Michael Spencer's call for self-awareness in social work practice

Response to Spencer Article on Social Justice

Abstract
In a guest editorial for the National Association of Social Workers journal Social Work, Michael S. Spencer (2008) reveals the power of self-awareness in the process of social work. Reflecting on his own identity and intersectionality, Spencer reveals exactly how social justice is the essence of social work. The author exposes the importance of race, class, gender, and other key factors that impact access to power and privilege by showing how these variables affect the social worker’s perspective. With self-awareness, the social worker can become a more effective ally to clients and a catalyst for the broader social and political changes needed to undermine systemic forms of oppression. Response to Spencer's Reflections on Power, Privilege, & Oppression In “A Social Worker’s Reflections on Power, Privilege, and Oppression,” Spencer (2008) provides readers of Social Work—the journal of the National Association of Social Workers (NASW)—a unique personal perspective. Through the medium of a guest editorial, Spencer (2008) urges his fellow social workers and colleagues in the human services sector to take up the gauntlet of honest self-reflection. Social workers have a responsibility to reach for social justice in their work, no matter what their area of specialization or the focus of their work. Spencer (2008) argues that in order to fulfill their professional responsibilities, and to live up to the core tenets of the NASW, social workers need to engage in critical self-reflection and self-analysis. To achieve the rhetorical goals of his editorial, Spencer (2008) offers his own self-reflection. Spencer (2008) addresses multiple nodes of intersectionality including those related to race, class, gender, and physical ability. These and other defining features of an individual may at times determine access to power, privilege, and opportunity. Whether because of internalized prejudice or institutionalized discrimination, factors like race, class, and gender can affect social status. Social status in turn impacts personal outcomes and community-wide realities. Self-empowerment and community self-empowerment depend on having the tools necessary to subvert and overcome systematic forms of oppression, injustice, and inequality. Social workers need to remember how their own backgrounds and self-concept impacts perspectives on power and privilege. Essentially, to live up to their professional responsibilities and maintain NASW competencies, social workers need to engage in ongoing self-reflection to understand how race, class, and gender affect client populations.
Spencer’s (2008) editorial is not just correct; it is grounded in a substantive body of evidence that has emerged over the last several decades in the fields of human services and sociology. For example, Sakamoto & Pitner (2005) show how a critical consciousness “challenges social workers to be cognizant of power differentials and how these differentials may inadvertently make social-work practice an oppressive experience,” (p. 435). Spencer’s (2008) is also not the only editorial published in professional or scholarly journals that addresses the key concepts of intersectionality, power, and privilege. Also in 2008, Samuels & Ross-Sheriff offer the journal Affilia an editorial that addresses similar concepts, urging readers to understand how contextual variables affect both clients and social workers. Social justice concepts have therefore become fully entrenched and incorporated into the codes of ethics and professional competencies in social work and related professions including counseling (Ratts, Singh, Nassar-McMillan, et al., 2016). Social workers are poised to offer an especially poignant perspective on social justice given their position and roles with regards to impacting public policy.
After reading the Spencer (2008) editorial, I have become more motivated than ever before to engage in a process of critical self-reflection. Throughout my career, I will engage in discursive practices that serve to empower clients, and also to raise my own self-awareness. When social workers strengthen their professional practice, it becomes easy to disengage with the principles embedded in the NASW code of ethics and competencies because of complacency and a false sense of satisfaction. We can become satisfied with the routines of our professional practice, neglecting sometimes the overarching variables that impact social justice outcomes. To combat the tendency to neglect critical consciousness, social workers like me can commit to social justice. We can listen to the voices of the marginalized and oppressed, particularly those who we have yet to hear. As Samuels & Ross-Sheriff (2008) talk about in their work with refugee women, social workers sometimes encounter new forms of oppression and then we are called upon to totally reconsider who we are in relation to our clients.
Spencer’s (2008) editorial also reminds social workers of the power inherent in self-reflection. Self-reflection requires courage. Spencer (2008) talks about how being male and able-bodied has impacted his identity and attitudes towards gender and sexual orientation. So deep rooted is the programming related to gender and heteronormativity that it takes critical consciousness to realize how we can unwittingly perpetuate discrimination via tacit acceptance of overt or subtle forms of discrimination. One anecdote that resonates especially is that of Spencer’s (2008) encounter with other male parents at his son’s football game. Samuels & Ross-Sheriff (2008) likewise show how women can “enslave” or “oppress” other women by refusing to acknowledge how race or other factors lead to discrimination. Members of similarly oppressed groups can sometimes participate in the perpetuation of oppression unconsciously. As difficult as it may be to go against the grain, to oppose even those in our own circle of friends and family, and to risk being accused of being hyper-reactive or politically correct, social workers are professionally and personally responsible for uprooting these forms of oppression in our daily lives. Reflecting on Social Justice In fact, it is not just our professional work that defines us as social workers. Spencer (2008) shows that our commitment to social justice never ends. Even when we are with our friends and family, or when we are acting outside of our capacity as social workers, we still remain responsible for identifying oppression and fighting against it however we can. Ours is lifelong work and requires full dedication. As Spencer (2008) puts it, social workers become allies to our clients only when we can fully identify with and understand how oppression manifests in different ways for different people. It is impossible to help our clients and the communities we serve without first becoming truthful about who we are, how we have taken advantage of power or privilege, and how we have succumbed to the persistent pressures of pervasive social norms.
Social workers learn about the values of equity and social justice but often with too much detachment. Our advanced degrees, our professional development programs, and our professional experience in the field all provide a false sense of mastery that precludes honest self-awareness. Spencer (2008) reminds us that we need to remain vigilant. Our status is relational to others, and the more we work with different people and populations, the more we will encounter forms of oppression and discrimination we might not have known existed. We need to recognize that culture creates constructs that seem immutable, but which can be slowly dismantled through the process of social work. Social workers cannot change public policy and receive the outcomes we desire unless we first become aware of the root causes of problems. It is most certainly our responsibility to become critically self-aware, always cognizant of the ways our perspectives are shaped by race, class, gender, and access to power. Self-reflection is often challenging and sometimes even humiliating, but it always does boost our empathy and competency as social workers.

References Ratts, M.J., Singh, A.A., Massar-McMillan, S., et al. (2016). Multilcultural and social justice counseling competencies. Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development 44(1): 28-48. Sakamoto, I. & Pitner, R.O. (2005). Use of critical consciousness in anti-oppressive social work practice. The British Journal of Social Work 35(4): 435-452. Samuels, G.M. & Ross-Sheriff, F. (2008). Identity, oppression, and power. Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work 23(1): 5-9. Spencer, M.S. (2008). A social worker’s reflections on power, privilege, and oppression. Social Work 53(1): 99-101.