White Fragility Lesson Plan

Clean Silence vs. Dirty Silence

Kind of Activity:

Role Play

Objective:

Students will explore the ways silence can be both helpful and harmful in anti-racist work.

Common Core Standards:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.2, CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.9, CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.11-12.3

Structure:

In today's reading, DiAngelo discusses sociologist Joe Feagin's term "white racial frame", which is a name for the "pieces of cultural information—images, stories, interpretations, omissions, silences—that are passed along from one person and group to the next, and from one generation to the next," which teach whites that they are superior. The information in the white racial frame is...