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Transforming Individual to Structural Thinking About Race

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The Palgrave Handbook of Learning for Transformation

Abstract

White supremacy and individualism are the ideological bulwarks of racism. This chapter examines how these ideologies intersect to keep racism in place, and how people can be helped to make a transformative shift from thinking in individual terms about race to thinking structurally about that issue. This cognitive move entails moving them from seeing racism as an individual expression of personal bigotry and hatred and toward viewing racism as a structural and systemic reality. As part of this change, people stop thinking about anti-racist work as an individual effort to avoid racial microaggressions and come to see anti-racism as collective organizing to change structures and systems.

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References

  • Crass, C. (2013). Towards collective liberation: Anti-racist organizing, feminist praxis, and movement building strategy. PM Press

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  • Daumeyer, N. M., Rucker, J. M., & Richeson, J. A. (2017). Thinking structurally about implicit bias: Some peril, lots of promise. Psychological Inquiry, 28(4), 258–261.

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  • DiAngelo, R. (2018). White fragility: Why it’s so hard for white people to talk about racism. Beacon Press.

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  • Feagin, J. R. (2013). The white racial frame: Centuries of racial framing and counter framing (2nd ed.). Routledge.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Antioch University, Culver City, CA, USA

    Stephen Brookfield

Authors
  1. Stephen Brookfield
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA

    Aliki Nicolaides

  2. Adult Learning & Counseling, Akkon University of Applied Sciences for Human Sciences, Berlin, Germany

    Saskia Eschenbacher

  3. University of Canberra, Bruce, ACT, Australia

    Petra T. Buergelt

  4. SLD Consulting, Port Coquitlam, BC, Canada

    Yabome Gilpin-Jackson

  5. Saint Mary’s College of California, Moraga, CA, USA

    Marguerite Welch

  6. University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA

    Mitsunori Misawa

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© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

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Brookfield, S. (2022). Transforming Individual to Structural Thinking About Race. In: Nicolaides, A., Eschenbacher, S., Buergelt, P.T., Gilpin-Jackson, Y., Welch, M., Misawa, M. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Learning for Transformation. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84694-7_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84694-7_14

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-84693-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-84694-7

  • eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)

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