Hafen and Villescas wrote in their July paper— which was taken down from the journal’s website on Saturday — that as “social work moves in the direction of anti-racist education and practice, social workers of color have urgently called attention to how theme [sic] profession continues to perpetuate white supremacy and harm BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color).”
The two scholars wrote that when anti-racist educators attempt to bring attention to how their field advances white supremacy in the classroom, white students attempt to “re-establish the white supremacist status quo” through resistance and the espousal of “color-blind rhetoric.”
This “[r]etaliatory white backlash,” they wrote, is best referred to as “whitelash,” which they describe as intimately entwined with the socio-relational process of white emotionality and the maintenance of racial hierarchies.
Thus, in an attempt to “expose” and “disarm” this white resistance to anti-racist education, the scholarly duo documented their own exploration of the pedagogical strategies they utilized while co-teaching two different undergraduate social work courses in 2023.