Essay On White Privilege

As my role of becoming a justice based social worker and being exposed to new knowledge about oppression and privilege, I want to focus on the topic of race and White privilege to strengthen my knowledge and the knowledge of others on multidimensional levels. There are a few reasons why I have chosen an action plan focused on race and White privilege. I believe it to be a longstanding issue in our society, it is rarely discussed because of the uncomfortable territory that comes along with it, and more importantly, I would like to expand my awareness of how race affects individuals on different systemic levels and my awareness of my privileges can affect my role as a social worker. “Teaching about White privilege is fundamental to understanding

I have decided to take certain steps to grow as an individual with the intent to move forward as a justice based social worker, with particular regard to race and being aware of my own race and what that means to my career. The first step in my action plan is to take the valuable knowledge I learned throughout this course, which is mostly recognizing what it means to be White, and try to practice it every day in all social settings I am in. I strongly believe in teaching as a way of learning, so I plan to take what I have learned in class and explain White privilege to my closest friends and family members. I seem to have a better understanding of what the benefits of White privilege are, but I would like to work on having a better understanding of what the consequences are for people without White privilege. There is an annual conference called “The White Privilege Conference” that examines the concepts of White privilege (www.whiteprivilegeconference.com). With the discussion of privilege, also comes with the discussion of oppression. Many different people attend this conference from all over the world. I have looked into this conference and would like to attend one when it is being held close to home. I plan on welcoming friends to join me as

How does my privilege influence my work? How does my privilege influence the way I interact with my friends and the public? How can my awareness of my privilege affect the way in which I choose to practice as a social worker? These are questions that I plan to continue to ask myself and evaluate as I continue with my career and with my education. I intend on measuring my expansion of knowledge on race and White privilege through my own awareness. I believe that measuring my awareness is the best way to determine growth. I have already begun to notice my awareness of my understanding of White privilege and that of others as well, or lack of. My goal is to search and read an article once a week on race or White privilege and I will measure this by marking in on my calendar at work. Discussing what I read and learn with close friends will help with reaching my goal of becoming more informed and more aware of my privileges and in turn, will help me become a more well-rounded justice based social