Mary Thomas, Roberta Medina, Stevan St. Augustin, George Warden
Among comments made by homeowners during the Q & A for July’s film series, Race: The Power of an Illusion, was that the program was “preaching to the choir.” Audience members truly appreciated this concept. The film series presented an opportunity to reach out to homeowners who value inclusiveness and cross-cultural understanding—those interested in joining the choir. It is hoped that future efforts will provide programs that address issues faced by our community and will grow the choir, providing homeowners who support inclusiveness with tools to challenge racism, heterosexism and religious bigotry.
In remembering events that contributed to her decision to join the choir, Mary Thomas recalled her experience while working as a Clinical Professor at the University of Wisconsin. In that role, Mary was responsible for developing and implementing an internship program for graduate social work students in a neighborhood center. The center had an existing partnership with the university’s College of Nursing and Medical School to provide primary care services to neighborhood residents. Residents saw value in adding social work services to the health services provided at the center. The partnership with the university included working side by side with neighborhood center staff to provide services to neighborhood residents while training nursing, medical and social work students to work as interdisciplinary professionals.
The neighborhood center was located in the largest low-income housing development in Wisconsin. Most of the neighborhood residents were African-American and poor. The majority of the staff of the center were also African-American. This provided a unique opportunity for Mary and her students to work in an agency where, as white people, they were in the minority. This situation made it possible to examine racial and class biases in an environment where people of color felt free to express their views, discuss their experiences of racist insults and recall historical memories of exploitation of members of their race.
Mary and her students served as members of the clinic but also as staff of the center’s Family Resource Center (FRC). When meeting the black women who staffed the FRC, Mary was asked about the university’s motives in creating internships for social work students at the center. Specifically, the women asked if the students “were coming to the center to do experiments on black people.” The impact of powerful historical memories was laid bare in the question. Mary was mindful of the unethical research conducted at academic institutions such as the Tuskegee Institute’s experiments with black men who were denied treatment for syphilis so researchers could study the long-term health effects of the disease.
It was clear that the FRC staff’s motivation and purpose was to make sure that neighborhood residents would be free from exploitation and intrusions into their private lives. After a moment of self-reflection, Mary told the FRC staff that she would need the help and support of her new colleagues to recognize and address subtle racist expressions and behaviors among the students and herself. As a white person, it was easy to overlook the subtleties of racism. Mary asked her colleagues to challenge such expressions among the students and herself so that relevant learning and growth for the students and herself would be possible.
During the years that Mary and students worked at the neighborhood center, staff provided support and insights as well as challenges to racist thinking; this solidified Mary’s participation in the choir. When students finished their internships at the center, they entered the social work profession with concrete knowledge of the effects of historical memories and experiences, as well as the impact of the day-to-day insults and limits faced by people of color in a predominantly white society.
We hope homeowners will join the choir that promotes inclusiveness and acceptance in our community. For more information about joining us, please contact Roberta Medina at [email protected].