2017 GROSSBARD LECTURE SERIES: Two Presentations on Race by Dr. Kenneth Hardy

GROSSBARD LECTURE 2017: TWO-PART SERIES

IN-PERSON FOR CSSW STUDENTS, ADMINS & FACULTY ONLY; LIVESTREAM OPEN TO THE PUBLIC (scroll down for instructions); REGISTRATION REQUIRED FOR BOTH.

1.5 contact hours are available for NYS-, NJ-, CA- and CT-Licensed Social Workers, for nominal fee. For other states, please email swope@columbia.edu.*

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LECTURE #1: Of Walls and Wars: Tips, Tactics and Strategies for Talking About Race

DATE:Tuesday October 10, 2017
TIME:8:00 p.m. – 9:30 p.m.
PLACE: Room 311/312
LIVESTREAM LINK: https://livestream.com/columbiassw/events/7752629

1.5 CEUs available for NYS-, NJ-, and CT-licensed social workers for nominal fee

Despite the array of heartwarming slogans and clichés regarding the value of diversity, having meaningful conversations remains a volatile issue that often creates discomfort and polarization. Rigid and self-righteous diversity-related “talk” often makes it difficult to engage in meaningful and transformative interactions across the gulf of cultural differences. Our undying, often romanticized, commitment to inclusion and connections across cultural groups, at times, doesn’t appear to be enough to prevent vast misunderstandings, and seemingly irreconcilable stand-offs. Claims to “not see color” in a color conscious society, or efforts to hold on fervently to the “feel good” ideal that differences don’t matter anymore, make meaningful dialogue virtually impossible. When much needed dialogues about diversity and power differences become stifled, the creation of walls and ultimately wars are inevitable. As social workers, committed to centrality of relationships, we must have the ‘will’ and ‘skill’ to facilitate these courageous conversations both in our work regardless of context.

This presentation will address how walls (i.e., polarization and cutoffs based on differences) contribute to wars (i.e., conflict, domination, and thirst for punishment) between and among us. A model will be presented for how we can explore new dialogues that will move toward bridging differences that have divided us historically. Implications for addressing difficult diversity related issues in the workplace will be discussed.

Continuing Education Learning Objectives:

▪   Define the anatomy of oppression and its impact on cross cultural interactions and relationships

▪   Deconstruct how cross cultural tensions develop and prevent honest, meaningful interactions between and among members of different  groups;

▪   Explain a model for advancing inclusion and healthy interactions between diverse groups with a history of polarization, misunderstanding, and oppression

▪   Apply tools that will facilitate meaningful cross cultural dialogues in the workplace and beyond.

▪   Recognize relevant cultural-related Self of the Therapist/Worker issues that may impede and/or facilitate constructive culturally-based conversations.

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LECTURE #2: Uncovering and Addressing Racial Trauma

DATE:Wednesday October 11, 2017
TIME:12:15 p.m. – 1:45 p.m.
PLACE: Room C03

LIVESTREAM LINK: https://livestream.com/columbiassw/events/7752640
1.5 CEUs available for NYS-, NJ-, and CT-licensed social workers for nominal fee

Racial trauma is an inescapable by-product of persistent exposure to repressive circumstances that emotionally, psychologically, and physically devastates one’s sense of self while simultaneously depleting one’s strategies for coping. It is a life altering and debilitating experience that affects countless numbers of people of color over multiple generations. Unfortunately, the failure to consider the interrelationship between racial oppression and trauma limits our ability to work effectively with the People of Color who live in the midst of sociocultural conditions that are injurious to their psyches and souls. Even when clinical work is trauma informed, it rarely devotes adequate attention to racial oppression and the pervasive trauma associated with it.This experience is masked by the fact that we are a nation in denial, especially when taking a critical look at our racial biography is at task.  There is an enduring and invisible force that stifles change with regard to race that remains unscathed and unacknowledged.  That force is the centrality of whiteness. 

This lecture will provide a comprehensive overview of the anatomy of racial trauma and the debilitating hidden wounds associated with it. It will also examine the pervasive and deleterious effects of the centrality of whiteness.  Particular attention will be devoted to a critical examination of the role it plays in our lives especially regarding the relationships that we strive to have with each other across the racial divide.  Attention will also be devoted to highlighting trauma informed interventions and strategies that centralize race and racial oppression; and to strategies for de-centering whiteness in and outside therapy. 

Continuing Education Learning Objectives

▪   Apply a racially sensitive, trauma-informed framework to uncover the hidden trauma wounds that often underpin the health disparities that stifle the lives of African Americans and other racially oppressed populations;

▪   Identify how the unrecognized, unexplored, and/or unresolved racially-based attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of providers and other work personnel can often impede efforts to fully engage and serve racially traumatized clients effectively

▪   Deconstruct how the centrality of whiteness undermines our quest for racial and social justice in our lives and in our social work practice; and

▪   List strategies for de-centering whiteness as an act of social justice.

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About the Speaker

Kenneth Hardy is a professor of family therapy at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the director of the Eikenberg Academy for Social Justice in New York City. He is an internationally recognized clinician, author, educator, and consultant. An engaging workshop leader, Dr. Hardy presents workshops nationally and internationally on family therapy with oppressed and racially traumatized populations. For more information, go to his faculty bio page.

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