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REPORT TO THE 2015 ANNUAL MEETING ON 

ETFO’S EQUITY AND WOMEN’S PROGRAMS

RE-THINKING WHITE PRIVILEGE

The workshop is called Re-thinking White Privilege, and has the following goals:

 Knowing that nothing in the classroom or school is race-neutral, we need to be aware of what and how

we choose what goes in it/them.

Knowing that our own identities shape our approach to teaching and that we all have unearned

privilege(s) or disadvantage(s) based on race, we need to make conscious choices to ensure we aren’t
misusing power/privilege and perpetuating the cycle.

Knowing that white privilege shapes how schools are organized, what/how we teach, and our

interactions with colleagues, students/families, we need to start doing things differently and make
changes.

It starts by asking participants to reflect on the meaning, to them, of the term “white privilege.” 

Guided discussion carries on from there. Presenters emphasize that race is not the only 

dimension on which issues of privilege and disadvantage play out; there’s also sex, class, 
sexual orientation, ability and all the other complex, fluid identities each of us carries. 

Participants work through one of two scenarios that raise issues of race and culture in 

different school environments, one with an emphasis on race and the other exploring issues 

raised by common stereotypes about First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples. 

The focus throughout is on the systems and institutions that create and maintain privilege, rather than 
on individual racism. The hope is that participants leave with a heightened consciousness of their own 
privilege and motivated to make positive changes to their teaching practices. 

The workshop defines white privilege as follows:

White privilege is about the concrete benefits of access to resources and social rewards and the 
power to shape the norms and values of society that whites receive, unconsciously or consciously, 
by virtue of their skin color in a racist society. 

Source: Maurianne Adams, Lee Anne Bell, and Pat Griffin, editors.  

Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice: A Sourcebook (New York: Routledge, 1997), p. 97.

 

Peggy McIntosh’s great TEDtalk video provides beautiful metaphors, and a wise and gentle summing-up 
of why personal guilt is not the most helpful response to the realization that one enjoys white privilege.

Individual white people are not responsible for racism – but they are responsible for how they respond 
to it.

IN THE NEWS

When we publicized the availability of the workshop to our members and locals, a journalist at the 
Toronto Sun took exception to the project, denying that white privilege exists and claiming that ETFO 
offering a workshop on the topic was inappropriate, dangerous and divisive. A great deal of stressful 
but valuable public discussion of the issues took place as a result of these articles, at many levels and 
in many different media. 

One aspect of the attack against ETFO’s workshop focussed on whether unions should be engaging 
members in discussion of social justice issues at all. Shouldn’t we just stick to bargaining salary and