1 Feminist Strategies for Teaching about Oppression: The Importance of Process Patricia Romney, Beverly Tatum, and JoAnne Jones About the Authors JoAnne Silver Jones is Associate Professor and Director of the Social Work Program at Springfield College in Springfield, Massachusetts. Her primary interest is in education aimed at social justice literacy. She has taught in Canada, northern Europe, and Alaska, primarily focusing on issues of human oppression. Patricia Romney is Assistant Professor of Psychology in the School of Social Sciences at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, where she teaches courses on the psychology of oppression, black psychology, and black women’s autobiography. Dr. Romney is also a consultant specializing in organizational diagnosis and multicultural organizational development. Beverly Daniel Tatum is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and Education at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts. Dr. Tatum teaches courses on the psychology of racism as well as theories of personality and the psychology of the family. She has lectured extensively on the impact of social issues in the classroom, and is author of Assimilation Blues: Black Families in a White Community (Greenwood Press, 1987). Abstract This paper describes the authors’ approaches to teaching courses and workshops on oppression from a feminist, process-oriented framework using racism as a case example. From the perspective of feminist theory the authors suggest that the way we teach about oppression is as important as the content itself. The process-oriented, feminist approach is discussed, and strategies and techniques for teaching about racism are offered. Publication Information All authors made equal contributions to this work. Published in Women’s Studies Quarterly. (1992). Vol. XX, Nos. 1 & 2. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1991 meeting of the Association for Women in Psychology, Hartford, CT. SHE: When that happened, I really felt guilty, and then to make it worse… HE: What’s the point? SHE: I’m telling you what happened and how I feel about it. That is the point. Setting the Context This paper is the product of three women who joined together in a writing group for the purpose of mutual support and colleagueship. We are all teachers and trainers and have taught classes and led workshops on oppression for many years. The academic courses we teach are the Psychology of Racism, the Psychology of Oppression, and Internalized and Externalized Oppression. We had been working together, reading, critiquing, and supporting one another’s work, when the idea developed of writing a paper together about the ways in which we teach. In putting the paper together, we talked with one another about how our various identities – African American, Jewish, Christian; heterosexual and lesbian; working and middle class – have shaped our understanding and experience of oppression. We also became increasingly aware of how much our work is shaped by feminist theory and a process orientation. In this paper, we will focus on the contributions of feminist theory to a process- oriented approach to oppression in general. Strategies and techniques for teaching about racism, in particular, will be provided as a case example. There are assuredly differences in the various types of oppression, and we would deal with different subject matter if we were teaching about heterosexism, sexism, or Jewish oppression. We believe, however, that the same basic principles of process are relevant for teaching about all forms of oppression. Our effort was a collaborative one right from the beginning. This paper, written in a feminist voice, describes our teaching. It is grounded in our own experiences of feminist theory and practice.