Social Work Commons^™

The Unequal Distribution Of Social Risk For Black Men Across The Life-Span. A Novel Framework., Waleed Y. Sami

Adultspan Journal

This conceptual overview offers a comprehensive overview of systemic pathways that negatively impact the mental health of Black Men throughout their lives. Our argument highlights the importance for counselors and mental health professionals to utilize a thorough social risk assessment that considers these pathways in order to effectively address the mental health needs of Black Men while fostering positive working relationships. This overview strongly advocates for the use of context and structural determinants when evaluating mental health symptoms. Without an appropriate understanding of social risk and determinants, counselors may inadvertently perpetuate disparities by decontextualizing symptomology, and reproducing racist discourse.

Adrift In Uncharted Waters: A Case Study Of A Muslim Family Involved With Child Protection Services In Ontario, Bibi Baksh

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This dissertation sought to understand how Muslims experience mandated child protection services in Ontario within the Canadian (and specifically, Ontarian) socio-political context. Ongoing experiences of racism, xenophobia, and Islamophobia within systems that intersect with child welfare, including schools and the criminal justice system, have compounding effects on Muslim families who are singled out politically and socially. Drawing from trends in child welfare literature, policy initiatives, and practices that consider the system’s impacts upon racialized peoples, this research contributes to the discourse by highlighting religious diversity as an under-investigated source of discrimination. Set against systemic challenges inherent in the child protection …

Racism-Based Trauma And Policing Among Black Emerging Adults, Robert Motley

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Community violence exposure (CVE) among Black emerging adults ages 18-29 in the United States is a major public health concern. However, an unknown is the nature of the relationship between Black emerging adults CVE and substance use when the perpetrator(s) of the violence are the police and the violence is experienced as a race-based traumatic event. The Classes of Racism Frequency of Racial Experiences (CRFRE) measure assesses individuals’ exposure to perceived racism-based events. However, the CRFRE hostile-racism scale does not capture the range of police violent events that are most salient for a population. To fill the noted gaps in …

The Effects Of Perceived Racism And Discrimination On The Mental Health Of Mexican And Mexican American Social Work Students, Karina Duque Sierra

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Research has shown that experiencing discrimination and racism can have significant and negative effects on people’s mental health. Among those affected are Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the United States. The purpose of this study was to examine if there was a relationship with self-reported mental health of Mexican/Mexican American social work students and self-reported experiences with racism and discrimination. This quantitative study surveyed 101 participants who (a) identified as Mexican and or Mexican American, (b) were 18 years or older (c) enrolled in college, and (d) identified as either a BASW or MSW student. This study utilized a Qualtrics …

Public-School Systems Are Criminalizing Our Young People: Giving Voice To The Marganilized, Carrie Stoltzfus

Graduate Theses & Dissertations

A phenomenological qualitative study using Critical Race Theory and counter-storytelling was completed to investigate what K-12 public schools should be doing to keep young people out of the school-to-prison pipeline (STPP). This study took place in a large city in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. Interviews were completed with former students of the researcher who were previously incarcerated, educational professionals, and justice system professionals. Additionally, observations of the court systems and document reviews were completed in order to triangulate findings. Themes emerged around factors that lead to incarceration and the preferred practices to support young people to avoid …

Navigating The Silences: Social Worker Discourses Around Race, Cherie Bridges Patrick

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This thesis explored social worker discourses to learn what they could reveal about professional workplace practices and experiences with race and racism. The study traced the subtle and elusive racism often found in everyday professional conversations that are not considered racist by dominant consensus. Using tools of thematic and critical discourse analysis (CDA), and van Dijk’s (1993, 2001, 2008, 2009, 2011) general theory of racism and denial (1992, 2008), data from 14 semistructured interviews and one focus group with a racially diverse group of social workers was analyzed in two ways. First, thematic analysis offered a horizontal or flat exploration …

Undoing Institutional Racism: Anti-Racism Training Handbook, India Irons

MSW Capstones

Research has shown that African American children and their families experience racial discrimination and bias in the child welfare system. Therefore, this project proposal aims to address racial discrimination and bias in the child welfare system by defining racism, analyzing color blind policy approaches and how it affects practice when working with families of color.

Undoing Institutional Racism is a facilitated intergroup dialogue that challenges the caseworkers, supervisors, and area administrators within Children’s Administration to “analyze the structures of power and privilege that hinder racial equity and prepares them to be effective organizers for social justice,” (The People’s Institute, 2008). …

It Can't Wait: Exposing The Connections Between Forms Of Sexual Exploitation, Dawn Hawkins

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Book Review: When Technology Hurts. How Pornography Harms: What Today's Teens, Young Adults, Parents, And Pastors Need To Know By John Foubert, Walter S. Dekeseredy

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Black Women's Search For Meaning: An Existential Portraiture Study On How Black Women Experience The 4 Existential Givens, Tamiko Lemberger-Truelove

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

The purpose of the phenomenological, qualitative study was to explore how select Black women experience the four ultimate concerns of existence, including freedom, isolation, meaninglessness, and death. Existential psychology, from which the four existential givens emerge, is deeply grounded in existential philosophy, which rarely connects key principles and tenets of existentialism to the experiences of Black women. The existential givens have been posited as a universal framework and yet because Black women are faced with multiple forms of marginalization the current study operates from the assumption that universal experiences are filtered through patently Black experiences. To explore how the existential …

Wholistic And Ethical: Social Inclusion With Indigenous Peoples, Kathleen E. Absolon

Lyle S. Hallman Social Work Faculty Publications

This paper begins with a poem and is inclusive of my voice as Anishinaabekwe (Ojibway woman) and is authored from my spirit, heart, mind and body. The idea of social inclusion and Indigenous peoples leave more to the imagination and vision than what is the reality and actuality in Canada. This article begins with my location followed with skepticism and hope. Skepticism deals with the exclusion of Indigenous peoples since colonial contact and the subsequent challenges and impacts. Hope begins to affirm the possibilities, strengths and Indigenous knowledge that guides wholistic cultural frameworks and ethics of social inclusion. A wholistic …

Constructing A Deconstruction: Reflections On Dismantling Racism, Bronwyn Cross-Denny, Ashleigh Betso, Emily Cusick, Caitlin Doyle, Mikaela Marbot, Shauna Santos-Dempsey

School of Social Work Faculty Publications

The article is a reflective narrative regarding the work I do as an ally for change and social justice as a white woman. In my class on Human Diversity and Social Justice, I often discuss how I can use my white privilege to advance social justice to address racism. Several students who have taken the class offer their own reflections on taking the class. Relevant information from the literature is provided to ground the discussion and includes cultural competence, racism, white privilege, and racial identity development. Strategies for deconstructing racism are discussed.

Racism Vs. Social Capital: A Case Study Of Two Majority Black Communities, Bruce W. Strouble

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Several researchers have identified social capital as a means to improve the social sustainability of communities. While there have been many studies investigating the benefits of social capital in homogeneous White communities, few have examined it in Black homogeneous communities. Also, there has been limited research on the influence of racism on social capital in African American communities. In this dissertation a comparative case study was used within a critical race theory framework. The purpose was to explore the role of racial oppression in shaping social capital in majority African American communities. Data were collected from 2 majority Black communities …

Managing The Polarities Of Democracy: A Theoretical Framework For Positive Social Change, William J. Benet

Journal of Sustainable Social Change

People around the globe have embraced democracy to bring about positive social change to address our environmental, economic, and militaristic challenges. Yet, there is no agreement on a definition of democracy that can guide social change efforts. The Polarities of Democracy model is a unifying theory of democracy to guide healthy, sustainable, and just social change efforts. The Polarities of Democracy model consists of ten elements, organized as five polarity pairs: freedom & authority, justice & due process, diversity & equality, human-rights & communal-obligations, and participation & representation. In this model each element has positive aspects and negative aspects and …

Calling Out The Persistence Of Racism, Sanford F. Schram

Political Science Faculty Research and Scholarship

In this issue New Political Science begins a new tradition, printing an extended review essay of the book that received the Michael Harrington Book Award at the most recent American Political Science Association Meeting. The Michael Harrington Award is given for an outstanding book that demonstrates how scholarships can be used in the struggle for a better world. In 2011, the award went to Michelle Alexander for her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in an Age of Color-Blindness. Sanford Schram, a member of the award committee, has contributed the below review.

Building Their Readiness For Economic "Freedom": The New Poor Law And Emancipation, Anne O'Connell

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Contemporary studies that track the new racialization of poverty in Canada require an historical account. The history we invoke in North America is often borrowed from the British poor laws, a literature that is severed from its counterpart: the histories of racial slavery, racial thinking, White bourgeois power and the making of White settler societies. The effects of severing the history of poor relief from racial classifications and racism(s) are far reaching. Systems of oppression come to be seen as separate structures in which the New Poor Law appears as a domestic policy in Britain unrelated to racial thinking and …

Color-Blind Individualism, Intercountry Adoption And Public Policy, Pamela Anne Quiroz

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

A prevailing ideology of color-blindness has resulted in privatizing the discourse on adoption. Color-blind individualism, the adoption arena's version of color-blind discourse, argues that race should not matter in adoption; racism can be eradicated through transracial adoption; and individual rights should be exercised without interference of the state. As privatization has increasingly dominated our world and disparities between countries have grown, so too has intercountry adoption. This paper examines the colonial aspects of intercountry adoption and implications for conceptualizing global human rights from our current emphasis on individual rights, as the real issue continues to be which children are desired …