Abstract
Social workers must locate their work within the history of our profession, while also recognizing how and why particular accounts are constructed, legitimized, and disseminated. The historical context of human rights work is especially significant. This narrative has been shaped by selective attention, which advances some perspectives and erases others. Intersectionality encourages scrutiny of missing elements, calling one to explore what else was happening concurrent with the mainstream account and whose perspectives are absent from the story. This paper illustrates the value of an intersectional frame by examining three erasures from human rights history in social work: the Combahee River Collective, the Black settlement house movement, and the Compton’s Cafeteria Disturbance. The paper closes with implications for social work education in four areas: deconstructing contemporary social work narratives, investigating historical and cultural locations of our knowledge base, theoretically contextualizing intersectional contributions, and respecting intellectual contributions beyond refereed journals and other traditional formats. Intersectionality theory engages marginalized aspects of human rights history in educating professional social workers; however, it must avoid cooptation to maintain its vibrant critique.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Founded in 1952, the Council on Social Work Education is the national association representing social work education in the USA.
The common acronym during the 1960s and 1970s was LGBT. The “Q” was added in 1996 to represent queer/questioning. The common use today is LGBTQ+ with the “+” representing a range of marginalized identities and sexualities (Baez 2019).
We acknowledge that this widely used term disregards Central and South America and much of North America.
Erasure of the origins of intersectionality is not a new idea. Carastathis (2016) explicitly takes this up in her analysis. The CRC is presented here as an illustrative example.
Dr. Stryker, an intersectional scholar herself, has also been erased in a sense, despite her contributions to gender and sexuality literature (Levine 2003).
References
Almutawa, S. (2015). The historian and social justice. The Newsmagazine of the American Historical Association: Perspectives on History. https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/february-2015/the-historian-and-social-justice
Armstrong, E. A., & Crage, S. M. (2006). Movements and memory: the making of the Stonewall myth. American Sociological Review, 71(5), 724–751. https://doi.org/10.1177/000312240607100502.
Baez, R. (2019). Why we need ‘reclaim pride’. The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide, 26(3), 22–25.
Baldwin, J. (1965). The white man’s guilt. Ebony Magazine, 20(10), 47–48.
Bentley, K. J., Mancini, M., Jacob, A., & McLeod, D. (2019). Teaching social work research through the lens of social justice, human rights, and diversity. Journal of Social Work Education, 55(3), 433–448. https://doi.org/10.1080/10437797.2018.1548985.
Bowleg, L. (2008). When black + lesbian + woman ≠ black lesbian woman: the methodological challenges of qualitative and quantitative intersectionality research. Sex Roles, 59(5–6), 312–325. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-008-9400-z.
Bowleg, L. (2012). Once you’ve blended the cake, you can’t take the parts back to the main ingredients: Black gay and bisexual men’s descriptions and experiences of intersectionality. Sex Roles, 68(11-12), 754–767. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-012-0152-4.
Carastathis, A. (2016). Intersectionality: origins, contestations, horizons. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Carlton-LaNey, I. (1994). The career of Birdye Henrietta Haynes, a pioneer settlement house worker. Social Service Review, 68(2), 254–273. https://doi.org/10.1086/604050.
Carlton-LaNey, I., & Hodges, V. (2004). African American reformers’ mission: caring for our girls and women. Affilia, 19(3), 257–272. https://doi.org/10.1177/0886109904265853.
Case, K. (2013). Deconstructing privilege: teaching and learning as allies in the classroom. Oxford: Routledge.
Cash, F. B. (1991). Radicals or realists: African American women and the settlement house spirit in New York City. Afro-Americans in New York Life and History, 15(1), 7–16.
Chapman, C., & Withers, A. J. (2019). A violent history of benevolence: interlocking oppression in the moral economies of social working. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame (2019). Jane Addams. http://chicagolgbthalloffame.org/addams-jane/. Accessed 15 May 2020
Cloud, D. L. (2018). Reality bites: rhetoric and the circulation of truth claims in U.S. political culture. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press
Collins, P. H. (1990). Black feminist thought: knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. New York: Hyman.
Collins, P. H. (2000). Black feminist thought: knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment (Rev. 10th anniversary ed.). Oxford: Routledge.
Collins, P. H. (2019). Intersectionality as critical social theory. Durham: Duke University Press.
Collins, P. H., & Bilge, S. (2016). Intersectionality. Malden: Polity Press.
Combahee River Collective. (1983). A Black feminist statement. In C. Moraga & G. Anzaldua (Eds.), This bridge called my back: writings by radical women of color (2nd ed., pp. 210–218). Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press (Original work published 1977).
Conrad, E. (1943/1990). General Harriet Tubman. Washington: The Associated Publishers, Inc.
Cooper, A. J. (1892). A voice from the South. By a Black woman of the South. Xenia: Aldine.
Council on Social Work Education (2015). Handbook of social work accreditation policies and procedures. https://www.cswe.org/Accreditation/Standards-and-Policies/EPAS-Handbook.
Crenshaw, K. W. (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: a Black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989(1), 139–167.
Davis, K. (2008). Intersectionality as a buzzword: a sociology of science perspective on what makes a feminist theory successful. Feminist Theory, 9, 67–85. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464700108086364.
Gatenio Gabel, S., & Mapp, S. (2018). Intersections and interventions. Journal of Human Rights and Social Work, 3(4), 167–168.
Gladden, J. L. (2018). Social work leaders through history: lives and lessons. New York: Springer Publishing Company.
Harris, D. (2001). From the Kennedy commission to the Combahee Collective; Black feminist organizing, 1960-1980. In B. Collier-Thomas & V. P. Franklin (Eds.), Sisters in the struggle: African American women in the Civil Rights-Black Power Movement (pp. 280–305). New York: University Press.
Healy, L. M. (2008). Exploring the history of social work as a human rights profession. International Social Work, 51(6), 735–748. https://doi.org/10.1177/0020872808095247.
Hertel, S. & Libal, K. (2011). Human rights in the United States: beyond exceptionalism. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Ho, M. (1975). Implications of teacher-student relationships in social work education. Journal of Education for Social Work, 11(1), 74–82.
hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: education as the practice of freedom. Oxford: Routledge.
Hounmenou, C. (2012). Black settlement houses and oppositional consciousness. Journal of Black Studies, 43(6), 646–666. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021934712441203.
Levin, S. (2019). Compton’s Cafeteria riot: a historic act of trans resistance, three years before Stonewall. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/jun/21/stonewall-san-francisco-riot-tenderloin-neighborhood-trans-women.
Levine, S. B. (2003). Review of the book, Sexual orientation and psychoanalysis: sexual science and clinical practice by R. C. Friedman & J. I. Downey. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 32(5), 473–474. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1025603711989.
Luker, R. E. (1984). Missions, institutional churches, and settlement houses: the Black experience, 1885–1910. The Journal of Negro History, 69(3/4), 101–113. https://doi.org/10.2307/2717616.
Lustbader, K. (2018). LGBTQ heritage. Change Over Time, 8(2), 136–143. https://doi.org/10.1353/cot.2018.0012.
MacKinnon, K. (2011). Thinking about queer theory in social work education: a pedagogical (in)query. Canadian Social Work Review / Revue Canadienne de service social, 28(1), 139–144.
Martin, R. (1987). Oral history in social work education: chronicling the Black experience. Journal of Social Work Education, 23(3), 5–10. https://doi.org/10.1080/10437797.1987.10672078.
Matsuda, M. J. (1991). Beside my sister, facing the enemy: legal theory out of coalition. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1183–1192.
Mead, M., & Kaplan, F. B. (Eds.) (1965). American woman: the report of the President’s Commission on the Status of Women and other publications of the Commission. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Moraga, C., & Anzaldúa, G. (1981). This bridge called my back: writings by radical women of color. Kitchen Table: New York: Women of Color Press.
Murphy, Y., Hunt, V., Zajicek, A. M., Norris, A. N., & Hamilton, L. (2009). Incorporating intersectionality in social work practice, research, policy, and education. Washington, DC: National Association of Social Workers: NASW Press.
NAACP (n.d.). NAACP History: Carter G. Woodson, “Father of Black History.” https://www.naacp.org/naacp-history-carter-g-woodson/.
National Park Service (n.d.). Carter G Woodson Home. National Historic Site, District of Columbia. https://www.nps.gov/cawo/learn/the-office-home.htm.
Pasulka, N. (2015). Ladies in the streets: before Stonewall, transgender uprising changed lives. https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/05/05/404459634/ladies-in-the-streets-before-stonewall-transgender-uprising-changed-lives.
Reisch, M. & Andrews, J. (2001). The road not taken: a history of radical social work in the United States. New York: Brunner-Routledge.
Segall, A. (2006). What’s the purpose of teaching a discipline, anyway? The case of history. In A. Segall, E. E. Heilman, & C. H. Cherryholmes (Eds.), Social studies--the next generation: re-searching in the postmodern (pp. 125–139). New York: Peter Lang Publishing.
Sontag, S. (2003). Regarding the pain of others. New York: Picador.
Stern, M. J., & Axinn, J. (2008). Social welfare: a history of the American response to need (7th ed.). Boston: Pearson/Allyn and Bacon.
Stryker, S. (2008). Transgender history, homonormativity, and disciplinarity. Radical History Review, 2008(100), 145–157. https://doi.org/10.1215/01636545-2007-026.
Taylor, K.-Y. (Ed.) (2017). How we get free: Black feminism and the Combahee River Collective. Chicago: Haymarket Books.
Taylor, C., & White, S. (2000). Practicing reflexivity in health and welfare: making knowledge. London: Open University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Brantley, N.A., Nicolini, G. & Kirkhart, K.E. Unsettling Human Rights History in Social Work Education: Seeing Intersectionality. J. Hum. Rights Soc. Work 6, 98–107 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41134-020-00138-w
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41134-020-00138-w