies with an emphasis on centering the voices of Black people, folks Indigenous to the Americas, and non-Black People of Color. Through the narratives of students, faculty, and alumni, we highlight our stories in creating, evaluating, and maintaining a course on decolonizing social work education at a predominantly white institution (PWI). We provide an overview of a collaborative effort to create and develop the power, race, oppression, and privilege (PROP) framework. Through the eyes of the PROP Collective, included here are: the history and content of the Foundations of Social Work/Decolonizing Social Work (DSW) course or the “PROP class,” student activism, course suffusion, teaching and learning methodologies, and yearly reflections toward improvement, facilitator support, and ongoing multidisciplinary collaborative effort to improve the course.

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