Baltimore Anti-Racist Social Workers

A local and issues-based chapter of the Social Welfare Action Alliance (SWAA)

We formed Anti-Racist Social Workers Baltimore in 2017 as an intentional learning group committed to the process of dismantling institutional racism. We are dedicated to providing space for support and growth for social workers around our identities, professional roles, and the systems that impact us and those we serve. All group participants are teachers and students in relationship to each other and our practices. We also commit to collective action, striving to show up for the endeavors of our fellow members and community-based organizations and coalitions, sharing in the projects that inspire us and build power by promoting justice, healing, and equity.

We aim to keep learning:

SWAA Baltimore is an intentional learning group. We use the knowledge and social work expertise in the room, to build critical growth around our identities and the systems that impact us, including but not limited to race, gender, history, economics, and politics. All of us are teachers and students. We learn in relationship to each other and our practices.

We aim to provide mutual support:

We create space for all social workers, in all types of practice. We make time and a safer space to talk about and reflect on our experiences as social workers, supporting each other in the goal of dismantling institutional racism. We are reminded of our commitment to accountability by this quote from a critical NASW publication: “The responsibility of individual social workers is to recognize that structural racism plays out in their personal and professional lives and to use that awareness to ameliorate its influence in all aspects of social work practice, inclusive of direct practice, community organizing, supervision, consultation, administration, advocacy, social and political action, policy development and implementation, education, and research and evaluation. Furthermore, individual social workers have a responsibility to promote change within and among organizations, and at the societal level” (from NASW’s Institutional Racism & The Social Work Profession, the Call to Action, 2007).

We commit to collective action:

As an element of the mutual support discussed above, we strive to show up for the endeavors of our fellow members, and garner our energy, time, money and spirit around the labor that social workers and our community partners perform within and outside the scope of formal employment every day. We resolve to share the projects that inspire us, and build power within our community by amplifying undertakings that promote justice, healing, and equity.

We uphold these principles (created by the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond ):

Analyzing Power

As a society, we often believe that individuals and/or their communities are solely responsible for their conditions. Through the analysis of institutional power, we can identify and unpack the systems external to the community that create the internal realities that many people experience daily.

Developing Leadership

Anti-racist leadership needs to be developed intentionally and systematically within local communities and organizations.

Gatekeeping

Persons who work in institutions often function as gatekeepers to ensure that the institution perpetuates itself. By operating with anti-racist values and networking with those who share those values and maintaining accountability in the community, the gatekeeper becomes an agent of institutional transformation.

Identifying and Analyzing Manifestations of Racism

Individual acts of racism are supported by institutions and are nurtured by the societal practices such as militarism and cultural racism, which enforce and perpetuate racism.

Learning from History

History is a tool for effective organizing. Understanding the lessons of history allows us to create a more humane future.

Maintaining Accountability

To organize with integrity requires that we be accountable to the communities struggling with racist oppression.

Sharing Culture

Culture is the life support system of a community. If a community’s culture is respected and nurtured, the community’s power will grow.

Undoing Internalized Racial Oppression

Internalized Racial Oppression manifests itself in two forms:

Internalized Racial Inferiority
The acceptance of and acting out of an inferior definition of self, given by the oppressor, is rooted in the historical designation of one’s race. Over many generations, this process of disempowerment and disenfranchisement expresses itself in self-defeating behaviors.

Internalized Racial Superiority
The acceptance of and acting out of a superior definition is rooted in the historical designation of one’s race. Over many generations, this process of empowerment and access expresses itself as unearned privileges, access to institutional power and invisible advantages based upon race.

Undoing Racism®

Racism is the single most critical barrier to building effective coalitions for social change. Racism has been consciously and systematically erected, and it can be undone only if people understand what it is, where it comes from, how it functions, and why it is perpetuated.