Leading the charge in addressing racism and bias: implications for social work training and practice

ABSTRACT

As a profession with social justice as an ethical mandate, social work is well positioned to lead systems towards anti-racist practice and equity through consciousness-raising efforts. At a time of heightened overt bigotry, polarization, and ‘othering,’ training social workers on how to identify, name, and disrupt oppressive practices is that much more critical. This paper outlines the development and components of customized anti-racist/anti-bias trainings for the Social Work Department of a large, urban healthcare system in the US. The trainings were developed in partnership with the system’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion and built upon unconscious bias core curriculum. The trainings intentionally drew connections between systemic oppressive structures, US history, the creation and maintenance of dominant narratives, and micro-level bias, all of which culminate in inequitable outcomes and disparate experiences for service users and communities. This paper suggests possible application and implications of such trainings to diverse settings including classrooms and organizations. Social workers benefit from enhancing their ability to analyze their role in perpetuating racism and bias in organizations and with the people served.

KEYWORDS:

• Anti-racism
• implicit and explicit bias
• training
• anti-oppression
• interdisciplinary collaboration

Acknowledgment

The authors wish to thank Ann-Gel Palermo, MPH. DrPH, Joseph Truglio MD and Ms. Giselle Lynch, Medical Student, Class ‘19 for their seminal work on anti-racism and anti-bias curriculum development at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and for Dr. Palermo’s editing of the manuscript. In addition, the authors express their gratitude to Gary Butts MD, Chief Officer of Diversity, Mount Sinai Health System and Director of the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, and to Susan Bernstein DSW, Former Director of the Mount Sinai Hospital Department of Social Services, Desiree Santos, LCSW and Elisa Gordon LCSW for their consistent encouragement and support of this interdepartmental collaboration.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. The authors recognize that race is socially constructed with no basis in biological science, and yet race remains salient in US culture as a source of advantage and oppression (Carten et al., 2016). Race in the US is an organizing category that results in structural violence and suffering due to phenotypic and perceived differences. See (Jonsson, 2016) for a discussion on working both with and against race in scholarship.

2. Social justice refers to efforts to eradicate social structures that result in disproportionate access to social, economic, or political power (Essed, 2013, p. 1395).

3. [insert acknowledgement].

4. The co-authors both created the curricula for the trainings and co-facilitate the trainings discussed herein.

5. The authors appreciate that the term ‘people of color’ is not without controversy, namely its clustering of a broad range of individuals and identities into one group to demark status that is not considered White in the US, and subsuming anti–Black racism within larger racial oppression, running the risk of diluting the need to stand up specifically for Black lives in the US (Kim, 2020).

6. Informed by Everyday Bias for the Health Professions, Cook Ross Inc, 2015.

7. For more on facilitation strategies, see: Landreman (The art of effective facilitation: Reflections from social justice educators, 2013), Sue et al. (2019) and https://behavioralhealthnews.org/anti-racist-organizational-transformation-questions-and-answers-with-mary-pender-greene-lcsw-r-cgp-and-alan-siskind-phd/.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sarah Ross Bussey

Sarah Ross Bussey, LCSW, M.Phil, works as Director of Care Management with Mount Sinai Health Partners in NYC, and is a doctoral candidate in the PhD in Social Welfare Program through the CUNY Graduate Center. Her research interests include: anti-racism clinical and community-based interventions; social work practice and anti-racism supervision; effective interventions to enhance and tools to measure critical consciousness; restorative justice and community healing; health disparities; and, critical qualitative methods. She received her B.A. in Sociology from Reed College, and Masters in Social Work at Portland State University, where she was awarded the 2008 NASW Community Based Practice Award.  Sarah worked in various capacities of youth work—with a focus on complex trauma, gang-involvement, transgenerational poverty, justice-system entrenchment, housing insecurity, and skill development—before joining an innovative program addressing clinical case management needs in a medical setting.

Monica X Thompson

Monica X. Thompson, LCSW, is an adjunct professor in the graduate social work programs of New York University (NYU) and Hunter College (CUNY). She is a Doctoral Student at the Graduate Center (CUNY) in the Social Welfare Department. Her current research is grounded in the exploration of the social and emotional impacts that influence affectability and “affect switching” for Black Women. She is also the CEO of Clinicians of the Diaspora, LLC., a therapeutic program that provides culturally responsive and supportive services to individuals, families, and institutions.

Edward Poliandro

Dr. Edward J. Poliandro, LCSW is the Senior Associate Director, Education and Training at the Mount Sinai Health System’s Office for Diversity and Inclusion, as well as the Associate Director, Center for Multicultural and Community Affairs, at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.  He has been involved in cultural and structural competency, and racial and economic justice initiatives in Medical Education, Social Work and health care for the past 25 years. His current responsibilities include working with Senior Leadership of the Mount Sinai Health System to develop an anti-racist approach to healthcare delivery and medical education and developing training for leaders throughout the System on having conversations with their staff on race, privilege, systemic racism and health inequities. Dr. Poliandro also works with the Mount Sinai Department of Spiritual Care with whom he co-created a four-year Curriculum for medical students on addressing the spiritual needs of patients and their families in the health care setting (with a major focus on addressing the spiritual needs of transgender patients).  Outside of the healthcare arena, Dr. Poliandro has worked for the past 20 years with regional and national Roman Catholic hierarchy and parishes on issues of sexual diversity, inclusion, and social and racial justice. He maintains a diverse, cross-racial psychotherapy and consultancy practice in New York City.