Implicit Biases and Microaggressions: Examining the Impact on Black Social Work Students' Well Being

Coined by psychiatrist Chester M. Pierce (1969), racial microaggressions are the everyday slights, insults, putdowns, invalidations, and offensive behaviors that people of color experience in daily interactions� (Sue et al., 2019). Racial microaggressions often occur as a result of implicit biases which are thoughts and feelings that occur outside of a person's conscious awareness and can influence an individual's actions and perceptions (Lai et al., 2014).

Implicit biases towards BIPOC students are often demonstrated in the form of microaggressions within social work education programs. Studies have shown that Black social work students tend to experience microaggressions that are related to their intellectual abilities, and that compared to other racial groups, Black social work students are commonly on the receiving end of microaggressions that speak to implicit biases regarding their levels of intelligence and competence. These experiences can be traced back to negative stereotypes that have been placed on Blacks/African Americans throughout history and often served as justifications to exclude Blacks from participating in institutions of higher learning.

Unfortunately, being on the receiving end of racial microaggressions can have serious mental health implications for Black social work students, such as anxiety, depression, and feelings of fraudulence related to the experience of the impostor phenomenon. Developed by Clance and Imes (1978), the term impostor phenomenon (IP) refers to the inability of an individual to internalize one's own accomplishments and a fear that others will discover that one is not smart or capable. Individuals with IP tend to feel like they have tricked others into believing they are intelligent and tend to attribute their success to external factors, such as charm and luck. In addition, IP is uniquely exacerbated for BIPOC students due to its inextricable relationship to historical experiences of racism (e.g., chattel slavery, race-based violence, racial segregation, etc.) and present-day psychological responses to historic experiences of collective trauma.

Currently, there is a lack of scholarship addressing the impact of implicit biases and microaggressions on Black students in social work programs. As a profession that prides itself on respecting the inherent dignity and worth of all individuals and acknowledging the roles of power and oppression in how individuals are treated, it is critical that we remain knowledgeable about how implicit biases and microaggressions impact the ability of Black students to be successful in the classroom and in the profession as a whole.

The purpose of this interactive workshop is to engage in dialogue around the different ways in which implicit biases towards Black social work students are demonstrated in the form of microaggressions and the impact it has on Black social work students. This workshop will include discussions around ways in which implicit biases lead to microaggressive acts towards Black social work students, the ways in which these racialized experiences lead to feelings of IP, how these experiences are steeped in historic experiences of collective trauma for Black students, and strategies for how social work education professionals can help Black students address these experiences at a micro and macro level.