Racism By Any Other Name: The Lived Experiences of Black Social Work Practitioners and Racial Microaggressions

Over the past two decades, scales have been developed to help operationalize terms and concepts that define racialized experiences (Gamst et al., 2011; Utsey, 1999). Although useful, these developments fail to capture the experience of racism that is more subtle, elusive and thought to be experienced psychologically like tiny cuts that go unnoticed yet are painful nonetheless (Coates, 2012). We are coming to understand and name this experience as racial microaggressions. The purpose of this study was to better understand the lived experiences of Black social work practitioners as they relate to racism in the workplace, particularly the more subtle, layered, and cumulative (Smith et al., 2006) mini-invalidations, mini-insults, and mini-assaults of microaggressions (Sue et al., 2007) by exploring the racial microaggressions faced in the day-to-day activities of working as a Black social worker. This qualitative study utilized Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Racial Battle Fatigue (RBF) to view four research questions: (1) How do Black social workers experience racial microaggressions in their day-to-day practice settings? (2) How do Black social workers articulate biopsychosocial stress responses experienced when encountering racial microaggressions in their practice settings? (3) How (and/or what) are the coping strategies employed by Black social workers experiencing racial microaggressions in their practice settings? and (4) How do the experiences of racial microaggressions in the practice-settings impact the way Black social workers see themselves professionally? Data collected from 14 participants were analyzed using a reflexive thematic analysis. Five themes answered how these Black social workers made meaning of their experiences: (1) racism by any other name, (2) the workplace setting is a hazardous terrain, (3) Black social workers are at spiritual warfare, (4) isolation as a source of survival, and (5) gendered overtones and intersectionality. The findings of this study were discussed with conclusions consistent with the tenets of Critical Race Theory (CRT). Racism was shown to be a common, fixed feature in the participants’ work environments. Implications and recommendations for social work and future research were discussed.

INDEX WORDS: Racism, Black social workers, Racial microaggressions, Critical Race Theory, Racial Battle Fatigue, Social Work, Qualitative research