Helping white practitioners become critically reflective about racism and white supremacy

In a diverse and unstable world, practitioners in all disciplines are faced with the necessity of working with clients and colleagues from multiple positionalities and identities. In this chapter I explore how to help white practitioners become critically reflective about their own learned racism. Realizing how white supremacy works to bolster racist structures and shape unproblematized worldviews asks individuals to challenge the paradigmatic assumption that they are good moral people who see each client as who they really are, undistorted by bias and racist conditioning. The chapter outlines the elements of white supremacy and white identity and sets out guidelines and strategies to draw whites who don’t see themselves as racist into examining the racism that lives within them and to become more aware of how they move everyday through racist structures.