Reflections: Narratives of Professional Helping

Reflections from the Guest Editors: A Call for Social Worker Educators to Confront and Dismantle Systemic Racism WITHIN Social Work Programs (Issue 2)

Shonda K. Lawrence, Tiffany D. Baffour — Wed, 28 Feb 2024 00:00:00 -0800

The second volume of a two-part Special Issue of a Trilogy on race and racism amplifies the narratives, experiences, and truths of social work faculty and students who are working to confront and dismantle systemic racism in social work programs and departments globally. Counter-storytelling, using teaching and learning as its central theme, is used to first name racist and colonizing practices and then offer strategies to improve institutional change efforts. Sustainable anti-racist efforts in social work education can be improved by incorporating knowledge, skills, strategies, and lessons learned throughout this Special Issue.

Teaching While Black: A Call to Decolonize the Social Work Curriculum

Christiana Best-Giacomini — Wed, 28 Feb 2024 00:00:00 -0800

As a Black, female, middle-aged, naturalized citizen who transitioned to higher education mid-career, my role as faculty is sometimes challenged. Moreover, I’m often the only faculty member at the table with so many intersecting social identities rooted in systems of oppression. My journey to this point has taught me that having a seat at the table doesn’t always mean having a voice. During the 2020 racial reckoning that ignited a global movement for racial justice, I found my voice again. This essay chronicles that journey, which rekindled a culture of resistance established in my Grenadian childhood. In my Black-majority country, I was surrounded by oral histories of my West African and Indigenous ancestors, instilling self-love and fortitude used today in the face of microaggressions in the US. Using an autobiographical approach, I’m calling for the decolonization of the social work curriculum and the inclusion of Critical Race Theory.

Who Positioned Social Work as the Noble Alternative to Policing?

Funke Oba, Samantha Zerafa — Wed, 28 Feb 2024 00:00:00 -0800

Events of 2020 further illuminated policing’s history of oppression, white supremacy, ableism, sanism, and misogyny (Mohapatra et al., 2020). In response, calls to defund the police and abolish the carceral system that enables state-sanctioned violence became louder, and social workers were elevated as the noble alternative to police (Wilson & Wilson, 2020). This paper examines the positioning of social work as innocent of the surveillance, scrutiny, and criminalization of racialized populations associated with policing. Critically reviewing social work’s history with relevant vignettes from the classroom, research, as well as practicum and community settings, we lay bare the profession’s checkered history of complicity with racial subjugation. We deconstruct claims of benevolence, good intentions, and ignorance usually held up in defense of ills perpetrated by social workers and conclude that the collective amnesia created by whitewashing social work’s history forestalls accountability and transformative practice.

Guilty Until Proven Innocent: Reflections on Encounters with Whiteness in an Academic Institution

Victor Chikadzi — Wed, 28 Feb 2024 00:00:00 -0800

Using selected personal experiences, this article reflects on my lived experiences of being a young black academic at an institution that is considered “white” in character and composition. From selected encounters with colleagues and students, I reflect on how blackness tacitly exposes black people to presumed incompetence and criminal culpability within the zone of whiteness and white privilege. Through these selected incidences, I also show how being white insulates white people from systemic and systematic injustices.

My Reckoning

Sanjana Ragudaran — Wed, 28 Feb 2024 00:00:00 -0800

This is a personal reflection of my work as a macro social work academic in 2020–2021. As a migrant woman of color, I reflect on how my lived experiences intersect with that of my professional work through the global lens of critical race theory. I reflect on the evolution of my work around teaching, scholarship, and service during this time and address strategies on how to move forward.

From Intellectual Exercise to Facilitated Dialogue: How One Class Confronted Race and Racism in the Social Work Classroom

Rosalyn Denise Campbell, Dashawna J. Fussell-Ware, Madison R. Winchester — Wed, 28 Feb 2024 00:00:00 -0800

Social work education is primarily charged with preparing students to engage in social justice work that includes combating racism and other forms of inequity. However, these inequities are often viewed as external to social work academia and the discipline as a whole. In this article, we will share our individual perspectives, as Black instructor, Black student, and White student, of racially charged events that came to a head in a shared social work classroom space. We will share our thoughts on how race and racism were discussed and addressed in our school of social work in general; our personal experiences of race, racism, and/or microaggressions; and, finally, our feelings about how race and racism were addressed by the instructor during this culminating event. I (Campbell) will also discuss how my response mapped on to a critical race theory–informed approach to addressing race and racism in higher education/university settings.

“Black People Are Not My Thing”: Microaggressions Experienced by Black Graduate Students in Social Work Programs

Joan M. Blakey, Quenette Walton, Sheara Jennings — Wed, 28 Feb 2024 00:00:00 -0800

Black students do not receive an equitable education to that of White students despite attending the same schools and receiving the same instruction (Johnson-Bailey et al., 2009). An inequitable education is primarily due to White supremacy, ongoing racism, microaggressions, and anti-Black sentiments that Black students experience in institutions of higher learning, which impacts their educational experiences, overall health, and well-being (Nakaoka & Ortiz, 2018; Smith et al., 2020). The social work profession should lead efforts to dismantle racism, given the profession’s code of ethics. However, the profession must look inward and address its racism and white supremacist attitudes and beliefs. The purpose of our paper is to explore microaggressions Black graduate students in social work programs have endured in institutions of higher learning and to issue a call to action for the social work profession to strengthen its commitment to the profession’s core values and ethical code.

Dilate: How My Marginalized Experiences in Education Created My Call for Equity in Social Work Education

Nathaniel L. Currie — Wed, 28 Feb 2024 00:00:00 -0800

Creating anti-oppressive social work education and practice begins at the front door with admissions to social work school. Having had the unique perspective of being a child and adolescent that received social work services and later becoming a licensed social worker—then social work academic—myself, there is a direct connection between my experiences in public education, my experiences in social work education, and equity in social work school admissions. This piece seeks to demonstrate such.

Participatory Program Evaluation: Centering Critical Perspectives in Developing Socially Just and Collaborative Solutions

Laurie A. Walker — Wed, 28 Feb 2024 00:00:00 -0800

MSW students take research and program evaluation courses designed to develop their research-informed practice and practice-informed research skills. Textbooks center Euro-western ways of knowing, which can be supplemented by Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) approaches to research, evaluation, and community-engaged change processes. My article describes and analyzes organizational contexts, course structure, and critical pedagogies that enable authentic justice-centered graduate student co-creation of egalitarian learning communities that seek to name, challenge, and dismantle structures of exclusion, injustice, and marginalization. My insights as an instructor focus on what perspectives are centered and transformative approaches that acknowledge holistic (including affective) engagement in change processes. My pedagogy normalizes feeling unsettled with relational and dynamic collaborations that require students develop the elasticity to accept community partner feedback and revise research methods and practices accordingly, which are essential skills when working with BIPOC communities seeking justice.

Tough Nuts to Crack: Initiating an Imperfect Racial Justice Accountability Process Within One School of Social Work from One Perspective

Elspeth Slayter — Wed, 28 Feb 2024 00:00:00 -0800

This narrative reflects my journey as a White woman who is part of a team of leaders in a school of social work while developing and implementing an inwards-facing racial justice accountability initiative. This initiative was focused on developing an institutional strategy for confronting, addressing, and dismantling racism within our School of Social Work at Salem State University.

Double Special Issue: The Epilogue

Jenny L. Jones, Anthony P. Natale — Wed, 28 Feb 2024 00:00:00 -0800

This epilogue comments on the Reflections: Narratives of Professional Helping double Special Issue: A Call for Social Work Educators to Confront and Dismantle Systemic Racism Within Social Work Programs. The articles highlight the lived experiences, observations, and treatment of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) in social work programs across the country and the impact on individual productivity, higher education institutions, social work curriculum and the social work profession. The issues create a lens for examination of behaviors and practices and suggest paths forward to address systemic racism within social work programs.