Session: Achieving Equal Opportunity, Equity, and Justice through Equitable Development (Society for Social Work and Research 22nd Annual Conference - Achieving Equal Opportunity, Equity, and Justice)

This year's conference is built around the Social Work Grand Challenge of “Achieving Equal Opportunity and Justice!” Macro social work researchers have an ethical obligation to advance equity and justice, particularly among historically disenfranchised groups and communities. In their paper, Goldbach and colleagues (2015) discuss strategies for social workers to address this grand challenge by decreasing the significant social disadvantage, inequality, and stigma faced by the disenfranchised, including the poor, and racial and ethnic minorities. Stigma attaches negative characteristics or stereotypes to groups based on generalizations, misinformation, attitudes or beliefs, often resulting from the exercise of power from dominant groups over less powerful groups (Goldbach, Amara, Vega & Walter, 2015). Stigma perpetuates inequalities in American society through direct person-to-person discrimination, the internalization of negative stereotypes among the stigmatized, interactional discrimination and structural discrimination (Link et al, 2014).

This symposium will demonstrate how social work researchers can address the inequities caused by stigma and structural discrimination by advancing “Equitable Development,” which combines people-based and place-based strategies; creates new tools and instruments to enable low- income residents to gain an equity stake in the revitalization of their communities; and actively builds the voice of residents to become change agents in development (Policy Link, 2001). Racial and economic inequities are becoming increasingly stark in cities across the country. Urban neighborhoods are now gentrifying at twice the rate of the 1990s (Maciag, 2015), and wealth inequality among neighborhoods has also dramatically increased (Pendall & Hedman, 2015). Inequitable development remains the status quo in U.S. cities: the distribution of risks and opportunities are steeply slanted to benefit affluent and white residents, to the detriment of the poor and people of color.

This symposium builds on a symposium we presented at SSWR 2017. Four studies that illustrate macro social work strategies for advancing equitable development will be discussed: 1) a community-based participatory research study that engaged residents in identifying equitable development issues in their neighborhoods; (2) a multi-case study of a Neighborhood Story Project that advanced community equity, opportunity and justice; 3) a case study of an environmental justice organization that promoted community health without displacing residents through environmental gentrification; 4) a partnership between a housing authority and an advanced community planning class to engage elderly and disabled residents in the redevelopment of their public housing development. We will engage participants in an interactive dialogue to inspire increased social work involvement in advancing equal opportunity, equity and justice in disenfranchised communities that have suffered greatly from stigmatization and discrimination.

This session builds on the theme for this year's SSWR conference by illustrating social work's commitment to social justice, and holistic policies to promote equal opportunity and equity for all residents. Macro social workers can make critical contributions to shaping the way cities grow and develop, broadening the conversation of how cities can equitably serve, benefit and provide opportunities to their citizens. This session will demonstrate social workers' ethical obligation to address place-based inequities that will move the needle on the ‘grand challenges' for social work.