Act Locally Think Globally: The Link Between Critical Race Theory and Human Rights.

Overview: An intermediate discussion on Critical Race Theory and its global application to human rights. Through a series of interactive activities, participants will apply a CRT lens to human rights advocacy to further develop skills to ameliorate the persistent racial inequities within the systems and institutions we live and work in.Proposal text: As social workers, we cannot solely advocate for human rights in the US without applying them internationally. The social work profession must take into account the global consequences of race and education for those racialized as non-white and are more likely to experience the racial state. International ideologies about racialization are built by powerful nations that have historically fostered racist rhetoric about ethnic minorities as a means to maintain current-day systems of oppression. Human rights have not been guaranteed to everyone throughout the world, and countries selectively bestow these rights to some groups over others. We see these dynamics clearly in the borderlands - spaces where immigration, forced migration, and colonization leave our communities with lingering wounds and traumas. Immigration, citizenship, and voting rights are clearly linked issues facing our racialized communities today. Macro and micro social work are uniquely positioned to lend to the voices calling for the eradication of these systems of oppression.

Workshop participants will engage in an intermediate discussion of the application and tenets of CRT and discuss the early work of CRT thought leaders who focused on establishing CRT as an analytic lens to push the field beyond its multicultural approach (Abrams and Moio, 2009; Ortiz and Jani, 2010; Razack and Jeffery, 2002). More recent social work scholarship uses CRT as a frame for research, pedagogy, policy, and practice (Aldana & Richards-Schuster, 2021; Constance-Huggins, 2012; Daftary, 2020; Franco, 2020; Gutierrez &Lechuga Pena, in press, Nakaoka, Ortiz, and Garcia, 2019; Perez, 2021).

The session will then move into an interactive discussion related to border spaces (e.g., neighborhoods, reservations, physical versus imaginary borders, man-made borders) beyond the context of the US and into a global context that considers transnational migration and citizenship. During the discussion, the concept of crossing borders will guide participants towards moving beyond cultural competence and towards CRT’s anti-racist paradigm and how this can foster human rights in and out of the classroom. The session will close with policy-specific suggestions for participants to consider to move beyond the current multicultural approach to human rights, thereby creating more inclusive learning environments within social work education.