Teaching Local Professional Histories of Racism and Oppression to Prepare Students to Battle Inequities

Background: The 2023 SSWR conference rightly challenges our profession to address complex problems, battle inequities, and build solutions. This project addresses the “complex problem” of social work’s history of racism and colonialism, and builds “solutions” by turning social work students’ gaze on ourselves. To truly battle inequities in the present, social workers must address how our profession has collaborated in white supremacy, state surveillance, and other forms of oppression (Harty, 2021). In order to encourage this historicized learning and reflection among graduating MSWs, I developed a pilot module for their final Capstone course.

Methods: First, students read five articles to spark reflection on oppression and resistance in social work history: African-American reformers (Carlton-LaNey & Hodges, 2004); interracialist social workers (Wilkerson-Freeman, 2002); white women and white supremacy (McRae, 2018); settler colonialism (Fortier & Hon-Sing Wong, 2018); and social work’s troubled past (Iaokimidis & Timikliniotis, 2020) and wrote reflections on the impact of those readings. Next, students attended a lecture in which I grounded these complex histories in the history of our own city. After the lecture, they explored more than 40 local historic “objects” on an online learning platform (e.g., an advertisement discussing enslaved children working in the building that houses our school; a newspaper article on racially segregated social services; and a call for a “white school of social work”). Finally, students reflected in writing on the “objects” and upon any reconciliation/change they believe is needed for social work to play a meaningful role in creating an equitable, antiracist world. Content analysis was used to analyze student reflections qualitatively.

Results: Thirteen students enrolled in the course. The students ranged in age from 25 to 35 years; 3 identified as Black, 2 as Asian, and 8 as white; all identified as women. Students universally wrote that they gained knowledge and insight from these assignments. For example, one student wrote, “If [social workers] don’t address what has happened in the past, we will not be able to move in the future without facing difficulties that have previously been (and still are) part of social work.” Students also reflected on the readings from their own identity standpoints. One white woman reflected, “I found myself feeling angry while reading how white women shaped and sustained white supremacist politics;” while a Black student wrote, “It is important to...realize that my ancestors were a part of it making great change.” Another Black student wrote that the materials made her “feel seen.” Full results will be discussed in the presentation.

Conclusions: Based on the feedback provided by students in this pilot, a unit on racial inclusion and exclusion in local social work history has been integrated into all sections of our MSW Capstone class, so that in all graduating MSWs will grapple with these materials. The material now lives on the School website and we are working to build a module for the BSW curriculum. Further research will continue to explore how teaching local professional histories prepares students to battle inequities.