Abstract
Background
In early 2019, Anjanette Young was getting ready to launch her new business in her native Chicago, mentoring social workers to complete their licensure exam. Anjanette, who has two master’s degrees, one in human services and one in social work from the Jane Addams School of Social Work at the University of Illinois Chicago, was just doing what she had always done, lighting the passions of young people and coaching them to be of service to others. On February 21, 2019, as Anjanette undressed and prepared to go to bed, 12 white male police officers broke through her front door. The 45 minutes of terror that ensued unalterably changed her life. But, as Anjanette’s own story reveals, it did not end her life or her mission—despite the frightening likelihood of either of those outcomes.
In this editorial, Anjanette generously shares her story with the readers of Affilia. We include extended excerpts from an 80-minute conversation we had with Anjanette and end with a response to her story and the connections we have drawn to our critical feminist social work community. As a committed and lifelong social worker and woman of faith thrust into an unforeseen role as a public social justice warrior, Anjanette’s words speak volumes about the deeply entrenched injustices of policing in America and the battle for truth-telling and social change that she asks us all to join. “#IAmHer” is a campaign she is beginning that not only draws the line from Anjanette Young to Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old black EMT who was killed by police on March 13, 2020, but links all who have suffered and continue to suffer the systemic invisibility, dehumanization, and death forces that remain the everyday reality for black women and girls across America.
Anjanette’s Story
Now I Understand Why I’m in Social Work
I am originally born in Chicago, raised in Mississippi, and now am back in Chicago. I did my undergrad at Mississippi Valley State University, a historically black college/university, where I majored in sociology, with a minor in social work. I did my master’s in social work at the Jane Addams School of Social Work at the University of Illinois Chicago. And I’ve always mentored in some capacity. I tell people that it’s the gift that God gave me to serve others, and I thoroughly enjoy it. If you had asked me when I was going to school as an undergrad in Mississippi, why did I choose social work? I don’t know that I would have necessarily had an answer back then. But now I totally understand why I’m in social work. It’s just naturally who I am as a person, serving other people, fighting for justice and things of that nature, and nurturing and mentoring young people. My friends and family would say, “Oh, you’re doing social work? You should talk to Anjanette.” So they knew my passion for the work and they knew who I was. They would always refer people to talk to me about their career paths, going to school, and working on certain projects in school—things of that nature.
That’s how my business came about—coaching and mentoring and still being a part of social work. I’ve been doing this work for what seems like forever, but March makes this 2 years for the business. It’s so interesting because this incident happened on February 21, 2019, right as I was preparing for my launch of the business, doing website design, all of the back-end or behind the scenes work with an official launch party scheduled for March 16. And then this incident happened. And it stopped things for a minute. But I didn’t want it to derail my plans. I wanted my life to get back to some sort of normalcy. I also knew how passionate I was and how hard I had worked to start the business. So I moved forward in spite of it. And it was hard.
It May Not Ever Look the Same as Before
I don’t sleep well anymore. I definitely couldn’t sleep right after it happened. So I tell people that I’m running on fumes every day with the grace of God because I no longer have full nights of sleep. I used to tell myself all the time, “You need 8 hours of sleep, 8–10 hours,” to really rest and be functional, but I’m functioning on about 4–5 hours average of sleep right about now. Life is just not the same anymore, in that respect.
But I’ve come to this point today, of saying: It’s okay that it’s not the same because some new things are happening. I’m finding new ways to still reach my goals, new ways to still be the true, authentic Anjanette. And so it may not ever look the same as before February 21, but that’s okay. I’m learning. I’m finding the new me, my new voice, my new role, what life looks like beyond that night.
I still have moments where I feel like it’s just a bad dream. But unfortunately, it’s not. It’s my reality. And as I started this journey on speaking out about it, it was like, I need to own this my way. I don’t want to hide under the covers and pretend this never happened. I refuse to allow the city to sweep this under the rug as if this never happened. And so how do I tell it my way, my own story, and move forward in a way that empowers myself and others?
I’m Blessed Tremendously by the Support That I Received
It happened on a Thursday—February 21, 2019. That date is going to always roll off my tongue like it happened yesterday. I immediately was in contact with an attorney through the church that I belong to. Even that night it happened, one of the associate pastors was on the scene, came to my house. The very next morning, my senior pastor was on the phone with me. When I think of how horrific that night was, I could have easily just kind of turtled in, right in my shell, away from the world for days and weeks and months at a time, and it was so important for me not to do that. It happened on Thursday. I called into work. I didn’t go to work on that Friday. I spent the entire day in bed on Friday and probably Saturday too. Then Sunday, which is so important to who I am, I got up and went to church. And boy did I need to go to church, more than ever, that particular Sunday.
And I was received with so much support that it was overwhelming. Immediately after the service, I sat down with my pastor for some counsel and for some prayer. Our church already has a social justice ministry, social justice and counseling, and the ministry itself is designed to help the community connect with attorneys for free when they need it, to learn what their legal options are. The counseling piece is to address trauma, to make free and affordable counseling and mental health services available to the community in our church, in and around our local community. Little did I know that I would need to access those services. That Sunday my pastor says, “I’m connecting you with a Deacon in our church but he’s also an attorney.” The best part about that is the work that he’s doing for me is his everyday work that he was already doing. This happening on Thursday to Sunday, having a very competent and available attorney to pick this up right away and take it on, with no cost to me—I know that that does not happen for everyone. I’m blessed tremendously by the support that I received from my church, not just the attorney, but the love and the support and the counsel that I get overall from my church is amazing.
I Am Still Here to Tell the Story
My attorney right away reached out to the city and began requesting information, meetings, letting them know that we wanted to talk to them about what happened. We got zero response. Every motion and every letter, every outreach he made to the city council, was returned, in my words, with, “We didn’t do anything wrong, so we’re not going to address this,” but of course in all the legal jargon that they needed to put it in.
This went on for months and months and months, and then I saw the Breonna Taylor story that happened March 13, 2020. And that just kind of knocked me back to that night. I cried for days about that. And I cried for days about that because that was such an eye-opening moment for me. That’s exactly what happened to me, but by the grace of God, I am still here to tell the story. And I’m a very strong woman of faith and always have been. I was raised in the church my entire life. And so, when my incident happened, I struggled with where was God that night? Where was God that this happened to me? Where was God that I wasn’t protected? I struggled with that up until the point that I saw the Breonna Taylor story. And what her story did for me is to say that God was there the entire time and that’s why I’m standing here now, living and talking about my story. It’s because He was there. It didn’t feel like He was there because it happened, but I now see that He was there. Because it happened and I’m still here. I’m still alive and I have to take that and do something with it. That’s so meaningful to me and who I am as a person, as a Christian, as a social worker, I have to fight.
Ready to Fight: Exposing the City Meant Also Exposing Myself
A reporter at CBS2 in Chicago had been doing a yearlong documentary on these wrong raids. I asked my attorney if we could reach out to him, and he said to me, “He’s been reaching out to us and I knew you weren’t ready, so I kept turning him away.” I said, “Yes, let’s do it.” And at the same time that we were preparing the story, we were attempting to get body cam footage. That’s part of how they had been doing the story, showing officers breaking into these homes and stuff. But the city wouldn’t give it to us. They wouldn’t give it to CBS2, stating it was an issue of privacy on my behalf, though they had given footage to them in other cases. So we knew something was up at that point. The reporter said, “Well, Anjanette, you can request it because they have to give it to you because it’s you who the incident happened with.” So I made the request, and they denied my request as well. They said it was an issue of ongoing investigation, and so they couldn’t release it to me until after an investigation was over. Neither of those were true, but that’s how they responded.
So we went forward with the story, and we included that they wouldn’t give us the body cam footage. That story aired last year. It didn’t get the national attention like this last story, but it got some attention. We continued to fight, we continued to file motions, continued to do things to get the city to acknowledge what was happening. And, finally, my attorney was able to get the body cam footage through a federal court. And then we released the body cam footage. Ultimately because the city had something to hide, I knew that my fight would be to expose them. But exposing the city also meant exposing myself. And that wasn’t an easy decision to make. I trust my attorney completely, and we talk all the time through this process. When the body cam footage was made available to him, he asked me if I wanted to see it. I told him, “No, I don’t want to see it, do what you need to do, legally, for how we’re planning to use it,” and that’s what he did. He’s a guy, but he talked to me all the time about how it was hard for him to watch because he has a wife and three daughters. But he also talked to me about how careful he was about who saw the video. And so he only used his female associates to help him with it and then we hired an outside company to do the digital aspects, to blur it for public viewing.
It wasn’t until we were getting ready to release the second story that I actually watched it. I think I watched it 2 days before we released the story with the body cam footage. He sent me a total of about six videos. I was only able to watch a minute and a half of the first one. It was too much to see because I have the raw footage before they digitized it for TV. And more than the images, it was the sound of my voice that was so piercing for me. It made it so real for me. I didn’t watch it all but I trusted him. I said, “Let’s move forward.” And so I sat down with the reporter, and we did an interview, and I watched the full edited version of it for the first time with him. And that was part of our story, him showing me seeing it for the first time. That was hard too, but now that it is out there, I’m at a point where I’ve turned the page from being hurt to being angry and ready to fight. And it wasn’t an easy page to turn, but that’s where I am now.
#IAmHer: We Stand Together as Women
There’s a lot of work. I would not have chosen this for myself. There’s a scripture in the Bible where when Jesus is being chosen to be crucified and he says to the Father, “If this cup can pass me, I don’t want this. Can someone else do this?” I was in that moment, like. “If this cup could pass me, I don’t want to do this. I don’t choose this at all.” Before this, I was never a very public person. I totally see myself as a behind-the-scenes, up close and intimate person with people. My work is not about me. I just want to help people in whatever capacity, whether that’s in church, whether that’s in social work, you know, mentoring. But I don’t have to tell the whole world that I’m helping people. And so to be this public right now, and every aspect of my life being scrutinized—and the good thing is I can sit here and say, there’s nothing for them to hold against me. Before this, I was just this quiet person who went to work every day, minding my own business. Now the whole world knows my name. Anywhere I go, I go into the pharmacy and say my name to pick up my medication and everybody looks around. Everyone knows my name. And I would not have chosen that for myself, but I’m here. So what do I do with it? God has given me this assignment. This is a heavy cross to bear.
I’ve been given an assignment and I feel like I don’t have the right to say no to God. And so I have to move forward with this. And so I’ve been intentional in my prayer and my devotion time. What does this mean? Where do I go from here? At some point we will get a resolution from the city. But then, what does that mean for my life after that? And so there is much to fight for. I’ve always known that and in social work, that’s what we do, right? But I was never that policy advocacy, out-in-the-public person, you know? That wasn’t the social work that I was doing or that I was passionate about. I was just passionate about directly helping people right on the ground, boots on the ground, being that person who’s helping the marginalized and the hurt and the wounded and giving them all of me to lift them up. And the policy and advocacy, that’s a part of it, but that wasn’t my part, or at least I didn’t think it was. And now it has shifted to that being a part of who I am as a Christian and as a social worker.
There’s lots to do. I want to start this campaign #IAmHer. Similar to when people came out to the #MeToo movement, this campaign is about “I am her,” as in another person can identify, say “I am her” because this happened to me. “I am her” because I learned my strength and resilience from her. It doesn’t necessarily have to be “I am her” like they are Anjanette, but just own it, as a woman “I too am her” that has been hurt, has been marginalized, has been disrespected, has been treated less than by some system of injustice, of racism, of marginalization. I too have had this experience. I am her. She makes me strong, and we stand together as women.
I’m Asking for Real Change: You Have to Do Something to Make Sure This Doesn’t Happen Again
I have women’s groups who are marching on my behalf and people who are asking for a legislative change. Legislative change and system changes are a part of our final ask with the city as we move into some resolution. We’re asking for some very specific policy change. So people who don’t really know me, kind of outside looking in, just thinking, “The city has to pay, you have to sue the city, they have to pay you.” For me, money is just one piece of it. Money is the legal aspect of how things happen. They pay you some type of monetary compensation to say “We’re sorry” or to say, “Okay, here’s some money because we harmed you.” To me, it’s about, “You have to do something to make sure this doesn’t happen again.” So, I will not allow the city to settle with me just on money. I’m asking for specific policies to be changed before I take any type of final settlement from the city. And so that’s how I see the connection. Now I have people who want to back me, have congressmen, aldermen, all types of women’s groups that say, “We want to stand with you to make change.” Before this, I voted. I made sure that I did my civic duties, and maybe I attended a couple of protests at the state capitol. Maybe I signed a petition. But now, I am the person who is making decisions and who is standing in front saying, “Enough is enough—we have to make change.” And I’m standing right there with my social work counterparts. At this point, there has been a shift in my social work duties, for lack of a better word.
I’m asking for real change. I have the floor now so they have to listen to me. And some people know this about me—growing up in Mississippi, my grandmother was a civil rights activist. I watched her fight for voters’ rights. I watched her in these secret meetings with other leaders because they couldn’t meet out in the open. That’s my history and my foundation as a social worker. It just takes it to the next level. Civil rights, social work, it’s what I do, it’s who I am. And so I remember very vividly that next morning when I was having a conversation with my pastor and I was saying, “Oh, they got the right one. I’m a social worker, I’m gonna fight this.” I remember saying that to him. I don’t know at the time that I knew what that meant, but that’s just what came out. And now I’m in more of a position to say, “I know what that means. I know where I have to go with this.” And I fondly say this—my grandmother’s name is Lucendia—and I fondly say, they don’t know who they’re messing with. They’re messing with a child of God and they’re messing with Lucendia’s grandbaby, and I am going to fight until some real change happens.
Allowing Your Personal Experience to Help Guide Your Career
My ask to the social work community would be: understand your role. When we go to school for social work, there are tracks. Some people do family and children. Some people do mental health. Some people do policy. We have these different tracks that we choose, which when we go to school, we are kind of forced to choose your direction of where you’re going. And I think at the time that you’re in school, at least at the bachelor’s level, you’re not really sure. But you choose what’s most interesting to you at the time. And what I found in my personal journey, even before this incident, is that I’ve worked in a lot of different areas of social work. And I tell people that that’s where my longevity is, I’ve been doing this—my son is 25 now—so since before my son was born. And I’ve worked with a lot of different populations, but it was always direct service work because that’s what I felt that I most had to give to the social work community. But I’m learning now that situations and things arise throughout the years that help you to reevaluate. Do I stay there? So this is an opportunity for me to say, it’s time for a change. There’s a shift in my social work perspective right now because of my personal experience. Allow your personal experiences to help guide your career. You don’t have to stay in that assigned concentration that you started out when you graduated from school. Life changes. To be an effective social worker and have longevity in your career, stay true to yourself as a person, and staying true to the profession in that you allow yourself to be molded and shaped and turn in a different direction as it leads you there. So being very aware and open when those opportunities present themselves.
Young social workers come in and they’re on fire. We all were there, right? You know when you decide to go into social work, you’re on fire for the passion and your desire to help people. But not always knowing what that means. And so that’s why it’s so important to me that my company is to mentor young social workers. Help them to see the broad perspective of what they could do in social work and not get stuck. We have to follow the ethical guidelines, that’s without a doubt. But how do you be authentic to yourself in the profession in a way that you want to make an impact on the world without being crushed by rules? This is the time you choose to “get in good trouble.” When you decide to cross that line, being intentional about what it means and being intentional about what the outcome is if you cross that line. What’s your intended outcome? Because there are times when we should cross the line.
Accountability and the Roots of Injustice
So the big picture is awareness, accountability, and culture change. What I’ve learned from this experience is how deeply rooted the culture of racism and injustice is in the City of Chicago Police Department and their legal system. Because I was never a person who associated with a “bad crowd.” I don’t get in trouble, never arrested and never paid much attention to the criminal justice system. I paid attention to who was running for office and tried to be an informed voter. But I’m learning so much about how deep-rooted the injustice and racism is in the city of Chicago. I imagine this in other cities as well. But what I’m learning about the city of Chicago, really, really angers me and disgusts me that their system is so deeply rooted that incidents like mine and others’ continue to happen. And the same people who are the offenders of these incidents continue to be a part of the system. So if I had to say, what’s the big picture for me, it’s trying to unroot some of those things. It will take time, but at least I want to start. If I can cut out one root, to begin the process of clipping and chipping away at the system.
I had a conversation with someone and they asked me, what does accountability look like? And accountability looks like, for me, starting at the bottom, not at the top. So right now, we know there are policies that prevent some of this stuff. There’s a consent decree that was put in place, but they’re not following it. So the higher ups can put these things in place, but if the people on the ground don’t buy into the idea of it and change their way of how they interact with people, the policy is just a piece of paper. And so for me it’s how do you reach the people on the bottom, who’s doing the work, the boots on the ground people, the ones who are coming into my home and the ones who are racial profiling people in the community? How do you get those people to want to change?
Invisibility: They Didn’t See Me
One of my biggest issues with the night of the incident is I felt like they didn’t see me. So that night, they didn’t see me. I yelled, I cried, I made requests and they never responded to me. And when they did respond to me, it was like, “You need to calm down.” They never heard me when I was crying out to them, “Can I please put some clothes on?” They didn’t hear me when I said over 43 times, “You have the wrong place.” They continued to do what they did in standing right in my presence but totally ignoring me. So no, they didn’t see me and then I continued to feel like I was not seen, by the city, as we now know, received an email, a chain of emails. They released a chain of emails, a total of 150 pages of emails that outlined a thread of conversation back and forth from the mayor and her team. And still no one responded to me. They didn’t see me either. They didn’t see me as important enough to address this. They didn’t see what happened to me as important enough to inquire, investigate, to resolve until we exposed them. We didn’t even know these emails existed because the mayor initially said she was not aware. And after all of this publicity and everything that has been happening, the mayor released these on her own when she finally said, “Oh yeah, I did get an email.” And then someone pushed on it like, “Will you show us the emails?” And so she did. She dropped 150 pages of emails going back and forth about me. In the public when this first came out, she said she never knew about it, and she had to walk that back. And we now know that there was a lot of conversation—150 emails—that’s a lot of conversation. And no one did anything about it. So they also did not see me. The biggest part of me releasing the videos is: You didn’t see me, so now I’m forced to show you who I am.
And that’s also a part of what’s guiding “#IAmHer.” You need to see me and we all need to be seen. I have heard from so many people who have reached out to me to say, Something like this happened to me too, and I didn’t do anything about it, I didn’t say anything, I didn’t know where to go for help. I didn’t know how to find an attorney like your attorney. I didn’t know how to fight the city.
If My Skin Had Been White, That Would Have Looked Totally Different: The System Is Broken
I didn’t understand how the 12 men who were in my apartment that night, 12 white men, could not see me and see their sister, their mom, their cousins, their daughters? They could not see me as a woman. Could not connect that I was a woman who could have been any of the women that they actually know. Did you not see in that moment that this was a woman who was in need of protection? And I say all the time, the system is broken. All of the things that happened that led them to my door. The system is broken. They didn’t do the work on the front end. They did no research on who I was. They didn’t even know my name before they came into my door. They relied on information that was not valid, and they didn’t check the validity of the information.
From the informant who gave the information, to the person who wrote up the report, to the sergeant or whoever signed off on it, the information that they gave the judge—there are so many points of contact where things went wrong. But at the moment that they get on the other side of my door, how could you not be human? Even if you had it all right. Even if I had guns and ammunition in my apartment. The moment that you got on the other side of my door, what in you did not allow you to treat me as a human? Allow you to say, “Whoa, okay, let’s get her dressed and put her in handcuffs and sit her down.” Why couldn’t they have done that and continued to search the home? Why could they not have communicated with me when I constantly said, “I don’t know what’s going on. Who are you looking for? You have the wrong place.” They never responded to me. And at the point that they did respond to me, they said, “Calm down, I’ll show you the warrant in a few minutes.” So what about that could you not have served me better? Done your job in a way that could not have harmed me any further than you kicking in my door? Twelve men in the room and nobody did anything. At some point, they put a blanket around me, but they were not intentional about that. They just threw it across my shoulders. And my hands are behind my back and you put a blanket on my shoulder, and that’s it? So I’m still open in front. It’s falling. I’m still exposed and you’re walking around my house, doing what you think you’re supposed to be doing in your job. How do you not feel something for me? And they didn’t. And that’s why I say they did not see me, in any aspect.
My attorney says it, and I know it and all of us, everyone knows—that incident, once they got on the other side of the door, would have looked totally different had I been a white woman, if I was a white woman social worker and everything else that’s currently in my background, the only difference is my skin color. Because you know who I am as a person, law-abiding citizen, don’t get in trouble, very successful career, person who helps and serves. Oh, but if my skin had been white, that would have looked totally different. And it could have been a white woman with the same background and degree as me, or it could have been a white one with less than that. It could have been a white woman who’s sitting in the corner with a gun in her hand, with a crack pipe, and it still would have gone differently. We know this for certain.
When you asked about the correlation to what happened at the Capitol [on January 6, 2021], the only thing that I can do to make it connect to what was going on with me is that it showed that depending on your skin color, you’re treated differently by the justice system. Had that been black people, that situation would have looked a whole lot different. In my situation, a black woman, you come in and you treat me like garbage, and yet you got millions of white men, storming the Capitol, and you let them have their way. And I know that night, had I moved in any type of way to defend myself or to hide or to run, I would have been Breonna Taylor. And I tell people I was scared into compliance. I was too afraid to do anything different than I did because I was fearful that they would shoot me.
This Is Just the Beginning: It’s Every Woman, It’s Every Young Girl, and It’s Even Some Men
It’s every woman, it’s every young girl, and it’s even some men. But in this particular case, it’s women who are at the bottom of everything. Even worse than how they treat some of our black and brown men. They treat women even less. This is just the beginning. The #IAmHer, it’ll be a campaign, a movement. I’m in the process of putting all the nuts and bolts to it. But I want it to be national. I want it to be international. I want girls in Africa who are being raped, who are being forced to have female genital mutilation. I want it to go that far to say “I am her,” and I want you to see me in my power, see me as a woman, see me as someone who should be respected, see me as someone who can be respected, see me as someone who deserves, earns, and will give respect in every aspect of the word. And so that’s my mantra right now, and that’s where I’m going with it. I am her and I am speaking truth to power.
Editors’ Reflections
We share Anjanette’s story in the pages of Affilia in the powerful tradition of testimonial. By powerful, we refer not only to the powerful emotional impact of her words, but also to the powerful tradition of black women’s epistemic resistance (Collins, 2019). Wells-Barnett’s (1895) research and writing on lynching served this testimonial function, as she led resistance to state sanctioned violence against African Americans. Collins (2019) discusses how Wells-Barnett’s “painful personal experience with lynching was a turning point in her life” (p. 160), which echoes how Anjanette has been motivated to activism by her own experience. We have been thinking of Wells-Barnett as we have been moved by Anjanette’s courage in speaking out about what happened to her. Her epistemic resistance can effect social change through our believing (why did it take the body cam footage and lawyers for her to be believed?) and supporting and joining in solidarity (Garza, 2020). Anjanette poignantly speaks of how, to expose the police violence she experienced, she had to expose herself. Anjanette’s campaign hashtag #IAmHer reminds us that she is not alone. For black women and girls, state violence in all of its forms—from invisibility to assault, incarceration, and murder—is and has been a daily reality. It also asks us, particularly white and other nonblack social workers, to interrogate our internal accountability. Are black social workers, particularly those who speak out against injustices, safe within social work agencies, coalitions, schools, and professional associations? And when they are harmed by others, do fellow social workers respond promptly and strategically in solidarity?
Anjanette attended the Jane Addams School of Social Work in Chicago, which prompted us to think about Jane Addams as we were thinking of Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and the relationship between these two women, early social work leaders who formed settlement houses, albeit racially segregated ones. Knight’s (2010) biography of Jane Addams notes that in response to the work of Wells-Barnett, Addams wrote an article rejecting lynching for its lawlessness, but never repudiated the claim that black men had raped white women (the justification often used by lynchers). Wells-Barnett, on the other hand, in her thorough documentation of lynching in A Red Record (1895), had found that the charges of rape were “a threadbare lie” and further, that only one third of the lynching victims had ever been charged with rape. Addams’ failure to stand in solidarity with Wells-Barnett (a fellow social justice activist and Chicagoan in that she was a South Side resident from 1919 to 1930) was a lost opportunity in our history to forge a different path forward. Anjanette reflects on the strength and support she receives at her church—spiritual, psychological, and even legal. Despite systemic racial discrimination, the black church has been able to launch social institutions and movements from mutual aid societies to colleges to civil rights campaigns, even at times when the profession, mostly comprised of white leaders, was not and is still not willing to recognize this type of work as “social work” (Lasch-Quinn, 1993).
Anjanette tells us that she can no longer sleep, not the way she could before the violence inflicted on her. Her experiences remind us that the harms of police violence against black people extend far beyond those who are directly victimized. Young (1990) explained how violence oppresses not just those who physically experience it but all members of groups who, through their social location, are vulnerable to it: What makes violence a face of oppression is less the particular acts themselves, though these are often utterly horrible, than the social context surrounding them which makes them possible and even acceptable. What makes violence a phenomenon of social injustice, and not merely an individual moral wrong, is its systemic character, its existence as a social practice. Violence is systemic because it is directed at members of a group simply because they are members of that group. (pp. 61–62) The oppression of violence consists not only in direct victimization, but in the daily knowledge shared by all members of oppressed groups that they are liable to violation, solely on account of their group identity. Just living under such a threat of attack on oneself or family or friends deprives the oppressed of freedom and dignity, and needlessly expends their energy. (p. 62) During Wells-Barnett’s era, the harm done to the individual African American men, women, and children who were lynched and the harm done to African Americans as a collectivity who lived with the threat of violence served as daily reminders that victims of lynching need to be believed and that the interpretations of African Americans about their own experiences were of special value. (p. 166)
At the end of our discussion with Anjanette, we all said out loud something we knew only too well before we even started talking—if Anjanette had been a white social worker, this never would have happened. A white woman would not have been left naked. And the police would have heard and believed her when she said they had the wrong house. And if somehow this had happened, there would have been a tremendous societal outcry and a demand that these police officers lose their jobs. In some ways, this fact seems too obvious to state, and yet we must state it, know it, and act; because, once we know this, we must refuse to accept it.
We must also refuse to accept social work’s collusion with the carceral state or what Richie (2012) calls the “prison nation” and our history of collaboration and legitimization of carceral systems of surveillance and punishment. In Affilia’s recent special issue on anticarceral feminisms, Richie and Martensen (2020) discuss the need for feminist abolitionist praxis that recognizes that the criminal legal system was never designed to protect people, at least not all people. An abolitionist future envisions alternative means of ensuring our collective safety that recognize our interdependence and seek accountability and justice in ways that build and restore community rather than dehumanize, punish, and exclude those deemed unworthy, less than human due to race and intersections with gender, sexuality, ability, class, nationality, and religion.
We end with a statement of connection and solidarity. In social work, we are not separate from the people and communities with whom we work. We may have disparate positionalities, but ultimately we must see ourselves as connected, interdependent, and we must work on the basis of our shared humanity, not on some notion of helping or saving those who are needy or less fortunate. We draw courage from Anjanette’s bravery in sharing her pain so that others will not have to experience it, and we choose to stand with her. bell hooks (2003) writes, Dominator culture has tried to keep us all afraid, to make us choose safety instead of risk, sameness instead of diversity. Moving through that fear, finding out what connects us, reveling in our differences; this is the process that brings us closer, that gives us a world of shared values, of meaningful community. (p. 197)
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.