Confronting White Supremacy & Microaggressions for White Providers

Kelsey Pacha

Training Description

This training defines foundational terms related to whiteness, white supremacy, and racism, & prompts participants to consider how their white identities affect how they embody their professional role(s). Through self-reflection, discussion, and interactive activities, participants will recognize and challenge areas of discomfort and fragility based on internalized ideas about whiteness as “normal” or “superior.” Participants will complete a white culture checklist to identify potentially problematic areas of their workplace culture, and practice having difficult conversations taking responsibility for internalized white supremacy in order to make their areas of practice as inclusive and anti-racist as possible. Participants will leave this training having completed honest self-reflection, with more resiliency in addressing white supremacist policies and cultural norms in their professional and perhaps personal lives. This training is intended for white providers, but all are welcome.

Learning Objectives

• Define racism, whiteness, white privilege, white culture, & white supremacy.
• Review the cycle of oppression as one model describing how individual biased incidents create structural inequity.
• Take the Harvard Implicit Bias Test and practice reflection on one’s biases with others.
• Define white fragility and practice identifying and sharing about white fragility.
• Become familiar with the concept of microaggressions and learn to recognize and respond to racist microaggressions in their context.

Agenda

10am-10:15am  Intros, learning objectives, scope.

10:15am-10:25am Self-reflection: When were you first aware of your whiteness?

10:25am-10:45am Define whiteness. Review cycle of oppression as one model for how individual acts of bias translate into structural and historic inequity. Discuss how the cycle of oppression operates in the child welfare & health care systems specifically in relation to actual & perceived race/ethnicity.

10:45am-11:05am Define racism, white privilege, white culture, and white supremacy. Discuss these terms and how they interact.

11:05am-11:25am Complete white culture checklist. Pair share discussion—how have you seen white culture operate within the child welfare system? The mental health care system? Social services in general?

11:25am-11:40am Break. (CEUs will not be issued for this time)

11:40am-11:50am Activity:Demonstration of Harvard Project Implicit test.

11:50am-12:10pm Activity: Each participant takes Harvard Project Implicit (Skin Tone) test.

12:10pm-12:35pm Self-reflect and discuss:Results of Project Implicit test.

12:35pm-12:50pm Define white fragility. Fishbowl activity: Share a time where you were aware or made aware of your bias, racism, or investment in white culture in your work.

12:50pm-1:05pm Define:​ Microaggressions (microassault, microinsult, microinvalidation.) ​Video: What is a microaggression?

1:05pm-1:35pm Activity: Non-violent communication practice: how to respond when we are being called in; when we discern we are acting out of white fragility—how do we take responsibility? Roleplay: how do we intervene if a colleague or stakeholder in a client’s life commits a microaggression?

1:35pm-1:45pm Resources for white people to do better in workplace situations, specifically in the child welfare system.

1:45pm-2:00pm Question & Answer period, resources, evaluations, wrap-up.

Meet Our Trainer

Kelsey Pacha, MA, M.Div. is a trans man who has worked with marginalized communities for 15+ years in a variety of settings. He holds a Master of Religion and Psychology, Master of Divinity, and Certificate of Sexuality and Religion from Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, CA. He also holds a Bachelor of Science in Human Development and Psychological Services from Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. He is the owner of Kelsey Pacha Consulting, which supports the work of institutions and individuals in increasing their capacity for cultural humility and social justice-informed institutional change. Kelsey offers educational trainings and LGBTQ workplace policy expertise with an emphasis on practical skills, identity awareness, and personal empowerment. He regularly works with corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion officers and LGBTQ affinity groups, as well as legal, clinical, medical, and direct service (including child welfare and faith leader) personnel. For more information, visit kelseypachaconsulting.com or email info@kelseypachaconsulting.com.

This course meets the qualifications for (3.75) BBS CEUs for LCSWs and MFTs as required by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences & is provided by Fred Finch Youth Center, CAMFT Provider #045295.