In 1994, in response to student protests at the Smith College School for Social Work, the faculty voted to become an “anti-racism institution.” We were the only school of social work to make such a commitment.
This pledge was made because students had woken the school up and confronted it with irrefutable evidence of institutional racism – only 5 percent of its students, and very few of its faculty, were people of color, and white privilege and Eurocentrism permeated its curriculum and pedagogy.
It was a commitment made with the full understanding that it needed to be long-term, that there would be conflict and tension, and that it would often fall short, despite good intentions. Since making the commitment, there has been much progress – for example, now 30 percent of students are people of color as are many of our faculty and two out of our three deans, syllabi have been critically evaluated and re-written and there has been a great deal of faculty training and development.
Many student organizations and a faculty mechanism exist to support an anti-racism stance and many other innovations and programs have evolved to support the commitment.
Hundreds of our graduates report that commitment changed how they approach clinical social work, and that their professional and personal lives were shaped, if not transformed, by it.
And yet, there have been many areas where there has been insufficient progress.
Current students in our program are painfully aware of this. At times, many of us who work at the school have felt discouraged and dispirited by the uneven and glacial pace of change.
Our students, through their activism, have lived up to the honorable ethics and standards of the social work profession by continuing to seek racial justice and accountability in all aspects of their educational experience, despite the emotional and physical exhaustion of engaging in such a struggle.
We owe them a debt of gratitude for their advocacy and fortitude.
Much has been written recently about two letters that students became aware of, one written by a faculty member and the other by anonymous adjunct faculty members.
The authors of the letters were critical of the school administration, of its admissions process, and of its students. This has generated pain among students, as well as faculty and administrators and has fueled protests.
Both letters reflect a minority view. The school’s administration cares deeply about the anti-racism commitment, as do the faculty.
The faculty are responsible for the admissions process, and the vast majority of the faculty stand by it and are proud of this process, which makes Smith’s one of the most selective social work schools in the country.
We value every student who we have admitted and want them to succeed. And the vast majority of faculty, full- and part-time, condemn an anonymous letter that demeans students and the school’s administration, not only for what it said but how it was written without attribution: it is not how we do business, it is not consistent with the standards of professional behavior that we teach our students and is at odds with the ethics of our profession.
While racism has always been a central dynamic in U.S. society, the past two years have been particularly painful for all who seek racial justice – many deaths of unarmed black and brown people without accountability or justice and a presidential campaign in which coded and at times overt racism has been the hallmark of one candidate. Not surprisingly, universities and colleges, which carry and replicate the institutional DNA of racism in our society, have seen student protests and acts of courageous dissent in response to historical racist legacies and contemporary racist practices.
Lastly, I want to mention the bias that resides in people’s hearts, minds and psyches as a result of persistent and systemic racism.
Racist behavior and statements should be vigorously condemned and confronted. We need to hold ourselves and others accountable for such behavior. We also should try to be mindful of biases and distortions that we all carry, and which find themselves expressed in unconscious prejudices, implicit racism and racial microaggressions.
Our goal, however, is not to root out racists but to undo racism. We are all flawed human beings. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi and Nelson Mandela not only modeled leadership and courage in the face of severe injustice and oppression, but also compassion, reconciliation and healing.
This is not to minimize individual acts of racism – they are to be deplored and confronted – but to encourage us to not lose sight of the essential goal – to remove all traces of the scourge of racism that infects our bodies and souls, saps our spirits, distorts our thinking, creates barriers to our relationships and weakens our society.
It is to this goal that the Smith College School for Social Work is committed and, despite our missteps and shortcomings, we will continue to pursue it.
Joshua Miller is a professor at Smith College School for Social Work, former associate dean and acting dean and co-author of “Racism in the United States: Implications for the helping professions.”