I Am A Black Mother: Racism Analysis

Firstly, Kumsa, Mfoafo-M’carthy, Oba and Gaasim (2014) put forth anti-Black racism as the type of racism directed against blacks (A-BR) to demonstrate how the Black community experiences the wounds of systemic discrimination as primary targets of racism (p.22). The authors use Funke’s Story: I am a Black Mother to connote the realties of fear and anxiety Black mothers experience every time their Black children walk out the door. This distress is a correlation of how societal structures survey and police Black bodies through reading and seeing them as inherently criminal. The story continues, “Make sure you give them no reason to see the violent Black boy, don’t make them feel intimidated. Your very Black body is intimidating” (Kumsa et al., …show more content…
Yet, the contours of anti-Black racism are also embodied in my lived experiences and the three understandings permeate my worldview. For anti-Black racism (A-BR) I am Funke when I worry about my Black brothers and sisters who are targets of systems who perceive their bodies as scary. In anti-Black racism (AB-R) I am Magnus every time I question my experiences, doubt my abilities, and tear down others that share my Blackness in different shades and colour ranges by perpetuating White supremacy. Lastly, as Kuwee’s anti-Black racism (A-B-R) I am also managing my chameleon who is struggling between inclusion and disengagement, who carries stories of how I am targeted by systems of oppressions but also walk those same systems in …show more content…
When working with racialized Black youth, anti-oppression must be paired with anti-Black racism to engage in the diverse narratives of a person’s identity and lifting said person up instead of tearing them down. Although it is not the intent to maintain a hierarchy of oppression, social work practice cannot ignore the prominence of race relations. Additionally, we have to ask questions of how one is also operational in the systems they are working for. Social work is entrenched the friendly helper discourse and praises helping relationships. Heron (2005) alerts me, and other social workers alike, to examine how one’s subject positioning can interact with those of service users to re-inscribe certain dominations even through the act of “helping”. No matter the false innocence and best intentions behind the profession of social work, power is ingrained into my body and is inserted into my actions, attitudes, discourses, learning processes and interactions with people around me. For this reason, social workers need to not accept dominant ideas and instead keep on questioning hegemony and pointing out the contradictions of anti-Black racism in our work with racialized and non-racialized youth and people alike.