Un Grito

Abstract

In this article, we describe Latino experience within the current, essentially Eurocentric social work curriculum and call for significantly increased Latino content in schools of social work.

Our system is one of detachment: to keep silenced people from asking questions, to keep the judged from judging, to keep solitary people from joining together, and the soul from putting together its pieces. Eduardo Galeano, The Book of Embraces

Numerically, the US is being transformed. The question now is whether our institutions are being transformed. Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, Dean, UCLA Graduate School of Education.

Why does Latin@ content persistently remain on the periphery of social work education? ¹ We are sometimes told there is no space within the competencies-oriented curriculum for in-depth content on Latin@ and/or immigrant experience, a response that seems tremendously inadequate in a world whose dominant realities are globalization, migration, and exploitation. Everywhere migrating populations bring change and challenge to nations—and to schools of social work as well. In the United States, 1965 legislation both expanded immigration and significantly changed the ethnic makeup of the population (Passel, 2011). In the 1990s alone, 5 million Mexicans immigrated to the United States (Card & Lewis, 2007), and by 2011 the 11,692,000 foreign-born persons of Mexican origin living in the United States comprised 29% of the total foreign-born population (Motel & Patten, 2013). In our own state of Nevada, Latin@s comprise 27% of the general population and 39% of school-age children. (Though we focus on Latin@s here, we are not doing it from an essentialist perspective but rather believe that the questions we raise are relevant to all people who experience oppression, exclusion, and domination.)

We begin this short essay with snapshots of our individual experience with social work education and then go on to ask what a transformed, non-Eurocentric curriculum might look like.

Beatriz Aguirre, 2013 master of social work (MSW) graduate: A telling moment in my bachelor of social work experience occurred at my field placement in a juvenile probation agency when my supervisor brought data to a meeting showing that a majority of the incarcerated youth were Latin@. I wondered why that was—and why, in consequence, there weren’t more Spanish-speaking probation officers (POs). Only 3 of the 30 POs spoke Spanish—along with 2 secretaries and me, the intern.

Inevitably, I was thrown into the task of interpreting for the POs. This was not easy because while Spanish is my first language, I was educated in English and was unfamiliar with many legal terms. It was also detrimental to my practicum experience because rather than learning the skills to conduct my own assessments, I was repeating verbatim what was told me in Spanish or English. I was not getting the experience I needed to grow as a social worker, yet I could not say no. I felt my presence in the room helped parents understand an unfamiliar system. If I weren’t there, how would they know that their kid was one “Possession of Marijuana” citation away from being sent to a serious, state-level juvenile detention facility?

But there were problems much broader than that. Even in court, where a professional interpreter was available, judges tended to discount Spanish-speaking parents’ statements. Employees at the agency weren’t up-to-date with policy initiatives like “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals” and how they might impact youth. (On June 15, 2012, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced that certain individuals who came to the United States as children and met several other guidelines could request that any removal action like deportation be deferred for 2 years, after which the individual could apply for a renewal or a work permit.) Parents would whisper things to me they wouldn’t dare tell the officer like, “don’t tell him, but she got in a fight again,” or “she misses school because I need her to go with me to doctors’ visits because I don’t speak English.” POs couldn’t comprehend why an undocumented boy, that is, a U.S. resident without legal sanction or status, who had straight A’s all his life was now truant, failing, and experimenting with drugs and alcohol. He was dealing with the fact that he would not be able to go to college and have the career he wanted. He couldn’t drive like his classmates and couldn’t even get a job at the local fast-food restaurant and have some spending money. In a way, he gave up on life.

It puzzled me that in classes we did not discuss the barriers to Temporary Assistance to Needy Families and the Violence Against Women Act that Nevada’s undocumented community were experiencing. We were learning how to provide services to Reno’s needy—but overlooking the undocumented population. Classmates would refer to clients as “the illegals” or ask, “Should I call ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement)? Maybe they want to go back.” What? Wait a minute! There was a huge information gap. How could the university consider students “culturally competent” when they were ignorant of the enormous crisis that is the immigration policy?

Ricardo Salazar, MSW student: “Faggot, queer, pussy, homo, pansy, girly”—all strong words that have been thrown at me at one time or another. Sometimes I wish I had never experienced them, but fortunately these words have molded me and ignited me to become the best social work practitioner possible. But how do you train someone who has never experienced the intersections of being Latino and gay to work with our community? What would a master’s level curriculum look like that prepared social workers for this uncharted territory? The National Association of Social Workers supports the dignity, lifestyle, and well-being of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) population, but social work practice should go beyond simple acceptance. We need more than allies, more than “cultural humility.” Our Latin@ LGBT community yearns for action and for movement that produces change. Our community suffers, and all we do is stand around getting “culturally humility-fied,” while people at school get bullied and hurtful words fill our high school hallways. Who should we stand with? We should stand with the lonely kid in the corner who eats by himself during lunch, is terrified in his physical education class, and is the target of ridicule and hatred. We should stand with his family; the one that does not understand why their child is so withdrawn and afraid of going to school, the family who cares but does not know what to say.

A shadow hovers over thousands of LGBT Latin@s. Their struggles have multiple dimensions, and intersections of race and sexuality cannot be overlooked. In our community, many LGBT Latin@s lead double lives. Some men have wives and children and are seemingly happy—until “guy’s night out” when they find escape and engage in sexual relations with other men. Although not always visible, these individuals have a unique set of needs. Social workers should know the implications of this and other issues.

A curriculum that explores the deep-hearted stories of these individuals would be an asset to any social work program. With regard to our curriculum, I wholeheartedly ask for more. Give us the skills to train parents, teachers, counselors, and friends. Give us the tools to march to city hall and forcefully yet respectfully demand our rights. Give us the strength and resources to be more than allies to these individuals and their families. There is a real community of progressive Latin@ LGBTs in Nevada; they are eager to move ahead. With a push and some social work empowerment this group could gain the momentum they need. To better our Latin@ LGBT community, social workers need to go beyond acceptance and tolerance to being champions and advocates. Let us get there.

Susan Chandler, faculty: In 2012, Dr. Debora Ortega spoke at the University of Nevada, Reno, on “Immigration: Path to Citizenship or Path to Dehumanization.” Five Dreamwalkers, young people walking from San Francisco to Washington, DC, to bring attention to the DREAM Act and the lives of the country’s undocumented youth, joined that All School Day program and added enormous energy to it. (The Dream Act, an acronym for Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors, is a bill, first introduced in 2001, that would provide conditional permanent residency to certain immigrants “of good moral character” who arrived in the United States as minors. The bill, still pending, requires young people to either graduate from a 4-year institution of higher learning or complete 2 years in the military, and then complete a 6-year period of temporary residency before attaining permanent residency.) At a Latino Leadership Breakfast, 30 Latin@ students and alumni (to me the seeds of the profession’s transformation in Nevada) crowded in to talk with Dr. Ortega. I was struck with how important Dr. Ortega’s personal story was. The students, many of whom later said they had never before met a Latino PhD, went immediately to the critical questions—“How do I pursue this career and at the same time attend to the needs of my family? Stay true to the values of my culture?” These were issues that sometimes appeared in student papers, but rarely if ever were raised in class. There were simply many, many places Dr. Ortega could take the students that I could not. For me this experience underscored the findings of the 2007 Task Force on Latinos/Latinas in Social Work Education that reported on the “dire nature of underrepresentation of Latinos/as [in social work education … ” and the “gross under-representation of Latino/a faculty in schools of social work” (Council on Social Work Education Task Force, 2007, p. 5). I was reminded, too, of how powerful majority minority spaces are in schools of social work—and how rarely we allow them.

I am very concerned with the absence of Latino content in social work educations. Students regularly tell me, “you know, I didn’t learn anything about Latinos (or African Americans or Native Americans or veterans or … ) in my two years in the program”—save for this or that class. I know there are individual faculty of all colors who teach their hearts out. But in my opinion, we are falling far short of what is required. It is not sufficient in our globalized world to teach cultural humility and other general concepts. Our students deserve the knowledge and skills that will create a beginning or master’s level expertise in serving Latin@ and immigrant families. Nor can we non-Latino faculty allow ourselves the luxury of not knowing. (This is particularly important in small- or modest-sized programs where there are often no Latino faculty and limited resources for electives.) Child welfare courses, for example, must provide a substantial focus on the impact of immigration policy on our youngest residents. Mental health courses cannot ignore the despair and depression so present among persons without documentation. If we do not know these things (and few of us do), then we must learn and/or invite grassroots and professional leaders to our classes. We must become familiar with the literature, research, music, and film that will open these worlds for our students. We must learn, too, to encourage genuine exchange, including argument in our classes. (One Latina student recently told me of a classroom discussion in which she had been called out by a White student for speaking too sharply on the issue of documentation. “The difference between being assertive and being aggressive may be being brown,” she laughed with some bitterness.)

Texts are part of the problem. I wince when colleagues defend them. Most social work texts employ the language of inclusion, but practice marginalization, keeping Latinos and other oppressed groups solidly on the periphery. As I write this, I am holding a text that contains in the obligatory chapter on Diversity and Social Justice a single page on “Latino Populations,” comprised of a few facts and the most elemental analysis. Later in the chapter on Mental Health, Substance Abuse, and Developmental Disabilities, there is a half page on “People of Color.” A one-third page discussion of “Differential Treatment of Minority Youth” appears in the chapter on Social Justice. That is what marginalization looks like. It is pap that passes for a critical analysis of the engaging, creative, complex, sad, resourceful, and resilient lives of Latinos in the United States and the world, and is a great disservice to our students.

We do not have to be reduced to this. In my experience, most Caucasian students are largely unaware of the realities of Latino life. Some of them are locked in their own worlds of privilege but most—most—are eager for knowledge. We faculty just don’t give it to them.

I have found social work faculty to be relatively thin skinned in this arena. My comments are nearly always unwelcome, and too often I keep quiet because of that. But if I, a tenured, White, U.S. citizen faculty am intimidated, what of the undocumented student for whom a single phone call to ICE can undo a family’s life? Or the undergraduate eager to establish herself in the profession and dependent on reference letters from faculty?

A Transformed Social Work Curriculum

In the last year, we students and faculty met often to discuss Latin@ content in the social work curriculum. What would it look like, we asked ourselves, if a School of Social Work was truly responsive to the opportunities and needs presented by Latin@ social work students and the communities they represent? We looked for Latin@ and/or immigrant focused courses in other schools of social work. A few exciting courses exist—mainly in schools where a Latin@ faculty member has developed them. For modest- or small-sized schools like our own, content-rich courses are nearly impossible to find.

We feel that students need courses that:

Explore the history of migration and of U.S. relations with Latin America, and introduce students, Latin@, and non-Latin@, to the great thinkers, actors, organizers, and artists of Latin America;

Introduce students to the important work of Latin American theorists and practitioners in social work and related disciplines;

Provide in-depth economic, political, and social analyses of Latin@ life here and internationally;

Engage students in developing well-documented, current needs assessments of Latin@ communities;

Provide detailed legal information about migration, migrants, and the rights of undocumented persons, including the roles and responsibilities of social workers working with persons not authorized to be in this country;

Are rich in stories of everyday life and reflect the realities that new generations experience;

Provide multiple opportunities for practice with Latin@s and within Latino communities;

Explore the intersectionalities of race, gender, class, religion, language, and sexual orientation, and educate students on the fundamental inequities that continue to create social risk for people of difference;

Provide an analysis of the use and barriers to the use of a wide spectrum of social services; explore the availability of evidence-based practice with Latin@ populations in areas of mental health, child welfare, health, education, and the justice system;

Explore issues of “diversity within diversity,” including issues of gender, sexual orientation, immigration status, indigeneity, youth, and age from a social justice perspective;

Teach organizing skills for community empowerment and build awareness of Latin@- and immigrant-led initiatives and organizations locally, nationally, and internationally;

Explore the processes, difficulties, and successes of migration, including issues of language, generational ties, depression, and health; and

Provide multiple opportunities to engage in research about and on behalf of Latin@ and immigrant communities.

Administrators raise the question, if we offer a Latin@-focused class, wouldn’t we then need to offer an African American class; a Native American class; an Asian American class? It is a question that arises in part from a liberal effort at “fairness,” but more, we fear, from an unwillingness to do the hard work of curriculum building and a blindness to the suffering of so many in our rapidly changing global world. In the end, each school of social work will have to take into account their own regional needs and resources. But it is certainly unacceptable to do nothing for that will assign the profession to the tail end of a great social movement and provide a woefully inadequate response to globalization and to the promise of America.