Refocusing Intersectionality in Social Work Education: Creating a Brave Space to Discuss Oppression and Privilege

ABSTRACT

In this article, we argue that those in social work education should refocus how they conceptualize and teach intersectionality to produce more effective social work practitioners. We emphasize that social work should shift from educating students to evaluate diverse clients as the accumulation of individual identities operating in isolation (e.g., race or ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation) to recognizing how these identities intersect to influence health and well-being based on these identities’ shared roots in oppression and privilege. This emphasis is grounded in the belief that training social work students to identify the multiple forms of inequities resulting from oppression related to gender, race, and class that influence clients’ social, economic, and health (physical and mental) outcomes will better prepare them to deliver culturally responsive and structurally competent practice that aligns with and advances the mission and ethics of the social work profession. We further discuss how intersectionality should be conceptualized, defined, and taught in social work education through explicit naming and discussion of oppression and privilege, and we close by presenting some common barriers to teaching intersectionality as well as possible strategies to overcome them.

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Notes on contributors

James David Simon

Dr. James D. Simon is an Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work at California State University, Los Angeles. He primarily researches child protective services interventions and outcomes among families investigated for child maltreatment and referred to community-based, prevention services. His other research interests include child welfare recidivism, screened out / evaluated out families, client engagement, differential response, families with complex needs, data-driven decision making, intersectionality, and matching needs and services to prevent child maltreatment. Dr. Reiko Boyd is an Assistant Professor in the Graduate College of Social Work at the University of Houston, whose research focuses on racial disparity and equity in child welfare, Black infant and maternal health, emerging adults, and structural inequality in Black communities. Dr. Andrew M. Subica is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Medicine, Population, and Public Health at the University of California, Riverside. His research targets the mental health and physical health disparities affecting vulnerable populations using the perspectives of health equity, social justice, and community participation.