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Is empathy a remedy for prejudice? This short paper argues it has a large role to play. It explores the authors’ observations as a Humanities teacher engaging Grade 8 Australian students between the ages of 12 and 14 in a study of the film Rabbit-Proof Fence. As students empathised with Aboriginal (Indigenous Australian) children forcibly removed from their families under Australian government policy in the twentieth century, they questioned the negative things they themselves had come to believe about Indigenous Australians.

Is empathy a remedy for prejudice? This short paper argues it has a large role to play. It explores the authors’ observations as a Humanities teacher engaging Grade 8 Australian students between the ages of 12 and 14 in a study of the film Rabbit-Proof Fence. As students empathised with Aboriginal (Indigenous Australian) children forcibly removed from their families under Australian government policy in the twentieth century, they questioned the negative things they themselves had come to believe about Indigenous Australians.

Transforming institutional racism and personal prejudice is a heated topic in the counseling profession and broadly in society. An imperative cultural and individual step to be taken towards addressing racism is making white supremacy visible in order to dismantle it. Part of that step is separating whiteness from supremacy and creating an ethical, humanist, and compassionate model of whiteness. This capstone thesis was a community engagement project focused on arts as therapeutic social action. The author explored oppression and dominance through body and movement with white women who are engaged in anti-racism. Group activities included observing how white supremacy and implicit bias are communicated non-verbally and creating a body movement repertoire for how a white ally moves. The author engaged in further movement exploration alone, including envisioning and practicing interjecting white ally body language into moments of interaction with people of color or other people with less perceived status or institutional power. Moving with the material revealed both verbal and nonverbal insights into whiteness, racial identity, and concrete ways to transform and increase self-awareness of implicit body processes that affect interaction with others.

Many writers have reflected on the subject of racism. Nevertheless, this theme has not been discussed by science educators. Taking this into account, the aim of the present paper is to introduce some important concepts involved with racism and discuss how it has developed. The paper also presents some possible contributions from science teaching and from sociology and phsycology education to contend with the racism in the society., Nos dias atuais, muitos autores vêm debatendo a questão do racismo. Entretanto, a questão racial ainda é pouco discutida dentro da comunidade dos pesquisadores de educação em Ciências. Por isso, o presente trabalho tem justamente por objetivo introduzir alguns conceitos importantes envolvidos com o racismo, bem como discutir como o racismo se desenvolveu ao longo dos anos. Além disso, são apresentadas possíveis contribuições do ensino de Ciências e de alguns pensadores da sociologia e da psicologia da educação no combate ao racismo presente na sociedade.