"Who Are You Really Doing the 'Saving' For?" Interrupting White Saviorism in Trauma-Informed Practice

• In Event: Disentangling the Reproductive From the Liberatory: Trauma-Informed Practice for Racially Just Systemic Teaching

Abstract

Our work rests upon empirical and conceptual frameworks of systemically trauma-informed practice (SysTIP) to examine how Whiteness and White saviorism weaponize the concept of trauma-informed practice resulting in deleterious effects for students. Our previous work has defined White saviorism in education as an internalized need to “save” children from adversity and trauma (Authors, 2021). We have called for SysTIP, which acknowledges the unequal and oppressive contexts within which trauma exists and which can manage prejudicial tendencies (Authors, 2020; Authors, 2020).

We analyze tweets authored during the COVID-19 pandemic, which represents a viral and a racial pandemic (Kendi, 2020), and illustrate how Whiteness feeds the blaming of children and communities of color for the traumas they have endured. We evaluate tweets that (1) invoke and misuse trauma-informed practice in ways characterized by White saviorism to deficit-frame children and communities, to cast themselves (authors) as saviors, and/or blame children and their families for systemically constructed injustices, (2) push back on these distortions by disrupting and interrupting, and (3) propose systemically trauma-informed practice (Authors, 2020), naming systemic elements of practice and employing asset frames to interrupt this violence and speak back to Whiteness. We uncover great nuance, highlighting how tweets fall on a continuum from White savior to systemically trauma-informed (Authors, 2020), as well as the ways in which educators respond to tweets and engage in dialogue around the topic of trauma-informed schools.

In our paper presentation, we use illustrative tweets to support participants in identifying and analyzing deficit-framing, while learning to recognize and interrupt Whiteness in their own practice in meaningful ways. We do this through practice-based exercises that draw directly from tweets to support educators’ practice. Our presentation will be usable and engaging, fortifying participants’ abilities to recognize Whiteness as it weaponizes the concept of trauma-informed practice. Considering disruptive instances will be important for providing models of how individuals can act in anti-racist, anti-Whiteness ways, holding up a mirror of what is possible, and how educators can critically examine their own trauma-informed work so that it does not pathologize and do violence to children and their communities.

Authors

• Simona Goldin, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

• Addison Duane, University of California - Berkeley

• Debi Khasnabis, University of Michigan