How Do Black Graduate Social Work Students Benefit From a Course on Institutional Racism?

A course on American Racism might be though to benefit mainly white students. This paper demonstrates how Black social work students in their own idiosyncratic way derive special benefit from such a course. Black students in search of a professional identity bring with them personal life experiences of oppression and social alienation. They make an important connection with the use of the immediate present as an effective means to counteract attitudinal/institutional white racism. Learning that the past cannot change, but that feelings about the past can, is liberating and has significance for their developing professional identity.