Online Sandboxes

“Power, Privilege, & Oppression” is a required foundational course for all MSS students and is intended to help students develop awareness of structures of inequality, systemic oppression, and individual privilege as they relate to social work service delivery.

Power, Privilege, & Oppression asks students to reflect on relevant issues in social work and social service history, as well as in the present. Students will be asked to analyze agency experience related to power and social identity and encouraged to reflect on their own experiences of intersectional social identities in interaction with others and in context.

This course draws from theoretical models of critical race theory as well as social identity formation and development. Materials for this course are drawn from various disciplines including social work, psychology, sociology, anthropology, education, history, and gender studies. The course is divided into four modules: 

• American Racism and White Supremacy
• Systemic Oppression
• Intersectionality and Social Identity Development
• Modes of Resistance. 

Students reflect on events, professional and scholarly journals in their discussions and written assignments. Documentaries and film clips are used in classroom instruction and student assignments to further integrate learning and highlight topics. Students acquire knowledge from class readings, film and video screenings, class discussion, written assignments and small group and dyad work to develop a foundational understanding of structural inequality and a beginning framework for culturally informed, anti-oppressive social work practice. The working assumption of this course is that developing skills of anti-oppressive social work practice is an ongoing, lifelong process, fundamental to our profession.