The Wabash Center's Dialogue On Teaching
Dialogue on Teaching, hosted by Nancy Lynne Westfield, PhD, is the podcast of The Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion. Amplifying the Wabash Center’s mission, the podcast focuses upon issues of teaching and learning in theology and religion within colleges, universities and seminaries. The podcast series features dialogues with faculty teaching in a wide range of institutional contexts. The conversations will illumine the teaching life.
Host: Nancy Lynne Westfield, PhD
Producer: Rachel Mills
Sound Engineer: Paul O. Myhre, PhD & Paul Utterback
Podcast music by Dr. Paul O. Myhre, PhD
The Wabash Center's Dialogue On Teaching
Episode 89 - Personal Agency Needed for Anti-Racist Work
This podcast was originally featured as a webinar with Dr. Nancy Lynne Westfield, Dr. Melanie Harris (Texas Christian University), and Dr. Jennifer Harvey (Drake University). White America must challenge its high capacity to tolerate racism, to overlook racist acts, and to look past racist behaviors. Personal agency is required to become anti-racist. Disrupting systemic racism requires a shift in public policies as well as a rethinking of institutional norms, traditions, and procedures. These shifts require the work of dedicated people. Equally, personal agency is required to genuinely welcome persons targeted by racism. To shift personal and familial attitudes, beliefs and behaviors persons must speak out for justice. This requires education and action. Our questions for this webinar:
• If racism is so pervasive as to be like “smog in the air” (Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum) – how do we identify acts of racism?
• What does it mean to be complicit with racism?
• What kind of listening is needed to become anti-racist?
• Is there such-a-thing as “microaggression?”