Oh, look!

... a quick midweek update

Many of y’all have read my concerns over the politicization (is that a word?) of child welfare in the interest of ideology. What comes across my feeds is the UpEnd movement etc., but it appears I’m not alone in my concerns. The NYT today digs into the deeper issue of the radicalization of social work in the pursuit of social justice.

As you’ll see if you read the op-ed, the issue is not a simple matter of being “more liberal” in the application of social work than the last generation. Jane Addams, as one source notes, worked on the belief that “that everyone should be considered worthy of respect and of being listened to.” The modern trend seems to be that we should rank the worth of families on the basis of their race, ethnicity, gender identity, and sexuality, as Ms. Paul recognizes in her column.

According to the National Association of Social Workers, “the primary mission of the social work profession is to enhance human well-being and help meet basic and complex needs of all people, with a particular focus on those who are vulnerable, oppressed, and living in poverty.” The new movement rejects that premise, arguing instead that the institutions designed to maintain society are themselves oppressive: “Police, prisons, & foster care are the cause of oppression, racism, discrimination & inequities,” says their primary spokesperson.

I try hard in this newsletter/column/random-dump-of-my-thoughts to be objective. It’s something that was ingrained in me back when I thought I’d spend my life as a newspaper reporter. But I’m afraid we are approaching a point at which our society is about to throw away 500 years of progress.

It’s time to be clear about a few things. One’s future is not dependent upon one’s past nor upon one’s ethnic background, no matter how much ideologues want to put people in boxes from which they are not allowed to escape. “[R]ecognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.” And every child must be treated with equal dignity and without “discrimination of any kind, irrespective of the child's or his or her parent's or legal guardian's race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national, ethnic or social origin, property, disability, birth or other status.”

These principles have been behind every “progressive” movement of the past several hundred years. When the elites of our society begin to diminish them — by damning societal efforts to protect children because “the system is racist”; by calling for the “liberation” of children from societal norms; by valuing certain children over others because of the class or race into which they were born; by dividing ethnicities into “oppressors” and “oppressed” — it becomes clear that their real interest is not that of children, but that of themselves as privileged and self-centered adults.

On a practical basis, can you imagine being a young person interested in helping vulnerable children and families and walking into a university where you’re told the value of individual men, women, and children depends entirely upon their status as members of a certain race, ethnicity, gender, sex, religion, and sexual orientation? Why would any decent person want to enter a people-serving profession with that philosophy? Why would any struggling family want to be “helped” by someone with those beliefs?