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NewSocialWorker
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March 27, 2005
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Reviewer's Comments:
Summary:
a timeline of historical events
Spirituality and the Black Helping Tradition in Social Work, by Elmer P. Martin and JoAnne M. Martin, NASW Press, Washington, D.C., 2002, 296 pages, $20.95.
Reviewed for THE NEW SOCIAL WORKER by Pamela Higgins Saulsberry
“African Americans have been depending on Jesus for a long time.” These words were written by a research participant in response to an open-ended question that asked African American parents to identify necessary lessons African American children needed to learn to be successful in American society. From this statement, the participant appeared to believe that a spiritual connection was one of those necessary lessons, as did the majority of the participants in this study (Saulsberry, 2003). Other studies, such as Hill’s 1971 research on the strengths of Black families, provide support for this position regarding the importance of spirituality in the lives of Americans of African decent. E. P. Martin and J. M. Martin have documented the vital and historical relationship between spirituality and the resiliency of African American people within the pages of their book, Spirituality and the Black Helping Tradition in Social Work.
Martin and Martin’s work provides a timeline of historical events delineating how “Black caregivers and pioneering social workers used spirituality in their work with Black people” to help raise them to a higher level of functioning socially, psychologically, educationally, and culturally. Chapters 1 through 4 provide the historical foundation for understanding the connection between the beliefs regarding spirituality and religious practices in Africa and America for Black people and the metamorphosis that took place in the understanding and behaviors related to both within American Black populations.
Chapter 1 provides a definition of spirituality in contrast to religiosity. The importance of spirituality to, and its role in, sustaining displaced Africans in their quest to survive and progress not only through slavery, but the black codes, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights eras, as well as the present day issues affecting African Americans, is provided in Chapters 2 through 4.
Examples of the central position spirituality held in the efforts of those who undertook to advance the status of African Americans through “race work” is chronicled in Chapters 5 through 8. These chapters provide information on the beginnings of social work inherent in “race work.” Long before the term “social work” was coined, “race work” had been the social work of 19th-century free Black people. Carloton-LaNey (1996) held that race work was essentially community service coupled with the constant struggle for social justice and racial equality. Race work was community service with a deep spiritual focus (p. 93). These chapters provide information on the efforts of individuals that exemplify many of the values of the social work profession today, such as ridding society of the “isms” such as classism, sexism, and racism. An appreciation for the diversity of humanity, a strengths perspective, and social responsibility of individuals held by the race workers, which translates to the principles of social work, is revealed in these chapters.
The last two chapters conclude the presentation of spirituality’s tradition for providing social services in the Black macro community. These chapters present a challenge to reexamine the practices of providing social services to African American clients. People can only operate with the information they have been provided and/or seek.
This book provides the opportunity for social work professionals, future and present, to incorporate into the provision of social services, from education to practice, and including policy levels a holistic knowledge base. Social workers, especially non-dominant group social workers, must seek to avoid becoming entrenched in bureaucratic roles to the point of not “expressing themselves spiritually, racially, or communally” (p. 196). This book provides a foundational blueprint to do so.
References
Carlton-LaNey, I. (1996). George and Birdye Haynes’ legacy to community practice. In I. Carlton-LaNey and N.Y. Burwell (Eds.), African American community practice models: Historical and contemporary response. New York: Haworth Press.
Hill, R.B. (1971). The strengths of African American families. New York: Emerson Hall Publishers.
Saulsberry, P. H. (2003). Racial socialization, academic performance, and social adjustment in African American youth: A multivariate analysis. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Jackson State University, Jackson, MS.
Reviewed by Pamela Higgins Saulsberry, Ph.D., LCSW, Licensed School Social Worker, Certified Effective Black Parent Instructor, Professor of Social Work at the University of Louisiana at Monroe.
This review appeared in the Fall 2003 issue of THE NEW SOCIAL WORKER magazine.
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