ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how privilege needs to be interrupted at an embodied level. Although it pertains to all systems of oppression, the chapter looks specifically at white supremacy. Privilege signals belonging in a dominant group, but, paradoxically, it also disconnects us from one another and from holistic identities. This chapter addresses how common student resistances to anti-racism and white privilege are often shaped by embodied automatic reactions that can be unlearned when mindfulness and somatics are integrated with Anti-Oppression pedagogy. The chapter reframes belonging, safety, and intention, disrupting the false sense of each that are granted to members of dominant groups by systems of oppression. Instead, each are redefined to support us in more deeply connection with one another. They therefore become motivations that encourage students to move through automatic reactions and shift to more intentional responses. Reconnecting to what we care about and to one another can support students to be with the dissonance to unlearn and dismantle privilege. The chapter also addresses the value and the limitations of implicit bias as a tool for disrupting oppression.
Anti-Oppression pedagogy
Mindfulness
Somatics
Privilege
White supremacy
White fragility
White flammability
Implicit bias
