Freedman, Ethan Professor Susan Witte Columbia University School for Social Work, New York
Submitted in partial fulfillment as a Self Awareness Synthesis Project within the requirements for Columbia's School for Social Work program and Prof. Susan Witte's Foundations in Social Work class.
Acknowledgements
In introducing the following work, I would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory on which we learn, work, and resource from at Columbia University School of Social Work is land of the Lenape and Wappinger indigenous peoples. Let us commit ourselves to the struggle against the forces that have dispossessed the Lenape, Wappinger, and other indigenous people of their lands.
I would also like to acknowledge Prof. Susan Witte and her class in Foundations in Social Work (SOCWT7100) for introducing me to pivotal social work principles. Moreover, my peers who I worked closely in discussion and were very influential in developing thoughts around this paper. I appreciate everyone in the class for the ideas they have assisted in generating. With these acknowledgements, I present the following work of my own.
Introduction
On the eleventh floor of the Columbia School of Social Work (CSSW) building is a classroom in which twenty individuals collectively meet once a week – for the last 14 weeks – to ground themselves in the discipline of social justice work. For Foundations of Social Work, facilitated by Prof. Susan Witte, the syllabus orients around the "social work NASW Code of Ethics" which "explicitly states that it is essential for social workers to exhibit a commitment to social justice and the amelioration of oppression on the micro, mezzo, and macro levels" (CSSW, 2024). There are many sites at which social justice work takes roots, but this Foundations course is one that has bent and stretched my understanding of social justice, human interactions, and how systems contribute to power dynamics at play in society.
As social workers in training, we are guided through construction of critical thinking skills and deconstruction of implicit biases. We must demonstrate professional conduct grounded in ethical principles, critical thinking, and the ability to effectively communicate professional ideas. They must embrace diversity with humility, confidence, and respect while engaging in research-informed and practice-informed approaches. Additionally, social workers apply knowledge of human behavior and social environments to respond to and shape practices within diverse contexts, working collaboratively to engage, intervene, and evaluate individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities. From Foundations of Social Work, I have learned and further developed my tool box for mitigating and eliminating oppressive systems at the site of social work centering anti-black racism, social justice as core to ethics of practice, self-awareness and self reflection, radical healing, imagination, transformation, and coalition building and action.
Social Justice Work and Anti-Black Racism: Inherently Intertwined
Actively undoing systems and perpetrators of anti-black racism is a core principle in social work as anti-black racism is intentional, unintentional, nuanced, and impacts everyone alongside histories of black and white, white supremacy, and anti-blackness. PROP Collective discusses the roots of the foundation course, a curriculum constructed to "disrupt systemic oppression rooted in enslavement" (Altaha et al., 2023). If white supremacy is sewn into our systems, centering black feminism can abstract an expansive domain of oppression (Altaha et al., 2023). There is recognition of a wide range for anti-oppressive work, whether opening the stage for one to share their embodied experiences, listening to music to "share space with the beauty" of sound, or student activism. Regardless of one's medium for social justice, "mutuality and collaboration" is of the utmost importance (Altaha et al., 2023).
At my practicum site, I find myself in engagement with scholars from Boys Bronx Prep Middle School who are exhibiting behaviors that put them broadly at risk in school and society. Part of the work that we do insists on creating space for collective understanding, using group therapy tactics to design safe arenas for support between students with similar or different locuses. Okun (2021) orients one to white supremacy as a "construct of race to create witness and a hierarchy of racialized value" that "serves capitalism," and "comes after all of us." If "we are all swimming in the waters of white supremacy culture," and "anything constructed can be deconstructed or replaced," establishing spaces of mutuality for scholars to build tools for empathy–especially when bullying at this site is rooted in entrenched internalized racism of young black and brown boys.
While Okun (2021) goes deeper with characteristics, culture, and resistance towards white-supremacy, Chung (2017) expands discourse to include "anti-blackness in the Asian American community" as "not a discreet, widespread sentiment"–but "directly correlated" to Asian struggles for integrity. If white supremacy creates a hierarchy, adapting a curriculum around anti-blackness highlights the structures of power that place each and every agent into subject despite giving white people privilege in the process. In "The Four I's of Oppression" it is made clear that social justice work, whether at Boys Bronx Prep or elsewhere, can utilize critical anit-racist ideologies to breakdown the institutional, internalized, interpersonal pillars of oppression and privilege.
Social Justice Core to Social Work
If "social workers challenge injustice" using anti-black racism as an abstraction for the all encompassing domain of structuralized racial oppression, understanding the ways social justice becomes tangible in the pursuit of social change requires a social worker to be ethical in language, accountability, questioning, active listening, empathy, cultural competency, anti-oppressive theory, and more (CSSW, 2024). A principle lens for social justice is Kimberlé Crenshaw's intersectionality theory which highlights that oppression can be intertwined with other subjugations or privileges at all levels, but understanding that social work and social justice go hand-in-hand to combat oppressive systems from an intersectional pedagogy is something Finn augments saying, "social justice work challenges us to examine the social construction of reality, that is the ways we use our cultural capacities and give meaning to social experience" (2021). There are countless identity compounding injustices perpetrated on agents by systems, collectives, and individuals. "Justice oriented action first requires critical reflection on both ourselves and that which we witness" as social workers in order to understand how there is nuance to embodied experiences that necessitate social justice work (Finn, 2021).
Part of the core curriculum for the relevant course was Open-Mic presentations which asked for students to engage in listening to others' experiences and relationship to anti-black racism and oppressive systems. Whether perpetrators of violence at one point or subjects everyday, each and every agent in the room had diverse and distinct experiences that informed why they were doing social work or how they understood the curriculum. While some people wanted to be heard only, others welcomed responses from their peers–something I engaged with many times. I wanted to reflect my understanding of their testimonials in efforts to share how it expands my understanding of the multiplicities in life experiences. With a lot of the class being white students, it was important to understand that lots of open-mics might be within the realm of DiAngelo (2011), concepts of white fragility, and low tolerance for racial discomfort. Our class had many moments where whiteness revealed itself and created discomfort, but just as many moments of growth followed. To testify an experience alongside anti-black racism actively goes against "white insistence on racial comfort" which "ensures that racism will not be faced" (DiAngelo; 2011). This is the building of "stamina" in order to exist in a career that necessitates being in engagement with agents embodying different knowledge (DiAngelo, 2011).
In line with all of this, social workers must live by Audre Lorde's perspectives of oppression and intolerance administered in all kinds of varieties. If Lorde does not "believe that one aspect of [herself] can possibly profit from the oppression of any other part of [her] identity," the notion that "there is no hierarchy in oppression" takes root in the fact that she could not separate her identities that were in tension with each other. As a social worker and someone who lives by pieces of Lorde's pedagogy, some people in this world have faced incredibly adverse experiences that can be measured in a variety of ways–but I must not compare them to each other in such a way that invalidates the capacity of its effect to that individual who vulnerably opens up and shares. Social justice as core to ethics in social work is situated in the matter that profuse amounts of stories can be told and heard in response, but social workers must act on that which impassion them for positive change.
Self Awareness and Self Reflection
Showing up in constructed spaces for engaging with individuals and organizations requires social workers to have a tool box for reflection, accountability, and humility. Morgaine (2020) wonderfully prefaces with a tool that is critical to co-conspiring with others and that is the language one wields. Words can define relationships, build the atmosphere of engagement, reveal the clients relevant feelings, and hold someone accountable. On the other hand, absence of talking can speak volumes alongside nonverbal behaviors and simply listening to the person at the other end of the conversation (Morgaine, 2020). Language is relevant to every point of social work and Gaiter (2018) positions a reality where not knowing discourse on a subject can place the informed in a realm of discomfort.
For a student who had to partake in the Columbia University core curriculum, Gaiter (2018) emotionally felt that lack of diversity on campus and racist ignorance "forced" them to facilitate a metaphorical course in their daily life "while avoiding descent into black rage" (2018). On a predominantly white campus for a Black woman like Gaiter, she felt "opting out will not resolve this problem" of miseducation (2018). For my open mic, I opted into making a zine on Asexuality alongside Black Feminist analysis of compulsory sexuality. As a white cis-het passing male individual actively pursuing a career in health and sex education in a higher academic setting at a different facet of this very same University Gaiter (2018) addresses, Tatum (2000) lives rent free in my mind to remind me of the complexity of my own identity within different contexts upon self reflection and registered self awareness. The past, present, and future self informed the agent in me to create an open-mic with the intention of engaging in conversation about topics with stigma that white men have historically wielded violently through patriarchal values. Alternatively, women have excluded men from spaces to discuss these topics because of the associated histories of discomfort around men who perpetrated harm. Currently there is a lack of male sex educators and a gap in men's sex education because of the lack of conversations being facilitated by or for men on the subject. In my open mic, years of self reflection and garnering tools for self awareness, accountability, and humility assist me as I pursue work in a field of change where agents are already in the process of becoming who they want to be before they step into shared space. To Tatum (2020), our identities enter the room with us and reflection enables us with understanding of how we have shown up in the past in order to inform the present and the future. Self awareness is born out of reflection that results in positive change and consciousness of how one's mind and body can show up to space to produce a change in the environment or life of agents.
Radical Healing, Imagination, Transformation
Upon being in engagement with people, reflecting, listening, having awareness, and gathering more tools for a tool kit from a foundational curriculum in social work, knowing the role of healing, abstraction, and imagination alongside strides for social justice is vital to staying motivated and grounded in one's work. Anti-oppressive liberation, decision making, and centering an all encompassing domain for healing that requires radical imagination situates me in my training. Freire (2005) shows us that education needs to be rethought before radical self healing can take place. Education is an act of denomination and to remove ourselves from the system, no matter how entrenched we are in it, could look like many different things (Freire, 2005). As a student, I rest during the weekends, with a sigh, or anything I want to do that I can lean on for space. Discussing violence requires making room for the joy and celebration that can foster spaces for rebuilding agents who are fatigued or in need.
The Combahee River Collective writes in a "Black Feminist Statement" that "Black feminism is the logical political movement to combat the manifold and simultaneous oppressions that all women of color face" as "the personal is political" and not all spaces are safe for every body (1977). Considering the topics we were discussing in class were tough, radical imagination and healing could take place in spaces we constructed through language and centering voices often marginalized. However, in a world based on inclusion, sometimes the most radical thoughts are simple ones–and affinity spaces are a prime example of this. Considering we are in a world where race is a construct responsible for harming people on a daily basis no matter how integrated society seems to be, sometimes creating spaces where groups are separated based on inclination to have similar experiences through labeling broader umbrella identities can be really helpful in establishing safety.
My experience in affinity groups has helped me to understand that healing can take place at the individual level as well as collective, organizational, cultural, or world wide. The issues we face as collectives require centering those who can liberate us all, but sometimes doing that requires excluding those who do not cater to the dynamic. There are many ways to engage in healing and affinity spaces are simply one. Another simple one might be the stress and fidget toys that I give my scholars at Boys Bronx Prep to help them in class–regardless, healing requires one to think on that which might be uplifting depending on the agent in question.
Coalition Building: Concretizing my Foundation Moving Forward
When I was admitted to CSSW, I was not admitted alone. I was one of a many in a cohort of social justice workers who had their own mind, body, and attachment to their understanding of how they can turn their knowledge into practice. While it is easier said than done to move through graduate school alone, social workers should opt into engagement with those around them using all the tools available in their kits. Engagement is the process of building space and understanding rooted in empathy and partnership centering trust and collaboration (Finn, 2021). There is no ending to engagement as it is life long depending on the agent's commitment, but relationship is at the core (Finn, 2021). If engaging with another is "entry into a conspiracy of hope," the assessment process to Finn (2021) asks social workers to follow their clients to the source instead of leading them. Through teaching-learning, the assessment of an agent enables social workers to engage in "multiple ways of knowing" using "meaning making" processes like narrative storytelling, occupying the role of the "listener" (Finn, 2021). When clients guide clinicians towards their roots, the process of action and accompaniment is orienting to the notion that we must choose to practice what we are learning. This part of the process requires social workers to walk alongside their clients with empathy, collaboration, trust, respect, solidarity, equality, and a focus on the entire process that is being witnessed (Finn, 2021) It is our job to be in alliance with agents who seek our help and to do this we must be sensitive to the context, rights, risks, and responsibilities of each agent and their relationships to power dynamics and oppressive systems (Finn, 2021). We have the ability to plan and challenge all while advocating and expanding possibilities, but the evaluation process necessitates empowerment and centering human rights and social justice (Finn, 2021). Moreover, it is of the utmost importance to always offer space to return to any conversation needed. While this could look like setting up time for follow up sessions, when engaged with others, the process is sensitive and requires continued checkpoints for understanding, reflection, memory, and dialogue (Finn, 2021). Sharing what it is a social worker is coming to understand about their client can be incredibly helpful, liberating, and affirming and the entire process of building relationships necessitates empathy and holding space respectfully and professionally.
Finn (2021) is speaking to the client in an abstracted sense, but their words apply to my recent onboarding into social justice work via Columbia University School for Social Work and Professor Susan Witte's Foundations of Social Work class. I am a white, cisgender, heterosexual male passing through space around health and sex education in efforts to understand management processes, entrepreneurship, and social justice as one of my pedagogies for this work. I am informed by a commitment to continuous learning, reflection, and action. I have a deeper understanding of the systemic inequities that shape our world and the tools necessary to address them. Social justice is not just a theoretical framework but a practice that demands humility, self-awareness, and collaboration. By centering anti-oppressive principles, radical imagination, and coalition building, I am equipped to approach with empathy, integrity, and a focus on meaningful change. I am inspired to integrate these lessons into my professional journey, embracing the complexities of identity, oppression, and healing in service of creating a more equitable society. The path ahead is challenging, but with the foundation built during this course, I am prepared to walk alongside individuals and communities in the shared pursuit of liberation and justice.
Bibliography
Altaha, N., et al. (2023). Narratives for uprooting anti-Black racism in higher education: Developing a power, race, oppression and privilege framework in social work. Smith College Studies in Social Work, 93(2-4), 106–129. https://doi.org/10.1080/00377317.2023.2266026
Chung, J. (2017, August 24). How Asian immigrants learn anti-Blackness from white culture, and how to stop it. HuffPost. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-asian-immigrants-learn-anti-blackness-from-white-culture-and-how-to-stop-it_b_599eecaae4b0cb7715bfd3a1
Combahee River Collective. (1977). A Black feminist statement. In G. T. Hull, P. B. Scott, & B. Smith (Eds.), But some of us are brave: All the women are white, all the Blacks are men: Black women's studies (pp. 13–22). Feminist Press.
Denham, A. R. (2008). Rethinking historical trauma: Narratives of resilience. Transcultural Psychiatry, 45(3), 391–414. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363461508094673
DiAngelo, R. (2011). White fragility. International Journal of Critical Pedagogy, 3(3), 54–70.
DiAngelo, R., & Sensoy, Ö. (2014). Leaning in: A student's guide to engaging constructively with social justice content. In A. D. Davis & S. L. Museus (Eds.), Navigating difficult dialogues in higher education (pp. 193–208). Stylus Publishing.
Finn, J. L. (2021). Just practice: A social justice approach to social work (4th ed.). Oxford University Press.
Freire, P. (2005). Pedagogy of the oppressed (M. B. Ramos, Trans.; 30th anniversary ed.). Continuum. (Original work published 1970)
Gaiter, A. (2018, March 28). Black emotional labor is core to my Columbia experience. Columbia Spectator. https://www.columbiaspectator.com/opinion/2018/03/28/black-emotional-labor-is-core-to-my-columbia-experience/
Garran, A. M., & Rasmussen, B. M. (2014). Safety in the classroom: Reconsidered. Journal of Teaching in Social Work, 34(4), 401–412. https://doi.org/10.1080/08841233.2014.937517
Grassroots Fundraising Journal. (2012, October). The four I's of oppression. Grassroots Fundraising Journal. https://grassrootsfundraising.org/2012/10/the-four-is-of-oppression/
Lorde, A. (1983). There is no hierarchy of oppression. In Homophobia and education (pp. 9–10). Council on Interracial Books for Children.
Morgaine, K., & Capous-Desyllas, M. (2020). Anti-oppressive social work practice: Putting theory into action. Cognella Academic Publishing.
Okun, T. (2021). White supremacy culture—Still here. https://www.whitesupremacyculture.info/
Sensoy, Ă–., & DiAngelo, R. (2014). Respect differences? Challenging the common guidelines in social justice education. Democracy & Education, 22(2), Article 1.
Tatum, B. D. (2000). The complexity of identity: "Who am I?". In M. Adams, W. J. Blumenfeld, H. W. Hackman, X. Zúñiga, & M. L. Peters (Eds.), Readings for diversity and social justice (pp. 9–14). Routledge.
The Arrow. (2018, August 9). Why people of color need spaces without white people. The Arrow. https://arrow-journal.org/why-people-of-color-need-spaces-without-white-people/