Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

White Bashing? Teaching "Hot-Button" Issues Via Indirection, Jack C. Straton

Education Faculty Publications and Presentations

The biggest barriers to learning about racism, sexism, and the other oppressions, are the non-rational aversive reactions most of us have to the material and to the learning process. When men truly inquire into the lives of women, we come face to face with a horrible reality that just "cannot be true," but is. When those of us of European heritage inquire into the lives of those whose ancestors came from the other continents, what we find often makes us flinch at its brutality. We feel guilty for what "whites" or men have done, and most of us don't like …