I was interested in this discussion because it intersects with two aspects of my life right now. I’m currently teaching a course that could be called a “diversity” class for a local undergraduate social work program. This class is actually the second in a series, the first of which honestly was more in-depth and substantial than the diversity course I took in my Master’s program. I have taught the first course in the series twice, and was happy to be asked to teach the second course, which delves much further than just learning about different racial/ethnic populations to explore social work practice. So, as a woman of color teaching a class on issues of diversity for a professional program dominated by white practitioners, I was very interested in hearing what others had to say about the ways I, as a female teacher of color, read and are read by the students in my class.

In addition, over the past month, this topic has come up in a couple of conversations amongst a group of friends who regularly get together. However, we are not only discussing the educator of color in the classroom but including the reverse situation of white educators teaching in a diverse classroom of K-12 students. This group of friends includes several educators, three of whom are white women and three of whom are women of color (myself included). One of the things that happened was that comments made by the educators of color were viewed negatively by the white educators, the white educators attempted to “educate” the educators of color based on a White, liberal framework that did not account for the differences and nuances with teachers and students of color, and feelings were hurt on both sides.

I’ve been pondering this for the past few weeks, trying to figure this out more clearly in my own mind. Pedagogically, as a group we are pretty similar. However, the issues were centered around race – explicitly and implicitly. Which reinforces to me that it doesn’t matter how much a group is politically and intellectually like-minded, race and culture are always present in the conversation as much as people would like to think they are not. So I was also interested to see how this roundtable addressed how a diverse group of white and people of color educators discuss the racialized classroom.

A few of the key quotes that were made in the roundtable I thought were provocative and have been on my mind:

• the tyranny of comfort gets translated as civility
• asking for the “we” (solidarity, consensus) to happen in the classroom is problematic, because when the White students/teacher leave the room, there is no more “we” – they can leave the “we” in the room. Students and educators of color, however, don’t get to leave it in the room, because we carry it in our bodies the minute we leave the room
• White faculty can be disturbed but not hurt personally by racism in the classroom – and how do they intervene if they don’t have the same personal experiences of oppression?
• privilege allows you to shift politics in a heartbeat as soon as it becomes uncomfortable or personally threatening
• there is a sharp disconnect between theory and praxis. You can talk the theory, but when it happens in the classroom it’s back to the status quo
• people of color enter the classroom already in power differential as a result of our racialized bodies

There is actually another issue at play here, at least for my classroom of students this semester. Which is, that the social work profession will not be able to really get a handle on issues of diversity until several things happen – most particularly, until the profession stops assuming that the social work practitioners are all going to be White and the clients are all going to be people of color.

The students in the class I’m teaching are an incredibly diverse group of students – diverse in terms of race, ethnicity, culture, gender, socioeconomic status, culture, immigration status, age, ability, national origin, and religion. My frustration is that I’m teaching a class in which the “typical” social work professional – white and female – makes up less than 25% of my class (and including the white males make up less than 1/3 of the class) having to use textbooks and other materials written for the White practitioner for the client of color.

This is yet another example of systemic racism, the assumption that the White students will be the social work practitioners, that people of color are not social work practitioners; that bias and prejudice and cultural differences are not areas social workers of color need to think about or examine, that as a person of color we do not also carry privileges that we need to be aware of, for example assuming that I, as a Korean American who might be working with a Korean American client,  will not need to factor in the power differentials I carry by virtue of my profession.

I realize the field is still dominated by White persons, and White social work professionals need to examine their privilege and assumptions and biases. I am definitely not suggesting that we stop teaching to White students.

But how are social workers of color supposed to see themselves reflected in the profession at all, if all our textbooks and courses operate from a traditional “diversity” model in which White people are the professionals and people of color are only reflected in the client population, pathologized as those who need interventions and the great White savior to “empower” us? Despite the hand-wringing over the difficulty recruiting and retaining social workers of color to our college and university BSW and MSW programs, what is our profession doing about changing the frame that the social work profession is for White folks? Our textbooks and syllabi reflect the status quo in which our field sees White practitioners as the norm and clients of color as the norm.

Karger, H.J. (1983). Science, research and social work: Who controls the profession? Social Work, 28, 200-205.

To gently ease back into blogging, I’ll begin by sharing an article about transracial adoption and racial identity by journalist Hope Rurik, who interviewed me in December for this article, Research, experts say racial identity important after adoption.

JaeRan Kim, who was adopted from South Korea at age 3, said culture camps, cultural festivals and even restaurant outings all became popular after her generation of adoptees, which includes Trenka, had grown. She said giving children the tools they need to grow into an adult of color in the U.S. requires more than a restaurant visit.

She said the wide disconnect from language and culture often makes it more difficult for intercountry transracial adoptees to connect with ethnic communities in the U.S. than it is for American transracial adoptees.

“Anyone can go out and buy food or costumes from another country,” she said, “but it’s the feeling like you’re part of an ethnic community as a person of an ethnic background that you don’t necessarily get.”

Read the article in full here.

From the press release:

MU PERFORMING ARTS PRESENTS

A COMMUNITY FORUM

What If?: An Adoptee Dilemma

September 25, 4:30 pm

at John B. Davis Auditorium, Macalester College

Free Admission

(Minneapolis/St. Paul) In association with its upcoming 2011-2012 mainstage season, Mu Performing Arts is initiating a new series of community forums designed to bring audiences closer to the work before it appears on stage. The first of these forums, entitled “What If?: An Adoptee Dilemma” and co-sponsored by Macalester College, will take place on Sunday, September 25, 4:30 pm, at the John B. Davis Auditorium of Macalester College. Admission is free and open to the public.

Mu Performing Arts, the region’s foremost Asian American performing arts company, focuses its work on social justice and community issues, many of which affect individuals both within and outside of the Asian American population. With the aim to enlighten audiences through discussion and create deeper insight into the stories on stage, Mu will hold one forum prior to each of its four mainstage productions throughout the season. Topics for each forum will reflect a relevant issue inspired by the related performance.

“What If: An Adoptee Dilemma” takes its inspiration from Four Destinies, a play about various facets of the adoptee experience by playwright Katie Hae Leo. The panelists, all adoptees, will engage in a comprehensive dialogue of stories and perspectives, exploring questions of fate, race, sexuality, and family from an adoptee point of view.

Mu envisions the community forum not only as a means of bringing people together to examine an important issue, but learning from those who have lived through the experiences that Mu presents on the stage. “We’ve asked a lot of questions and have had conversations with many people in the [adoptee] community to get to this point,” says Mu’s Community Liaison Randy Reyes, who is organizing the forum series. “We are really excited to have the support from Macalester College and some of the top leaders in the adoptee community involved in this panel.”

Panelists include social worker and PhD candidate JaeRan Kim; PhD candidate and Korean American adoptee Oh Myo Kim;  LGBTQ social activist and PhD student Shawyn Lee; Colombian adoptee Shanda Stracek, and Metro State assistant professor in social work Robert O’Connor. Soojin Pate, Minneapolis Community and Technical College will moderate the forum.

Four Destinies by Katie Hae Leo opens at Mixed Blood Theatre on October 15.

Just some highlights:

• I spent a week in California at an adoption family camp, where I was privileged to be one of the keynote speakers, facilitated three workshops for parents, two workshops for the teens, and one workshop for the teens and their parents. By far the best part of going to Pact Camp is the opportunity to be with other adult transracial adoptees who are creating, sharing, advising, counseling, educating and mentoring adopted children and youth and their adoptive parents. One of the things that has been difficult is the in-between state we adult transracial and international adoptees who work with adopted individuals and families find ourselves. We are often considered less expert than the Professionals and Adoptive Parents who do the same work. We are also routinely criticized by other adult adoptees for working at camps such as Pact because we are seen as perpetuating the adoption industry. It is such a thin tightrope that we walk. I’m eternally grateful that I have found a cohort of adult transracial and international adoptee professionals that just get it, and with whom I can share both the joys and the frustrations of doing this work.
• I attended the Summer Institute for Indian Child Welfare in my home state of Minnesota. For several days I learned about best practices in tribal child welfare services by those who are the experts – the tribes. I have to say I was very, very impressed by the speakers and the special opportunities for learning that I was privileged to be invited to participate. One of the biggest takeaways from this conference was that not only are some of the tribes that took over their child welfare services from the state governments doing exemplary work in their communities, that the outside world should be implementing their practices. Shouldn’t every child have active efforts conducted on their behalf? Shouldn’t every placement be determined on a hierarchy of the best interest for a child’s continuation with their family and community (placement first with family, extended family, community, and with new resources outside the community as a last resort)? My greatest frustration in leaving this conference was the huge disservice our child welfare service practices have done to children and families. What arrogance do we as a system of care have that we think children thrive better when completely severed from their families and communities, not to mention cultures? I challenge any adult to think about what it would be like to be forced to move away to a strange new place and start over without anything from your former life and prohibited from talking to anyone from your former life – family, friends, colleagues, everyone – and told to be grateful for it. Imagine being in a witness protection program only you had no choice over whether you wanted to be in the witness protection program because someone else decided it was in your best interest. I would guess it would be your last choice, chosen only if there were no other options available. Now imagine that you have to do this as a child. And that, sadly, is what we are doing to thousands of children each and every day.
• I presented at a shelter that provides crisis counseling, services and beds for youth that are experiencing homelessness. I was asked to present because in the past few years, this agency has seen a big rise in the number of teens who were transracially or internationally adopted. These teens have either run from their adoptive homes or were kicked out by their adoptive parents. While reunification is the goal, the counselors have been challenged by the difficulty with working with the adopted youth and his or her parent(s). One staff person told me that nearly all the youth they saw at the center during one recent month were adopted.
• I am continuing to work on my dissertation proposal as well and hope to be finished in early September, so I can begin to collect data for my research and thesis. I am also continuing with my “day job” which is to coordinate the Permanency and Adoption Competency Certificate through my university, that will begin this fall.

The grim reality of being in a graduate program!

I had to laugh at the statement “for many, the appeal of the “life of the mind” – being buried in books and surrounded by the intellectual elite – is the ultimate fantasy” because it is so true. In a way I was really fortunate that I had several friends in the middle of or recently finished with doctoral degrees when I began mine, so I had a heavy dose of reality to counter my fantasy. Even so, I often find myself realizing that like a stubborn teenager who thinks “it won’t happen to me,” many of the very things my friends warned me about are indeed part and parcel of graduate school.

Via: Online PhD Programs

When I began graduate school my department did not use social media sites to promote and market their activities and programs. I asked if I could create and maintain a Twitter site for the Center and now I share Twitter duties with other graduate students. I enjoy working with others in the Center to think about how to effectively use social media to promote the Center’s activities.

One of the things I make sure to emphasize when I talk about using Twitter or other social media (our Center also has a Facebook page and a blog) is the reciprocal nature of social media. A lot of professionals use Twitter and Facebook in a one-way direction to share their organization’s (or professional) activities/news/etc. But I often remind others who are starting to use Twitter professionally that it’s not just about a mass news blast to the “Twitterverse” but that social media done best is done relationally. That means paying attention to who else is out there that is similar to you or your organization and “following” or “liking” their social media page. It means thanking new followers on Twitter for following you. It means when someone you follow or like posts, a news story link or message that you “re-tweet” or “share” rather than posting it as your own. It means commenting on other blogs and linking other blogs on your blog as well.  It means making connections between fellow online relationships that you think would benefit from knowing each other.To me this is what social work is all about!

Anyone who knows me knows that one of my mantras in almost all social work (and beyond) situations is parallel processing. So in the same ways that we social workers tend to think about social media as a client (practice) issue, I want to encourage our profession to see it as a professional and organizational issue as well, beyond the issue of just client concerns (i.e. clients engaging in problematic behaviors on social media sites) which is where most of the emphasis on social media is currently situated.

As Ericka and I discussed at our presentation for NASW-MN last week, this (focusing on clients) is the easy part of the social media discussion to come together on. It’s also the location where our professional ethics give us the most guidance. The NASW and ASWB came together in 2005 to create a guide about technology, Standards for Technology and Social Work Practice. However, what Ericka and I were concerned with is the lack of guidance on the professional-to-professional ethical concerns that we have been hearing about or seeing within our own experiences (both at an agency or organizational level and at a larger macro professional level). Unfortunately this means that often in discussions I’m having with other social workers about social technology, the “blame” almost always centers on how social media affects clients. Rarely – almost never – do social workers talk about their own usage on social media sites (except with those who are pretty adamantly against social media) or the professional responsibilities and ethical issues that are present in this digital age.

In addition, supervisors often have less personal usage experience in social media and social networking than practitioners and at the agency level there are very few policies in place to address problematic issues regarding social media and social networking use other than what I call “abstinence-only” policies. That is, no access to social media or social networking sites in the work place. This becomes a problem when the agency decides to jump on the social networking bandwagon and create their own Twitter/Facebook page/Blog and suddenly they need access so that employees can tweet/post/etc.

Just as a certain politician recently found himself in trouble over twitter messages he thought were private that instead had been published publicly, there are social work professionals and social work students who behave “badly” on social media sites and our profession hasn’t figured out how to address these problems. For example (true story), what about two social workers making fun of a colleague on Facebook, regardless of whether the colleague in question is a “friend,” when all the other colleagues see the exchange happening? How would we address this situation professionally if the one being made fun of was a client of ours? What about if one of the bullies was our client? My question is, as a professional, am I holding my fellow colleagues to the same ethical standards when online as I would in real life? If I overheard two of my colleagues making fun of a third colleague in the break room, would I say something to them? Would you? Is there a difference between how professionals behave online vs. in real life?

When Ericka and I talk about “virtual boundaries” we are not only referring to boundaries in the client sense – with social media, there is now a greater chance that professional and personal relationships will find themselves crossing the “line” – or, as Ericka talks about it, the overlap in the Venn diagram in which we have personal relationships and professional relationships in separate spheres. Many of us have had that overlap even before social media and social networking sites were accessible. Are these questions about the overlap new, or is it the technology that has made this overlap more visible? How do agencies address IRL problems amongst its workers? Are agencies and organizations – including NASW and ASWB – reacting or proactively working on some guidelines for the profession?

At our presentation last week, we had six “case studies” that all had to do with professional ethical dilemmas regarding social networking and social media use. We had hoped to engage other social work professionals in a discussion about the workplace and professional issues that come up regarding social networking and social media. Unfortunately, the audience once again kept bringing it back to “client” issues. Ericka and I left the presentation scratching our heads over why it is so difficult to engage social workers in discussing our own behaviors – and all I could come back to is that it is an issue of parallel processing. Even though we talk about reflective practice, I think our profession is still struggling to address professional ethics when it comes to how we treat each other. Yes, our code of ethics has standards for professional responsibilities to colleagues, but when it comes to how we treat each other – I think we are still struggling. Most of the continuing education classes on Ethics that I have taken for my licensure focus on professional/client ethical situations. My take on this: I think as a profession we are sometimes afraid to look in the mirror. As I mentioned in our presentation, “abstinence-only policies” regarding social media and social networking usage by social workers (not clients) in agencies doesn’t promote safe social networking, and agencies and organizations – and the profession as well – must have these discussions.

I credit my ability to even entertain the possibility of a doctoral program in large part because of my blogging, which began as a personal outlet and led to formal writing and scholarly projects and helped me discover there was a niche for me in the social work academic world. Clearly, I am a big fan of the potential that an active and carefully honed online presence can contribute to if done thoughtfully and proactively. So while I understand the fear and mistrust about online social media that seems to permeate the social work world, I believe that it is not the technology itself that is problematic and that the ethics and values that guide behavior in the online world is actually no different than IRL (in real life).

Social media and social network technologies are not the problem. The problem is that human relationships are complex. The world of social networking and social media only means that our social worlds have expanded in ways that are new. However, the problem of bullying, gossiping, sexual harassment, etc. are not new issues, the internet only gave us one more place where we must apply our relationship skills. Who better than social workers to be a leader in this issue? And we need to start with ourselves. We can’t be role modeling online relationships to our clients if we can’t even have discussions about it amongst ourselves.

Here is the description of our presentation:

Without giving away too much of the story (although most of it is now widely known) here are my thoughts. For the most part, the story is told in a compelling way, starting with the author’s imagined scenario of Henrietta’s visit to Johns Hopkins to have a”knot” checked out. Skloot tells the story of Henrietta and the impact of her cells on medical science while alternating between her history, her children’s stories, and those who played a key role in how her cells were used in medical research.

Several pages into the section of the story where author Skloot delves into Lacks’ history, I began to feel uncomfortable. Skloot discusses her methodology for creating imagined scenes based on interviews with those who knew Henrietta and extensive research but I was still uneasy about how Lacks was characterized. While I imagine that Skloot was attempting to bring Henrietta out of the shadows, so to speak, and humanize the person whose cells had been unacknowledged for so long, it seemed contrived and – exactly what Skloot didn’t want to do – exploitative.

To me, the real gem of this book is that Skloot makes public the way research involving humans has often been unethical. I took a fascinating course about moral and ethical dilemmas in family decision making a few years ago, and many of the issues Skloot brings to the surface in her book we discussed in this class; questions about who owns human tissue once it’s no longer attached to the person? When does an individual’s concerns about biomedical ethics supersede the greater good for all? Should important decisions be made by others if a person is deemed not competent or knowledgeable enough to make that decision when it comes to their health and medical procedures?

Skloot frames Lacks’ story within historical contexts in both medicine and racism during the 20th century and in particular highlights the intersections of both – using examples of the Tuskegee syphilis study and the Nazi experiments on Jewish persons. While the horrific medical crimes committed against Jewish prisoners are fairly known, I am always surprised at how often Americans are unaware of the Tuskegee study. Most people are also unaware of the recent institution of human subjects protection and obtaining consent from research participants that have developed only since the 1970s. For this reason, I am glad that Lacks’ story has been revealed.

However, there were many times when I was really upset by the author and felt she was actually exploiting Lacks’ family. Skloot hounded the family over the course of years in her attempt to get “their side” of the story. She reveals a lot of very personal information about a family that has repeatedly discussed how much everyone was using them for their own gain. Skloot purpots to have undertaken this to honor Lacks, but sometimes the book reads as if it is actually Skloot’s own agenda driving the process. I found much of Skloot’s descriptions of the Lacks family to be fairly negative and caricature-like. Often, while reading the book, I found myself remarking on how strong and resilient this family was, despite all the negative things that were put on the page. I kept thinking about how much *certain* white readers would have all their stereotypes and biases against poor, Southern African Americans validated through this story. In addition, participating in Skloot’s research negatively affected Lacks’ daughter Debra’s health and well being.

Research often exploits the most vulnerable. Social science research in particular is often aimed at improving the human condition and as a result those who have difficulties are the ones studied. Medical science is aimed at improving the health of people and thus, those who are sick are often the ones studied. This is where researchers must be very cautious and very ethical in their research design and methodologies. We need to balance our desire to know how to understand or change the human condition with compassion and respect and ensure that those who participate in human subject research do so with full information and understanding – even if it means we don’t get the perfect research results we desired.

If Skloot has brought national attention to a discussion about research ethics, human subject protection and informed consent, that is good. Was it worth it at the expense of the Lacks family? I’m not so sure. Henrietta Lacks, if Skloot’s research is correct, was an intensely private person. Just as her cells were taken without her knowledge and consent and replicated for the benefit of society, so was her whole life and death and beyond. It’s clear that Skloot wanted the world to know that a real person existed behind the cells that changed the course of medicine in the United States. But in the end, it’s a question who’s voice is really telling the story.