A fundamental but very challenging part of my work is moving white people from an individual understanding of racism - i.e. only some people are racist and those people are bad - to a structural understanding.

In aversive racism, the concept of racism is abhorrent to that person. But they're filled with racist conditioning and bias, as we all are. Because that conflicts with their identity as good people, they suppress it and are even more in denial about it. They are even more likely to erupt in defensiveness if it gets called out.

This is what I have learned: Any white person living in the United States will develop opinions about race simply by swimming in the water of our culture. But mainstream sources - schools, textbooks, media - don't provide us with the multiple perspectives we need.

Most people, certainly faculty, believe that if they're for social justice, it's automatically integrated into whatever they do.