Confident Conversations About Race and Racism

Overview

Racism remains one of the greatest scourges on society, here in Australia and globally. Yet, many of us are not confident in our abilities to recognise, understand, and take appropriate action against racism. This course will guide us to a better understanding of these complex issues and importantly provide a way to navigate through to take an anti-racist stance. With expert contributions from a range of people with diverse lived experiences and theoretical understandings, the course will equip people to gain greater insight into how race and racism are constructed and how they are experienced in different contexts. The course will also provide guidance on what it means to be anti-racist and what that looks like in action. Importantly, the MOOC has been designed to recognise and value diverse cultural, historical, and contemporary experiences of race and racism. It will guide people through the crucial work of critical self-reflection to understand how each of us are racialized; and how our own cultures, identities, histories, and assumptions inform and impact the ability to engage in productive conversations about race and racism.

Syllabus

Let's get started

Welcome to the Confident Conversations about Race and Racism course.

Module 1: What is race?

This module will explore how we understand 'race'. It will identify how race is constructed and explore different contexts, histories, and experiences of race. This module will outline the broad understanding of race and specifically the structural nature and impact and how whiteness is embedded in belief systems and actions which perpetuate racism.

Module 2: What is racism?

This module will explore what racism is and explore how it is constructed and experienced in different contexts. It will identify different ways that racism manifests and is perpetrated. It will also examine the connections between privilege, power, and racism.

Module 3: Being anti-racist

This module builds on the understanding of race and racism developed in the previous two modules and identifies how to be anti-racist. The module explores what being anti-racist means as well as identifying different ways to be anti-racist. This includes developing racial literacy and understanding the language or anti-racism. The module also draws on diverse cultural ways of talking about and addressing racism.

Module 4: What gets in the way

This module identifies common behaviours and ways of thinking that hinder the ability to be anti-racist. This module will address unconscious bias and examine racial privilege. The ways in which people deflect and distract to avoid talking about and addressing racism. This module will include ways to interrupt these behaviours and how to be more critically self-reflective about our own biases and privileges.

Module 5: Having confident conversations

This module brings everything together to explore what anti-racism looks like in action. It will identify practical approaches to respond to everyday situations. It will also explore social and emotional wellbeing for anti-racism work.