While social work education and practice have historically focused on oppression and marginalized populations, there has been increasing attention from scholars and practitioners in the past few years on the topic of privilege and its role in maintaining systems of stratification. This attention has focused primarily on white and male privilege, but has broadened more recently to include social class, heterosexual, able-bodied, U.S./American, citizenship, linguistic, size, Christian, educational and positional privilege.
The journal Reflections seeks narratives on the impact of privilege on the practice of social work and other helping professions, as well as the education, training and supervision of practitioners.
We seek narratives from the perspectives of students, educators, practitioners and clients that address general issues of privilege, or issues related to specific types of privilege. Narratives may address, but need not be limited to, the following:
- Describe the process of coming to recognize the impact of your privileges on your personal and professional life.
- How have you come to reconcile the inherent tension between your marginalized and privileged identities?
- What resistances have you encountered in your own process of recognizing privilege? How have you worked through those resistances? Where do you still struggle?
- How has privilege impacted your professional relationships with colleagues, students, clients, therapists, supervisors and supervisees?
- How has privilege impacted your personal relationships with partners, family members, friends and social networks?
- How does privilege shape the classroom experiences of educators and students?
- What approaches, techniques and strategies have you found to be effective in educating others about issues of privilege?
- What does privilege look like in higher education? In private practice? In community practice?
Mail manuscripts by June 30, 2009 to:
N. Eugene Walls, PhD, Reflections Special Issue Editor
University of Denver Graduate School of Social Work
Craig Hall
2148 S. High St.
Denver, CO 80208
If you have questions or would like to discuss ideas you have for manuscripts, you may contact N. Eugene Walls at 303-871-4367 or by email at ewalls2@du.edu.