Webinar: CSWE's Macro Social Work Practice Curricular Guide

The Council for Social Work Education (CSWE) presented a webinar on its publication, Specialized Practice Curricular Guide for Macro Social Work Practice (2015). The 300-page guide book categories macro social work under three primary focus areas: organizational administration; community organizing, and policy practice. It provides a comprehensive analysis of the nine professional competencies for macro social work practice.Each competency contains vignettes, case studies, classroom exercises, and additional resources for social work professors. The final section presents guidelines and frameworks for macro practice field education. The nine professional competencies for macro social work practice include the following:

1. Demonstrate Ethical and Professional Behavior
2. Engage Diversity and Difference in Practice
3. Advance Human Rights and Social, Economic, and Environmental Justice
4. Engage in Practice-Informed Research and Research-Informed Practice
5. Engage in Policy Practice
6. Engagement with Individuals, Families, Groups, Organizations, and Communities
7. Assess Individuals, Families, Groups, Organizations, and Communities
8. Intervene with Individuals, Families, Groups, Organizations, and Communities
9. Evaluate Practice with Individuals, Families, Groups, Organizations, and Communities

 
This guide book is part of CSWE's Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (EPAS). Printed copies are available for purchase at info [at] cswe.org. The webinar recording (September 4, 2019) can be viewed here.

The Atlantic: The Disciplines Where No Black People Earn Ph.D.s

The Atlantic published a piece about the obstacles in enrolling in doctoral programs in the U.S. The more prestigious Ph.D. programs have more funding, resources, and greater likelihood placing graduates into tenure-track faculty positions. But black doctoral students are few in number. The reason why students from underrepresented backgrounds--black applicants in particular--face obstacles in Ph.D. admission has to do with having the right research topic to having the right social connections.

Before experience becomes a material issue, though, a student must first get into a doctoral program, which can be a chore all its own. It is typically up to departmental faculty to decide who does and who does not get into a Ph.D. program, and “there can be a lot of politics in play that keep black students from being admitted,” Commodore told me. There could be a lack of enthusiasm about an applicant’s topic or research interest, or some students might not come with the same social capital—recommendations from noted or well-connected faculty in the field—that others might.

Once they are admitted into a Ph.D. program, black students are more likely to borrow to finance their graduate education:

Then, after they are admitted, there is the question of cost. Black college students borrow at higher rates than any other racial group, and they are more likely to default on those student loans. “Imagine coming out of school with a bachelor’s degree, with such a debt burden,” Lorelle Espinosa, vice president for research at the American Council on Education (ACE), told me. “Students are thinking, I don’t have a safety net for this debt. Am I really up for going for an advanced degree where I’ll find myself in even more debt?”

In 2017, there were more than a dozen fields in which not a single doctoral degree was awarded to a black person anywhere in the United States. If Ph.D. programs are not admitting black applicants and those who are lucky to attend must borrow to survive, this trend could have repercussions for the future of black faculty in higher education. When minority students are demanding higher education institutions to hire more faculty who share similar cultural experiences, Ph.D. programs are not admitting enough black applicants. This is a lost opportunity for research on issues that could inform and improve the well-being of black communities.

Review: Toxic Inequality (2017)

Toxic Inequality: How America’s Wealth Gap Destroys Mobility, Deepens the Racial Divide, and Threatens Our Future (2017), by Thomas Shapiro, is a professor at the Heller School for Social Policy and the Director of the Institute on Assets and Social Policy Brandeis University. He is the leading figure on racial inequality and public policy.

From the book cover:

Since the Great Recession, most Americans' standard of living has stagnated or declined. Economic inequality is at historic highs. But inequality's impact differs by race; African Americans' net wealth is just a tenth that of white Americans, and over recent decades, white families have accumulated wealth at three times the rate of black families. In our increasingly diverse nation, sociologist Thomas M. Shapiro argues, wealth disparities must be understood in tandem with racial inequities--a dangerous combination he terms "toxic inequality."

In Toxic Inequality, Shapiro reveals how these forces combine to trap families in place. Following nearly two hundred families of different races and income levels over a period of twelve years, Shapiro's research vividly documents the recession's toll on parents and children, the ways families use assets to manage crises and create opportunities, and the real reasons some families build wealth while others struggle in poverty. The structure of our neighborhoods, workplaces, and tax code-much more than individual choices-push some forward and hold others back. A lack of assets, far more common in families of color, can often ruin parents' careful plans for themselves and their children.

i an a fan of Shapiro's work, which has generated much discussion on the widening racial wealth gap and economic inequality in the U.S. He uses a sociological lens to examine how years of homeownership, household income, and unemployment created racial disparities in wealth between white families and black families. Although the Fair Housing Act of 1968 prohibited housing discrimination on the basis of race, it has not stopped the practice of redlining. Black neighborhoods tend to have lower home equities than white neighborhoods which has huge implications on intergenerational wealth. Black families also tend to live in neighborhoods with higher proportion of blacks (or adjacent to working-class neighborhoods) than white families. For the past fifty years, black families have been playing catch-up to white families but neoliberal policies and the Great Recession eliminated much of black wealth. Overall, I highly recommend the book because it is easy to understand for the general audience to see that black families are NOT on an equal playing field with white families when it comes to wealth accumulation.

I would even further argue that this data supports why affirmative action is still necessary in elite college admissions. With fewer assets, black families are less likely to afford test preparation programs that can boost their child's scores on the SAT (which is poor predictor of college success) and must rely on student loans to finance their children's college educations. As the recent college admissions cheating scandal revealed, these racial inequities create an unfair advantage to already privileged students who do not have to financially struggle to gain admission into elite colleges and universities.

If you have not read Thomas Shapiro's previous books, I highly recommend his other phenomenal books, Black Wealth/White Wealth (2006) and The Hidden Cost of Being African Americans (2005).