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Social Work and the Grand Challenge to Eliminate
Racism
Social Work and the Grand Challenge
to Eliminate Racism
Concepts, Theory, and Evidence Based Approaches
Edited by

MARTELL L. TEASLEY, MICHAEL S. SPENCER, AND MELISSA

BARTHOLOMEW
 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the
University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing
worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University

Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.
© Oxford University Press 2023
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in
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reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department,
Oxford University Press, at the address above.
You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same
condition on any acquirer.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Teasley, Martell L., editor. | Spencer, Michael S., editor. |
Bartholomew, Melissa, editor.
Title: Social Work and the Grand Challenge to Eliminate Racism :
concepts, theory, and evidence based approaches / Edited by Martell L. Teasley,
Michael S. Spencer, Melissa Bartholomew.
Description: New York : Oxford University Press, [2023] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022053631 (print) | LCCN 2022053632 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780197674949 (hardback) | ISBN 9780197674963 (epub) |
ISBN 9780197674970
Subjects: LCSH: Racism. | Social service and race relations. |
Minorities—Civil rights.
Classification: LCC HT1521 .S543 2023 (print) | LCC HT1521 (ebook) |
DDC 305.8—dc23/eng/20221208
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022053631
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022053632
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197674949.001.0001
 Racism is a grand challenge for the social work profession because
the profession has never tackled the centrality of racism as a causal
factor, precipitating problem formation in the lives of people.

—Martell L. Teasley
 Contents

Contributors
Introduction
Racism and Society
Race and Social Outcomes
The Goal of This Book
The Challenge of Eliminating Racism

PART I. HISTORY, RACISM, AND SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION

1. The Meaning and Function of Race and Racism: A Conceptual

Understanding
Martell L. Teasley
The Meaning and Function of Race and Racism
Racism
Institutional Racism
Systemic Racism
Racial Projects
Racializing People
Racialized Identity
Racial Commonsense Thinking
Conclusion
2. Anti-Racism Social Work: History and Future Challenges
Martell L. Teasley
Social Work and Racism
Racism in Early Social Work
Racism and Civil Rights
Racism, Diversity, and Social Work Education
Racism and Social Work
Anti-Racist Social Work
 ASWB and Racially Biased Licensure Testing
Conclusion
3. Using Personal-Professional Narratives as a Technique for
Teaching: Social Work Students about the Complexities of
Racism
Tracy R. Whitaker, Ruby M. Gourdine, and Robert L. Cosby, Jr.
Racism in the Helping Relationship
Challenges in Discussing Racism with Social Work Students
Use of Personal-Professional Narratives
Personal-Professional Narrative Case Study
Juvenile Court Experience
Child Welfare Agency
Evaluating Outcomes
Implications for Practice
Summary and Conclusion
4. Eradicating Racism: Social Work’s Most Pressing Grand Challenge
Abril N. Harris, Smitha Rao, Manuel Cano, Bongki Woo, Ty
Tucker, Dale Dagar Maglalang, and Melissa Wood Bartholomew
Conceptualization of Racism
Racism and the History of Social Work
Social Work’s Efforts to Eradicate Racism
Intrapersonal Efforts to Eradicate Racism
Interpersonal Efforts to Eradicate Racism
Institutional Efforts to Eradicate Racism
Conclusion
5. Ending Racism: A Critical Perspective
Harold E. Briggs and Martell L. Teasley
The Sustainability of Racism in America
Racism by Legislative Fiat and De Jure
Building a Race Consciousness-Raising and Anti-Racism Practice
and Theory Narrative
Structural and Policy Approaches to Anti-Racism Practice
Practice Approaches for Addressing Structural and Interpersonal
Racism
 Behavioral Approach to Understanding Racism and Racial
Prejudice
Mindfulness and Anti-Racism Practice
Combined Practice Approaches for Reducing Racism
Addressing Racial Discrimination through Task-Centered
Practice
Confronting the Denial of Racism
Anti-Racism and Anti-Oppression Practice
Critique of Anti-Racism and Anti-Oppressive Practice
Perspectives
Conclusion

PART II. RACISM AND INDIVIDUAL AND FAMILY WELL-BEING

6. Ensure Healthy Development for Youth: Expansions and

Elaborations for Equity
Valerie B. Shapiro, Amelia Seraphia Derr, Nehal Eldeeb, Henrika
McCoy, Miguel A. Trujillo, and Cuc T. Vu
In Matters of Equity, Creating Change Does Not Necessarily
Create Progress
Re-examining Unleashing the Power of Prevention for Equity
Elaborations
In Matters of Equity, Aspirations and Intentions Are Insufficient
Re-examining the Goal to Establish Equity-Enhancing
Interventions
Understanding the Effects of Tested Programs on Marginalized
Groups
Case Example: An Equity-Enhancing Approach to Program
Adaptation and Implementation
Equity-Enhancing Interventions Prioritize Participatory Processes
Equity-Enhancing Interventions Are Tailored to Particular
Cultures, Contexts, and Conditions
Equity-Enhancing Interventions Innovate Delivery Methods to
Improve Service
Can Unleashing Prevention Be Anti-Racist?
7. Ensuring Healthy Development for All Youth: Prevention of
Psychosis
Melissa E. Smith, Pamela Rakhshan Rouhakhtar, and Jason
Schiffman
The Promise of Prevention for All?
Overview of Early Psychosis Prevention
The Grand Challenge of Preventing Serious Mental Illness
The Promise of Prevention: An Update
Setting the Stage: Race and Mental Illness
Brief History of the Social Construction of Mental Illness and
Race
Current Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Identification and
Treatment of Serious Mental Illness
Role of Structural and Individual Racism in Mental Healthcare
A Mirror Image? Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Psychosis
Prevention
Structural Racism, Racial Bias, and Cultural Responsiveness in
Assessing Youth for Psychosis Risk
Are Promising Evidence-Based Practices for Psychosis
Prevention Racially and Culturally Responsive?
Strategies for Reducing Structural Racism and Racial Bias and
Increasing Cultural Responsiveness: Implications for Social Work
Research, Education, and Practice
Development of Racially and Culturally Responsive Evidence-
Based Practices
Service Provision: Helping Family and Youth Unleash Their
Power
Summary
8. Closing the Health Gap: Addressing Racism, Settler Colonialism,
and White Supremacy
Michael S. Spencer, Santino G. Camacho, Bongki Woo, Roberto E.
R. Orellana, and Jessica I. Ramirez
A Holistic View of Health
The Association between Racism and Settler Colonialism, and
Physical and Mental Health
 Eliminating Racism in Health Systems
Health Service Delivery
Workforce Development
Health Information Systems
Equitable Access
Financing Systems
Leadership and Governance
Culturally Relevant Health-Promotion Interventions to Reduce
Exposure to Racism
Racial Healing
Cultural Coping and Cultural Resilience
Culturally Tailored and Culturally Grounded Interventions
Toward Solutions and Reconciliation
Conclusion
9. Integrating AASWSW’s Grand Challenges of Productive Aging
with Anti-Racism and Health Equity Lenses to Improve
Population Health
Ernest Gonzales, Nancy Morrow-Howell, Jacqueline L. Angel, Lisa
Fredman, Lisa A. Marchiondo, Robert Harootyan, Jasmin Choi,
Nandini Choudhury, Kelsi Carolan, Kathy Lee, Erwin Tan, Patricia
Yu, Emily Shea, Cliff Whetung, and Christina Matz
An Integrated Framework of Productive Aging, Anti-Racism, and
Health Equity
Definitions
Public Policy, Culture, and Discrimination
Individual Capacity
Neighborhood Capacity
Institutional Capacity
Productive Activities
Outcomes among Older Adults
Outcomes for Families, Organizations, and Society
Contributions of an Integrated Framework
Progress to Date and Future Research
Implications for Education
Conclusion
10. Racism and the Grand Challenge of Ending Family Violence
among Black Families
Alan J. Dettlaff, Reiko Boyd, and Tricia Bent-Goodley
Black Families and Child Maltreatment
Black Families and Intimate Partner Violence
Historical Overview of Racism and Violence against Black
Families
Forced Family Separation
Laws and Policies to Maintain White Supremacy
The Role of Racism in Creating and Perpetuating Risk for Family
Violence
Racism and Poverty
Racism, Health, and Stress
Racism, Geographic Contexts, and Structural Inequities
Evidence-Based and Evidence-Informed Strategies for Ending
Family Violence
Applying an Anti-Racist Framework to Violence Prevention
11. Beyond Colorism: The Impact of Racialization in U.S. Latinxs
Rocío Calvo, Jandel Crutchfield, and Jorge Delva
Healthcare
Housing
Education
Criminal Justice
Promising Practices to Counteract the Impact of Racism on
Latinxs
Conclusion
12. Confronting the History of Racism against Asian Americans in the
United States
Meirong Liu
Introduction
Asian Americans and Historical Experiences of Othering
Impact of Racism on the Health and Mental Health of Asian
Americans
Anti-Asian Racism and the Grand Challenges for Social Work
Moving Forward: Strategies to Eliminate Anti-Asian Racism
 Disentangling the Model Minority Myth
Fostering Racial Solidarity
Reflecting Racism within the Social Work Profession and
Developing an Anti-Asian Racism Workforce
Support Reporting and Bystander Intervention Training
Policy Initiatives on Anti-Asian Racism
The Importance of Community-Based Solutions
Addressing Access to Mental Healthcare
Culturally Sensitive Evidence-Based Intervention
Directions for Future Anti-Asian Racism Research
Conclusion

PART III. ELIMINATING RACISM THROUGH STRENGTHENING THE

SOCIAL FABRIC

13. Strengthening the Social Responses to the Human Impacts of

Environmental Change
Rachel Forbes, Dorlisa J. Minnick, Amy Krings, Felicia M. Mitchell,
Samantha Teixeira, and Shanondora Billiot
Chapter Overview
Intersection of Health Equity and Environmental Justice
Pesticide Exposure
Food Systems and Food Security
Water
Extractive Energy and Natural Resource Development
Extreme Weather Events
Urban Heat Islands (UHI)
Tornadoes
Hurricanes and Flooding
Climate Migration
COVID-19
Air Quality
Food Systems
Water
Activism and Advocacy
Conclusion and Moving Forward
14. Race and Racism in the Homelessness Crisis in the United
States: Historic Antecedents, Current Best Practices, and
Recommendations to End Racial Disparities in Housing and
Homelessness
Deborah K. Padgett, Benjamin F. Henwood, and James Petrovich
Foreword: A Brief Comment on the Authors’ Positionality
Racism in Plain Sight: From Slavery to Jim Crow to Post–World
War II Housing Exclusion
Research on Homelessness: The Missing Significance of Race
Current Best Practices in Ending Homelessness: Housing First
The HUD-VASH Program for Homeless Veterans: A Rare Success
Story and Lessons Learned
African Americans among Homeless Veterans
The Success of HUD-VASH
Structural and Institutional Changes Needed to Address Racial
Inequities in Housing Access and Housing Security
Conclusion and Recommendations
15. Eradicating Social Isolation: Focus on Social Exclusion and
Racism
Sandra Edmonds Crewe, Claudia Thorne, and Natalie Muñoz
Introduction
Social Isolation and Social Exclusion
Social Isolation
Social Exclusion
Theories: Racism and Social Exclusion
Critical Race Theory
Intersectionality
Racialized Organizations Theory
Social Exclusion, Stigma, and Racism
Relationship of Racism to Social Exclusion and Stigma
Income and Wealth
Education
Physical and Mental Health Outcomes
Case Vignettes (Racism and Social Exclusion)
Case Vignette # 1: Ms. Jones
 Case Vignette #2: Julissa
Case Vignette #3: Michael
Conclusion: The Way Forward

PART IV. PROGRESSIVE APPROACHES TO ELIMINATING

INSTITUTIONAL, SOCIAL POLICY, AND ECONOMIC RACISM

16. Juvenile Justice for Achieving Equal Opportunity and Justice

Susan A. McCarter, Bo-Kyung Elizabeth Kim, Patricia Logan-
Greene, and Vanessa Drew
Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act
Disparate Impacts of Juvenile Justice System Involvement
Micro-Level Impacts
Meso-Level Impacts
Macro-Level Impacts
Assessing Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Juvenile Justice
Reducing Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Juvenile Justice
Conclusion and Implications
17. From Mass Incarceration to Smart Decarceration
Susan A. McCarter, Camille R. Quinn, Charles H. Lea, III, and
Laura S. Abrams
Mass Incarceration
Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Criminal Justice System
Promote Smart Decarceration Grand Challenge
Micro, Meso, and Macro Contributors to RED
Micro Factors
Meso Factors
Macro Factors
Strategies to Redress Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Criminal
Justice System
Increase the Availability of and Access to Culturally Congruent
Reentry Programs
Address Collateral Consequences through Racial and Ethnic
Equity-Informed Policies and Practices
 Decriminalize Low-Level Offenses and Invest in Alternatives to
Incarceration
Repeal Racialized Criminal Justice Legislation and Policies
Adopt Racial Impact Statements as a Policy Priority
Address Explicit and Implicit Bias along the Carceral Continuum
Conclusion/Implications
18. Reducing Racialized Barriers to School Success for All Children
and Youth
Terence Dwight Fitzgerald, Martell L. Teasley, Tasha Seneca
Keyes, and Schnavia Hatcher
Race, Gender, and Disproportionality in School Suspension and
Expulsion
Potential Outcomes of School Suspension and Expulsion
Existing Approaches for Tackling Disproportionality
Current Approaches
Launching the School Success Project (SSP)
Collaboration and Capacity-Building
Utilizing Evidence-Based and Innovative Methods
Completing the Interactive Map
Developing a Dissemination Strategy
Conclusion
19. Reversing Extreme Inequality: The Legacy and Persistence of
Racism Economic Inequality
Trina R. Shanks, Jennifer Romich, Stephanie C. Boddie, Laura
Lein, and Dominique S. Crump
The Legacy and Persistence of Racism: Implications and
Possibilities for Extreme Economic Inequality
The Significance of the Racial Income and Wealth Gaps
The History of Exclusionary Policies in the United States
Native Americans
Black Americans
Latinx/Hispanic
Asian Americans
White Americans
Labor and Income
 Assets and Wealth
Land Loss
Wealth Stripping through Fees and Fines
Policy to Mitigate Economic Inequality by Race
Reparations
What Can Social Workers Do?
Conclusion
20. White Supremacy and American Social Policy: Implications for
Racism-Centered Policy Practice
Jerome H. Schiele, Denise McLane-Davison, and Christopher
Maith, Sr.
The Reluctance to Address White Supremacy
White Supremacy’s Foundation
Social Policy as Racial Regulation
The Denial of Racism
Policy Practice to Address White Supremacy
Policy Practitioner Roles
Racism-Centeredness in a Social Welfare Policy Course
Womanist Pedagogy and Racism-Centeredness
Course Assignments
Congressional Black Caucus Foundation (CBCF) Annual
Conference
Conclusion
21. Policy, Practice, and Institutional Barriers to Financial Capability
and Asset Building Related to Race (Racism) in the United States
Jenny L. Jones, Julie Birkenmaier, Lissa Johnson, Gena G.
McClendon, Yunju Nam, Jin Huang, and Eyitayo Onifade
The Economics of Racism
The Challenges of Economics and Race/Racism
Race and Financial Education
Financial Socialization
Financial Education
For example, some schools
Financial Guidance
 Impacts of Financial Education on Financial Behaviors and
Well-Being
Race and Household Financial Access
Basic Financial Access: Banked Status
Alternative Financial Service (AFS) Use
Policy and Practice Suggestions to Increase Rate of Banked
Products and Services Use
Credit Reports, Credit Scores, and Credit Use
Policy and Practice Suggestions Regarding Consumer Credit
Retirement Savings
Policy and Practice Suggestions Regarding Retirement Accounts
Racism as a Barrier to Achieving Financial Capability and Asset
Building for All
Racial Wealth and Disparity
Race and FCAB and Social Work Education
Conclusion

Index
 Contributors

Laura S. Abrams, PhD, MSW, University of California, Los Angeles

Jacqueline L. Angel, PhD, MA, University of Texas, Austin

Melissa Wood Bartholomew, PhD, JD, MDiv, MSW, Center for
Diversity, Inclusion, & Belonging, Harvard Divinity School
Tricia Bent-Goodley, PhD, MSW, Professor Emeritus, Howard
University

Shanondora Billiot, PhD, MSW, University of Illinois

Julie Birkenmaier, PhD, MSW, LCSW, St. Louis University
Stephanie C. Boddie, PhD, MSW, Baylor University

Reiko Boyd, PhD, MSW, University of Houston

Harold E. Briggs, PhD, AM, University of Georgia

Rocio Calvo, PhD, MA, Boston College

Santino G. Camacho, MPH, University of Washington

Manuel Cano, PhD, MSW, Arizona State University

Kelsi Carolan, PhD, MSW, University of Connecticut

Jasmin N. Choi, BSW, Boston University

Nandini Choudhury, MSW, LCSW, MPH, Center for Innovation in

Social Work and Health, Boston University

Robert L. Cosby, PhD, MSW, Jr, Howard University

Sandra Edmonds Crewe, PhD, MSW, Howard University

Dominique S. Crump, LLMSW, University of Michigan

Jandel Crutchfield, PhD, MSW, University ot Texas at Arlington

Jorge Delva, PhD, MSW, Boston University

Amelia Seraphia Derr, PhD, MSW, Seattle University

Alan J. Dettlaff, PhD, MSW, University of Houston

Vanessa Drew, EdD, LSW, Elon University

Nehal Eldeeb, University of California, Berkeley

Terence Dwight Fitzgerald, PhD, EdM, MSW, Council for Mental

Wellbeing
Rachel Forbes, MSW, University of Denver

Lisa Fredman, PhD, MSPH, Boston University

Ernest Gonzales, PhD, MSSW, New York University

Ruby M. Gourdine, DSW, MSW, Howard University

Robert (Bob) Harootyan, MA, MS, University of North Carolina,

Wilmington

Abril N. Harris, PhD, MSW, University of Washington

Schnavia Hatcher, PhD, MSW, University of Alabama

Anna Hayward, PhD, MSW, State University of New York,

Stonybrook
Benjamin F. Henwood, PhD, MSW, LCSW, University of
Southern California

Jin Huang, PhD, MSW, St. Louis University

Lissa Johnson, MBA, MSW, LCSW, Washington University, St.
Louis

Jenny L. Jones, PhD, MSW, Clark Atlanta University

Tasha Seneca Keyes, PhD, MSW, California State University San

Marcos

Bo-Kyung Elizabeth Kim, University of Southern California

Amy Krings, PhD, MSW, Loyola University Chicago

Charles H. Lea, III, PhD, MSW, University of Houston

Kathy Lee, PhD, MSW, University of Texas at Arlington

Laura Lein, PhD, MA, University of Michigan

Meirong Liu, PhD, MS, LLM, Howard University

Patricia Logan-Greene, University of Buffalo

Dale Dagar Maglalang, PhD, MA, MSW, Brown University

Christopher Maith, Sr, PhD, MBA, Morgan State University

Lisa A. Marchiondo, PhD, University of New Mexico

Christina Matz, PhD, MSW, Boston College

Susan A. McCarter, PhD, MSW, MS, University of North Carolina,
Charlotte

Gena G. McClendon, PhD, ML, Washington University, St. Louis

Denise McLane-Davison, PhD, MA, Toronto Metropolitan

University

Dorlisa J. Minnick, PhD, MSW, Shippensburg University

Felicia M. Mitchell, PhD, MSW, Arizona State University

Nancy Morrow-Howell, PhD, Washington University, St. Louis

Natalie Muñoz, PhD, MSW, Howard University

Yunju Nam, Ph.D., MSW, University of Buffalo

Eyitayo Onifade, PhD, MSW, Clark Atlanta University

Roberto E. R. Orellana, PhD, MPH, MSW, University of

Washington
Deborah K. Padgett, PhD, MPH, MA, New York University

James Petrovich, PhD, LCSW, Texas Christian University

Meredith Powers, PhD, MSW, University of North Carolina,
Greensboro

Camille R. Quinn, PhD, LCSW, LISW-S, University of Michigan

Jessica I. Ramirez, PhD, MSW, MPH, University of Washington

Smitha Rao, PhD, MA, The Ohio State University

Jennifer Romich, PhD, MA, University of Washington
Pamela Rakhshan Rouhakhtar, PhD, University of Maryland,
Baltimore County
Jerome H. Schiele, DSW, MSW, Morgan State University

Jason Schiffman, PhD, MA, University of California Irvine

Trina R. Shanks, PhD, MSW, University of Michigan
Valerie Shapiro, PhD, University of California Berkeley

Emily Shea, MSW, MPH, City of Boston

Melissa E. Smith, PhD, MSSW, University of Maryland

Michael S. Spencer, PhD, MSSW, University of Washington

Erwin Tan, MD, Research & International Affairs Director, AARP
Thought Leadership

Martell L. Teasley, PhD, MSW, University of Utah

Samantha Teixeira, PhD, MSW, Boston College

Claudia Thorne, PhD, LISW, LCSW, Coppin State University

Miguel A. Trujillo, PhD, LCSW, University of Denver
Ty Tucker, PhD Candidate, MSW, Boston College

Cuc T. Vu, City of Seattle

Cliff Whetung, PhD Candidate, MSW, NYU Silver School of
Social Work

Tracy R. Whitaker, PhD, MSW, Howard University

Bongki Woo, PhD, MSW, University of South Carolina

Patricia Yu, Ph.D, LCSW, Executive Office of Health and Human

Services at the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
 Introduction

The Grand Challenges for Social Work (GCSW) have galvanized the
profession, serving as a catalyst for change in bridging collaborative,
scholarly, and public initiatives with innovative approaches, backed
by science, to tackle long-standing and seemingly intractable social
welfare problems. Launched in 2015 as a 10-year project, the
American Academy of Social Welfare GCSW selected 12 initial
concept papers under three domains. A plethora of consortiums,
forums, conferences, workshops, webinars, advocacy efforts, and
policy initiatives continue to take place, along with special journal
editions, books, and research articles, all dedicated to the GCSW.
Additionally, social work education programs have integrated the
GCSW into curricula and instruction, university programs, and
faculty-led initiatives.
While acknowledging the growing success of the GCSW, voices
from within the social work profession questioned the glaring
absence of racism as a central focus for the initiative. Although many
of the scholarly papers that make up the Grand Challenges
underscore the need to include race and discrimination as variables,
the distinctiveness of racism as an overarching and casual factor is
not captured within the initial set of concept papers. Native
American scholars were particularly concerned about a lack of
acknowledgment of their plight as First Nation, Indigenous people,
and the recognition of their continuous struggle for human rights,
anti-oppressive practices, and sovereignty. As voices grew, the topic
gained the attention of the Grand Challenges Executive Committee,
who then facilitated a discussion to consider the possible integration
of racism as a new Grand Challenge. For some, the pervasiveness of
racism is viewed as a nearly impossible task for the social work
profession to tackle. For others, the idea of generating a set of
Grand Challenges for the profession is incomplete without specific
attention to racism as a root cause of oppression and inequality.
From another perspective, the social work profession’s signature
value of social justice is obviously linked to the need for racial
justice, and thus, there were calls for the integration of racism within
all of the Grand Challenges, from a sort of metatheoretical
perspective; that is, as a formal system that describes the many
structural problems and outcomes related to race and racism in
society. In some ways, this would mean sprinkling race and racism
among the Grand Challenges, which could be meaningful, but would
not be enough. Such an approach is good as a method of
understanding the veracity of racism and its manifestations across
social problems. Yet, it neglects the centrality of racism as a causal
factor impacting the lives of people.
To think critically, based on what we know about the malleability
of race and racism, all of these perspectives have merit and become
points of departure in attempts to comprehend the veracity of
racism. However, there are also those who contend that “[b]ecause
race is socially constructed, all cultural and experiential products
from a racial perspective remain suspect” (Curry, 2017, p. 5). From
this position, any search for racial narratives and meaning to explain
social experiences and outcomes is a search for racial reification.
Thus, race consciousness is problematized and rejected as unproven
prima facie and narrow thought (Curry, 2017). However, this position
neglects to honestly examine the centrality of racism and denies the
real and meaningful experience of racialized people as personified
throughout history and contemporary times, along with its
omnipresent collate, racism (see Chapter 1). Nor will such an
approach garner meaningful changes in the lives of people who
intentionally and unintentionally are victims of racialized thoughts
and practices. It is important to understand how the malleability of
White supremacy and racism took hold in different forms and
systems of materializing racial practices in North America, South
America, Europe, and the Netherlands (Reid-Merritt, 2017). For this
reason, “definitions and perceptions of race are complex, confusing,
contradictory, controversial and imprecise”; but they continue to be
used as a classification system of groups around the world (Reid-
Merritt, 2017, p. 5). Race and racism are the only way in which
people can situate certain lived experiences and their outcomes. The
deleterious effects of racism are not on the margins of the lived
experience of people and groups, and therefore, approaches to
eliminating racism cannot be on the margins or serve as a secondary
social problem.
In the United States, although the Black and White binary of
racism continues, the growing significance of race and racism within
and between all racial and ethnic groups demands greater attention
by the social work profession. Laws and customs that disavow overt
racism have given way to more complex and covert forms of racism,
including the complexities of structural inequalities. Thus, any study
of racism at one point in time must take into consideration the
fluidity and flexibility of racism to morph into varied institutional and
structural forces within society (Omi & Winant, 2015). And we
cannot forget the benefactor of racism: whiteness. While there is
nothing wrong with being a White person, benefiting from whiteness
is a form of silent complicity seldom discussed. The historical
problem is that whiteness has been based on skin color, certain
physical characteristics, intelligence quota, and even the superiority
of spiritual systems, all contrasting with blackness, Black people, and
has been pitted relative to skin tone against people of other hues.
Thus, part of undoing racism means undoing whiteness (Asante,
2017; Reid-Merritt, 2017).
There is also the continuing growth and belief in White
supremacy, which exacerbates racism and contributes to growing
inequality within the United States. Many people in the United States
were astonished and stricken when they tuned into their televisions
and other media forms on August 11 and 12, 2017, as they
witnessed the Unite the Right and neo-Nazi rally on the campus of
the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. These protestors included
self-admitted members of the alt-right, White nationalist, right-wing
militias, neo-Confederates, and neo-fascists groups. Columns of
White males marched in unison shouting racist and anti-Semitic
remarks. Undoubtedly, White supremacy is on the rise in the United
States and throughout Europe, and unless stopped, its malignance
will only exacerbate into either outright discriminatory and racist
practices or growing covert forms of racism, all of which are
unfolding (Mishra, 2017). According to the Southern Poverty Law
Center, the number of White nationalist groups within the United
States increased by 55% from 2017 to 2019 to a total of 940. Their
visibility is becoming greater through their appearances at Black
Lives Matter protests and COVID-19 protests, wearing insignia and
brandishing weapons. Whether in the closet or upfront and vocal,
White supremacy of any kind, even in its silence, is pernicious,
volatile, and ultimately violent.
White people are essential to any possibility that the nation will
change course and head down a pathway to eliminating racism.
Understandably, this is a tough haul because of the polarizing nature
and the painful reality of discussing race, racism, whiteness, and
White supremacy in this country. White denial, as well as ignorance
of the contours of whiteness, foreshadow sincerity, clarity of
thought, and intellectual rigor, leading to substantive outcome
models for change, both inside and outside the social work
profession. At the crux of indifference to change is economic and
institutional vested interest in maintaining the structure and
functioning of the status quo. In the words of W. E. B. Du Bois,
“Everyone is in favor of justice so long as it costs them no effort”
(1929, p. 45). Thus, people cannot be outraged about injustice if
they take no action.
As the U.S. population continues to diversify to a non-White
majority, a number of important transformations are taking place in
terms of the intellectual justifications for racism, from the voting
booth, fears of non-White immigration, to the prison-industrial
complex. Professional leadership in this area means having a frank
and honest discussion about the complexities and the clear and
present danger of institutional and structural racism in the twenty-
first century. Such a conversation must lead to planned and
substantiated advocacy and action aimed at results. Although racism
permeates nearly every aspect of U.S. society, including social
interactions, there has been significant and continuous social
progress in reducing its vestiges. Thus, ending racism is not an
insurmountable project; it is one that requires commitment and
persistence from every member of society.
Racism is a Grand Challenge for the social work profession
because the profession has never tackled the centrality of racism as
a causal factor precipitating problem formation in the lives of people.
At the root of many clinically diagnosed problems that call for social
work intervention are a host of structural and systemic issues that
culminate and place disenfranchised communities, families, and
people at risk for unhealthy outcomes. Institutional, structural,
cultural, economic, and political racism is at the forefront of these
issues. In this respect, the Grand Challenge to Eliminate Racism
represents an excellent vehicle to ameliorate, lessen, and even
eradicate racism within targeted domains of the social work
profession and its fields of practice. The GCSW are a call to action,
seeking innovative ways to tackle long-standing social problems
using evidence-based methods an innovative approach to problem-
solving. Scientific approaches to undermining the many facets of
racism within society will require innovation and new ways to
approach old racialized problems, disciplinary and interdisciplinary
collaboration, as well as longitudinal commitment. And we cannot
forget the internal challenges of racism within the social work
profession, a problem briefly discussed later in this chapter.

Racism and Society

Racism has played itself out in many forms in the United States,
including slavery, indentured servitude, segregation, Jim Crow laws,
genocide, and settler colonialism. Today, structural racism, bias, and
discriminatory practices continue to promote racial inequality in a
myriad of ways (Lipstiz, 2011). “The dominant white frame still views
whites as a group to be generally superior and virtuous and people
of color as groups to be generally of less social, economic and
political consequence” (Feagin, 2020, p. 168). Institutional racism
within the criminal justice and child welfare systems and public
education continues long-standing practices resulting in inequitable
treatment and racialized outcomes. While the progress of the Civil
Rights movement is notable and far-reaching, the apparent need to
continuously address race relations is evidenced by the ongoing
violence against Black and Brown people by police, the desecration
of Indigenous lands and lives, anti-immigration policies, constraints
on voting privileges, high rates of incarceration of Black and Brown
people, and disproportionate rates of chronic illnesses that impact
people of color—all buttressed by society’s general lack of
understanding of the pernicious effects of White privilege and gross
income and wealth gaps between racial and ethnic groups.
Moreover, a national lack of awareness and status quo thinking such
as “this is the way things have always been” allow racist systems to
continue unchecked and to further generate methods to reify the
maintenance of the social order. Thus, racism is a unique Grand
Challenge, as it is inextricably linked to all of the existing 12 Grand
Challenges, while having its own distinctive qualities. Racism
infiltrates nearly all social welfare problems, including health, the
quality of life for the elderly, child welfare, mental health, substance
use, wealth distribution, poverty, homelessness, environmental
injustice and climate change, incarceration rates, and perhaps, the
biggest challenge of all, race and ethnic relations.

Race and Social Outcomes

While racial inequalities are associated with a wide range of negative
economic, social, and health outcomes, these inequalities become
exacerbated when there is a crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic is a
perfect example of this. Since the first outbreaks, COVID-19
attacked our most vulnerable communities. Besides the elderly, age-
adjusted rates of COVID-19 morbidity and mortality were
significantly higher for African Americans, Latinx Americans, and
Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders, American Indians, and Alaska
Native racial and ethnic groups (Artiga & Orgera, 2020). The
Brookings Institute reported in June 2020 that national death rates
from COVID-19 were higher for African Americans and Latinx within
all age categories. For example, African Americans ages 55–64 have
a higher death rate from COVID-19 that Whites ages 65–74. Among
those aged 45–54, African Americans and Latinx death rates are at
least six times higher than for Whites (Ford, Reber, & Reeves, 2020).
Why does this happen?
First, many of these groups have a history of economic
disadvantage, whether it is inequality in education, income,
technological deficits, networking opportunities, working a low-wage
essential job, or unemployment as a result of racist policies that
differentially fund school districts, the legacy of segregation and
redlining, discriminatory and predatory practices in lending and
financing, and the inability to accumulate assets (American
Sociological Association, 2003; Schiele, 2020). Economic
disadvantage lends itself to deficiencies in access to healthy food,
healthcare, digital access, housing, and other basic necessities to
survive (Ford, Reber, & Reeves, 2020). More than two-thirds of the
country’s Black (67%) and Hispanic (70%) populations live in zip
codes with higher than average unemployment rates. Second, as
Lipsitz (2011) explains in How Racism Takes Place, relations between
races are relations between places. In other words, physical space
undergirds how racism takes place. Lipsitz contends that geographic
racism in America is part of the “White spatial imaginary” shaping
where people live. One only needs to read the history of many
geographic dwellings, and how they become the domicile of
minoritized populations, to find how communities and neighborhoods
were racialized. Environmental and geographic racism normally
relegates poor minoritized populations to geographic areas where
there are income, wealth, education, employment and health
disparities. For example, at the time of this writing, Blacks are 18%
of the population in New York but made up a whopping 33% of
those contacting COVID-19. In Illinois, 43% of those who died from
COVID-19 were Black, but they are only 15% of the population.
Similarly, Michigan’s Black population accounted for 40% of the
state’s COVID-19 deaths, while Blacks are only 4% of the population
(Gordon, 2020).
 Third, there is evidence that existing chronic illnesses put
individuals with COVID-19 at a greater risk of mortality. There is
clear evidence of disparities in the distribution of chronic illness in
the United States. These disparities are rooted in both interpersonal
and institutional experiences with health systems that are rooted in
White supremacy and privilege, including unethical medical
experimentation, greater likelihood of receiving a more invasive
treatment (e.g., amputations), provider bias, lack of culturally
appropriate providers, as well as the health risks compounded by
economic disadvantage.
Fourth, there is a cultural and deeper “soul wound” among people
that exists through intergenerational trauma that is passed down,
both as a means of protecting communities from White supremacy,
and as a reminder that the country still has a long way to go to in
order to live up to its promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of for
happiness for all its citizens. We also cannot forget the plight of
today’s immigrant populations, who so often represent the poor
huddled masses seeking liberty, similar to the forerunners of the Pax
Americana. Beyond economic and social cost, racism wounds people.
This soul wound is exacerbated under the COVID-19 crisis when
people are isolated, anxious, depressed, and angry. Incidence of
overt racism, such as the murder of George Floyd and other Black
and Brown individuals, the 45th president of the United States
calling COVID-19 the “Chinese virus” and subsequent acts of racism
against Asian Americans, as well as stricter immigration policies for
non-White individuals, are now resonating with people as a call to
action. Continued racialized practices means that many racialized
groups continue to deal with covert or ordinary, everyday racism
(e.g., microaggressions), which deepen the wounds and heed
intergenerational and collective healing (Kendi, 2019). Unfortunately,
the buildup of frustration and anger resulting in protests and riots
further put minoritized communities at risk for greater harm, both in
contracting the virus or in encountering further violence from police.
Thus, racism attacks those most vulnerable at more than one level;
it attacks holistically, systemically, and unapologetically.
 The Goal of This Book
This book examines the centrality of racism in tackling a number of
long-standing social welfare problems. Focusing on the effects of
systemic racism and its impact on well-being during the life cycle,
authors take on many of the topical areas covered under the initial
12 GCSW, as well as exploring new subject areas. The text also
examines internal problems with race and racism within the social
work profession. In many ways, this text represents an opening
salvo for the June 2020 announcement of the Social Work Grand
Challenge to Eliminate Racism. Its content is symbolic of the
considerable amount of work to be done to include the identification
of problem formation, planning strategies, contemplation of
methods, attempts at changes, and ongoing assessment. Taking a
solution-focused stance to understanding problem formation, the
authors of the text place an emphasis on evidence-based and
innovative approaches to solving social welfare problems impacted
by racism.
Ironically, the planning of the announcement for the Social Work
Grand Challenge to Eliminate Racism came one month after the
murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin
on May 25, 2020, which triggered first national, then worldwide
protests against racism and police violence. Leaders within the social
work profession agree that there are internal challenges that need to
be addressed. At a June 26, 2020, virtual meeting held by the
Council on Social Work Education, the general sentiment among
professional social work organization leaders was, “we need to clear
up our own house first,” as stated by NASW CEO Angelo McClain.
The social work profession has attempted a variety of approaches to
deal with the challenge of racism, both internal to the profession and
within the wider society.
As demonstrated within this book, a considerable amount of
internal work in this area needs to be conducted. A range of power
dynamics within institutions, organizations, agencies, and workplace
settings should be part of such a process, along with adhering to the
reality of organizational diversity. At the personnel level, there is a
need to have micro-level discussions of White privilege, as well as
analysis of social systems that sustain social relations and
stratification based on whiteness. Again, this is necessary for the
social work profession as well as within the larger society. This book
fills a void within the social work profession in its dedication to
examining social justice and welfare topics related to the Grand
Challenge to Eliminate Racism.
The purpose of this book is to address the long-overdue challenge
within the social work profession to provide a road map for
deepening our understanding of how racism infiltrates our society
and what social work, in collaboration with allied sciences and
professionals, can do to eliminate it. We take special measures in
this book to not only look at racism as a root cause of oppression,
but also find solutions, grounded in evidence and practice-based
knowledge. Macro-, meso-, and micro-level implications are
examined and social work values are addressed throughout the
chapters. The authors address a wide range of social work and long-
standing societal grand challenges, and address not only the far-
reaching implications of racism, but also the challenge of White
supremacy.
Focusing on the effects of systemic racism and its impact on well-
being during the life cycle, 79 authors within 21 chapters of this
book take on a plethora of social welfare problems and their
connection to institutional, structural, organizational, and
interpersonal racism. Major objectives for this book are designed to
assist the reader in:
 • Examining various forms of racism and their distinctions and impact on
racial groups;
• Promoting evidence- and practice-based research that cultivates
improvements in the daily lives of people affected by racism, facilitating
systemic change on the individual, organizational, community, and societal
levels;
• Advancing community empowerment and advocacy to address and eliminate
racism and White supremacy;
• Identifying the link between racism and the social determinants of health
and social well-being;
• Moving towards “upstream” preventive practices as opposed to more costly
“downstream” inteventions;
• Fostering the development of an anti-racist social work workforce that
promotes access to resources and opportunities and encompasses
transdisciplinary collaboration;
• Examining the link between historical racial oppression and contemporary
racialized economic injustice;
• Promoting teaching and learning within social work education programs that
examine structural inequalities and White privilege, and their impact on
individual and group outcomes; and
• Developing a policy agenda for eliminating racism and white supremacy
from institutions and organizations, where structural racism is evident and
causes the most damage.

Many of the authors are writers of the initial 12 GCSW, and there are
a host of new authors who add fresh perspectives to the discourse
on race and racism with innovative approaches to eliminate racism.
Although this book is not intended to deeply explore whiteness, it
invokes a necessary conversation on whiteness that cannot be
avoided if there is sincerity in the elimination of racism. Anti-racism
practices include the study of whiteness, which contains implications
for how we can eliminate White supremacy, and how White privilege
can be used to combat racism (Bonilla-Silva, 2010). We also
highlight the ways in which social work interventions can be
damaging if White privilege and racism are not revealed and
harnessed. The editors of this book invite readers to become
involved with one or more of the issues identified and discussed
within this book.
 The Challenge of Eliminating Racism
Today, more than 60 years past the famed Civil Rights movement,
the country is in the midst of a resurgence of a human rights
struggle where cities are again experiencing major protests, rioting,
and the inevitable characteristics of American violence. Over time,
the nation has divided itself along political ideologies, and race
serves a central role in that division. The growing resurgence of
White supremacy groups; a growing wealth gap; police extra-judicial
killings; environmental racism; and serious health, educational, and
employment disparities among racial and ethnic groups drive the
clarion call for human rights and change in our social contract with
Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC). In what may be
viewed as a new civil rights movement, the primary target is
systemic racism.
Unlike the Progressive era, there is no planned advocacy and
policymaking force among social work organizations that can stand
up to prevailing societal forces that dictate our current national and
declining state of social welfare—the fragmentation among social
work organizations does not help this cause. The fire this time is
among us and Black Lives Matter, Moral Mondays, Repairers of the
Breach, Color of Change, and many others that have emerged as
grassroots organizations born out of necessity, now galvanizing the
nation and the world. They have become the face and leaders in the
call for social change. What visual and notable roles will the social
work professional play in this twenty-first-century call for racial
justice? The social work profession must identify its collective niche
in this new era, and its organizations, coalitions, leaders, and
professional members must ask themselves, what will be the resolve
and response of the profession to the heightened demand for racial
and economic justice in the era of hyper-capitalism? History will
record its efforts during this critical time. The Grand Challenge to
Eliminate Racism is late to the party, particularly for a profession
predicated on social justice. However, if the social work profession
wants to be part of the last dance, standing tall, and recognizable
for social justice in this new era, it will have to “step up” its game
and demonstrate leadership in the movement for change.
Authors’ note: We have no known conflicts of interest to disclose.

References
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American Indian and Alaska Native People. Coronavirus Statistics. Centers for
Disease Control. Retrieved from https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-
brief/covid-19-presents-significant-risks-for-american-indian-and-alaska-native-
people/.
Asante, M. K. (2017). Race and racism in American Society: Evolution towards new
thoughts. In P. Reid-Merritt (Ed.), Race in America (pp. 23–42). Santa Barbara,
CA: Praeger
American Sociological Association (2003). The importance of collecting data and
doing social scientific research on race. Washington, DC: American Sociological
Association.
Curry, T. (2017). The man-not: Race, class, genre, and the dilemmas of Black
manhood. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Du Bois, W. E. B. (1929). The denial of economic justice to Negros. In Foner, P. S.
(1970) (Ed.), W. E. B. Du Bois speaks: Speeches and addresses 1920–1963 (pp.
43–46).
Ford, T., Reber, S., & Reeves, R. V. (2020). Race gaps in COVID-19 deaths are even
bigger than they appear. Up Front Brookings. Retrieved from
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/06/16/race-gaps-in-covid-19-
deaths-are-even-bigger-than-they-appear/.
Gordon, S. (2020, May 7). Black, minority populations hit harder by COVID-19. UPI
Health Day News. United Press International, Inc. Retrieved from
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harder-by-COVID-19/8801588860415/
Kendi, I. X. (2019). How to become an antiracist. New York: Random House
Lipsitz, G. (2011). How racism takes place. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Mishra, P. (2017). Age of anger: A history of the present. New York: Penguin
Books.
Omi, M., & Winant, H. (2015). Racial formation in the United States (3rd ed.). New
York: Routledge.
Reid-Merritt, P. (2017). Race in America: Social constructs and social realities: An
introduction In P. Reid-Merritt (Ed.), How a pseudoscientific concept shaped
human interaction (Vol. 2, pp. 3–22). Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger.
Schiele, J. H. (2020). Social welfare policy: Regulation & resistance among people
of color (2nd ed). San Diego, CA: Cognella.
 PART I
HISTORY, RACISM, AND SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION

Racism is imbued within the structures of our society and has been
nesting comfortably within the social work profession since its
inception (see Chapter 1). The 13th Grand Challenge is boldly calling
social workers to extract this systemic stronghold from its profession
and breathe new life into a field that has the capacity to transform
society. To facilitate this necessary disruption, social workers must be
willing to critically engage in an exploration of the meaning of racism
and its impact on social work in order to work toward its elimination
from society and the profession. The chapters in Part I provide a
robust examination of race and racism, its role in social work, and
the profession’s movement toward a posture of anti-racism. In
Chapter 1, “The Meaning and Function of Race and Racism,” Martell
Teasley lays important groundwork required for this deep exploration
of race, racism, and the social work profession. The author examines
ways in which institutional norms produce racial commonsense
thinking as part of normative consciousness, discourse, and social
practice. Beginning with the fundamentals, he then provides the
scaffolding necessary for understanding the function of race and
racism at the micro, meso, and macro levels.
Teasley carries this discussion forward in Chapter 2, “Anti-racism
Social Work: History and the Challenge Ahead,” where he sheds light
on the persistent efforts of many within the profession throughout
the years to advance this conversation and to focus on race and
racism in a way that would take root. He illuminates the challenges
along the journey toward the goal of centering race and racism in
the curriculum and programming of social work education. The
author demonstrates how and why that the social work profession
continues to struggle with its approach to race and racism in its
efforts to promote social justice. This chapter provides a review of
efforts by the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE), the
National Association of Social Workers (NASW), and other
organizations in order to demonstrate the ebb and flow of the
struggle to grapple with race and racism while continuing to promote
social justice within the social work profession. In Chapter 3, “Using
Personal-Professional Narratives as a Technique for Teaching Social
Work Students about the Complexities of Racism,” Tracy R. Whitaker,
Ruby M. Gourdine, and Robert L. Cosby, Jr., offer a way to further
this goal. Their chapter explores the benefits and challenges of
utilizing narratives as a method for exposing social work students to
a realm beyond the classroom and the textbooks. The authors will
examine the incongruency between articulated and practiced
behaviors in social work, including how racism persists, even within
the context of helping relationships. They highlight how educators
can offer narratives as a vehicle for helping students understand the
function of race and racism in the lives of clients and the systems
and structures in which they live.
In Chapter 4, “Eradicating Racism: Social Work’s Most Pressing
Grand Challenge,” Abril Harris, Smitha Rao, Manual Cano, Bongki
Woo, Ty Tucker, Dale Arvy Maglalang, and Melissa Bartholomew
provide further grounding in racism and the history of social work.
They highlight the critical need for social workers to address the way
racism functions personally within White and BIPOC (Black,
Indigenous, and People of Color) social workers. They underscore
the need for ongoing self-examination to be part of the work of
eradicating racism within the profession. The chapter wbegins with a
critical conceptualization of racism and its extensive effect on
institutions and the well-being of populations. In Chapter 5, the final
chapter of this section, “Ending Racism: A Critical Perspective,”
Harold Briggs and Martell Teasley continue the theme of Chapter 4,
helping readers to envision the end of racism through an
examination of the clinical and organizational research supporting
frameworks for approaches that help address the function of racism
at the interpersonal and systemic levels. This chapter reviews the
available clinical and organizational research to present conceptual
frameworks to use in designing practice approaches for the
elimination of racism at the interpersonal and the systemic levels of
attention.
 1
The Meaning and Function of Race and Racism
A Conceptual Understanding

Martell L. Teasley

I knew I was not a racist, so I thought.

—James Baldwin

It is important to understand that in a country predicated on race

and racism from its origins, through colonial denomination and
genocide, slavery, exclusion, internment, Jim Crow, and the growing
backlash to a non-European, multiethnic majority, there remain
elements within American society serving from one era to another in
the maintenance of racism (Lipsitz, 2011; Mills, 1997; Reid-Merritt,
2017). For this reason, race and racism have many characteristics
and meanings that have development over time (Feagin, 2020; Omi
& Winant, 2015). Understanding the complexities of race and racism
and the assignment of their meaning and social value is important
for the social work profession in its service to diverse populations
and quest for social justice.
In this chapter, I set the stage for a conversation on race, racism,
and the social work profession as part of critical discourse. I discuss
a series of definitions as part of a conceptual understanding of how
to think about race and racism. This chapter is an attempt to provide
the reader with an understanding of the endemic ways in which race
and racism are embedded within the structure of American society,
often in everyday and ordinary ways. Understanding the centrality of
racism within the American context may seem to be a nebulous task;
mainly, because race and racism are part of the everyday and
ordinary social milieu and are fully integrated within American
society. I attempt to promote an understanding of how to
conceptualize race and racism based on micro, meso, and macro
levels within the social work profession.
Critical thought about race and racism means a continued study
of the fluid and flexible meanings of these concepts within a given
social era and/or context, and how they are addressed within
institutional norms and practices, and everyday interpersonal and
situational narratives. For example, it was unfashionable and
politically incorrect to say “Black Lives Matter” in many mainstream
settings prior to the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and
Ahmed Aubrey in the spring of 2020. However, these triggers
became a global tipping point for demands to stop out-of-control
policing of black bodies, which resulted in widespread protest, civil
unrest, rioting in some states, and international condemnation and
protest. After the May 2020 murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis
police officer Derek Chauvin, and his fellow officers as accomplices,
the social acceptance of Black Lives Matter (BLM) became a way for
people to distance themselves from the public, overt, and calculated
execution of Floyd, with the police officers knowingly being video
recorded. Seemingly overnight, BLM became a battle cry for racial
justice as citizens of all hues, major leagues sports, many Fortune
500 companies, major media outlets, and prominent White political
figures endorsed BLM, as well as some local and state governments.
The momentum from this period resulted in other symbolic
gestures taking place throughout society—bringing down Civil War
era statues; removing the names of known racists from buildings;
and acknowledging the legitimacy of BLM. While meaningful, these
acts represent a sort of camouflage that does little to change power
dynamics between police and minority communities—the source of
much discontent among African Americans and Latinos.
Parenthetically, none of these activities tackles systemic racism
found in a lack of corporate organizational diversity, draconian
minority-community lending practices by banks, discriminatory
employment and housing practices, urban community divestment,
gentrification projects, and zip code disparities in public school
funding. Calls to defund or reduce funding to police departments
resulted in some attempts to reduce funding, and some attempts to
increase funding. Congressional legislation on police reform based on
measures to enhance training and place greater oversight on local
policing ended without accomplishments. Conversely, one year after
the May 2020 police killing of George Floyd, 21 U.S. states passed
legislation focused on police oversight (Buchholz, 2021). State driven
legislation to reduced the dispropionality of legthal death by police of
unarmed minoritized groups did help to calm the public and served
as a meaningful victory to the psyche of African Americans,
particularly those from the Civil Rights generation, and those from
other ethnic groups, who have for generations decried and pushed
for the need to remove nationalized symbols of white supremacy.
However, according to the research group, Mapping Police Violence,
there is little in the abatement of police killings of unarmed African
Americans and other minoritiezed groups since the enactment of
legislation to end racial disparities in deaths by police. One year after
to the Floyd murder, . . . “25 states saw a decrease, 19 states an
increase and seven states had the same number of police killings
compared with the same period” a year earlier (Haddad, 2021,
online).
The activities of BLM and other social activist groups have
resulted in a heighted racial consciousness among many social work
professionals, particularly among students within social work
education programs. In fact, “[t]he 2020 Black Lives Matter’s call to
defund the police has at times carried a call for refunding social
services” (Burghardt, 2021, p. xxiv). In a backlash against many
mainstream institutions during this period, groups of young
professional and student social workers went as far as questioning
the worth of the National Association of Social Workers (NASW), and
have even called for its defunding.
For all of the social work profession’s efforts to develop
knowledge, critical thinking, values, and skills in the promotion of
diversity and inclusion, the profession finds itself in the twenty-first
century asking many questions in this area, and needing greater
understanding of the complexities of race and racism (Maylea,
2020). Many point to the lack of attention to macro practice by
frontline social workers as a salient factor in why the profession lacks
meaningful efforts and a creditable voice at the table of political
advocacy for racial reconciliation. There are also concerns about the
curriculum in many social work education programs. Part of this is
the seemingly “implicit imperative that focuses on preparing [social
work education] students and frontline professional for private
practice” (Burghardt, 2021, p. xxv). The divided house among micro,
meso, and macro practice cannot stand if the social work profession
is to make meaningful gains on the grand challenge to eliminate
racism and other traditional forms of practice. Consequently, the
current era represents a critical period for the social work profession
as it attempts to navigate the backlash against the nearly singular
professional focus on clinical entrepreneurship over the values of
social justice and the need to remedy racialized inequalities.
The social work profession in not alone in its need to thoroughly
address racism throughout its scope of education and practice. Other
social and behavioral sciences have similar struggles; most have
emerged from the era of pseudo-science and blatant scientific racism
and intelligence testing. Yet, reform is still needed, as many
reinforce vestiges of the past and practices based on racial
commonsense thinking. Standardized testing, such as the American
College Testing (ACT) exam and the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT),
are being abandoned as necessary assessments for college
readiness. In January 2021, the oldest national physicians’
association in the country, the American Psychiatric Association,
issued an apology from its Board of Trustees “to its members,
patients, their families, and the public for enabling discriminatory
and prejudicial actions within the APA and racist practices in
psychiatric treatment for Black, Indigenous and People of Color” . . .
(online). Following suit, in October 2021, the American Psychological
Association declared that the organization “failed in its role leading
the discipline of psychology, was complicit in contributing to systemic
inequities, and hurt many through racism, racial discrimination, and
denigration of communities of color, thereby falling short on its
mission to benefit society and improve lives” (online).
Chapter 2 discusses approaches since the 1960s in which the
social work profession attempted to address race and racism within
the profession and within practice. The spring of 2020 witnessed the
development of the Grand Challenge to Eliminate Racism, which is
quite an undertaking, even just to deal with racialized challenges
within the profession. Nevertheless, if the social work profession is
sincere about the call to eliminate racism, then it must deal with the
centrality of race and racism as causal factors influencing the lived
experiences of people. In referring to the centrality of racism, I
define it as a primary and casual factor shaping the lived
experiences and circumstances of people (Mills, 1997). This includes
generalized presuppositions about race and ethnicity; the
complexities of structural inequalities; socialized racial identities,
attitudes, and behaviors; the pervasive power of whiteness; and the
power and structure of institutions and organizations in which
racialized people interact within the social milieu. The centrality of
race and racism means having hard discussions, deliberation, and
decision-making surrounding racial understanding, equity, and
inclusion (King, 2018). Approaches to understanding race and racism
from a diversity and inclusion perspective are often void of an
examination of the centrality of race and racism, and therefore
contribute to a lack of understanding of the fluid and dynamic
aspects of race and racism within American society (DiAngelo, 2021).
As I have written elsewhere:
 Part of understanding the centrality of race and racism consists of how one
views, investigates, and examines the structural system, its operations and
actions including the cultural context, and the ability to pinpoint the ripple
effects of problems grounded in racialized policies and practices. It is
important to understand that although race and racism were central factors
throughout the development and maintenance of the America experience,
they have been relegated to the margins or peripheral of our discourse on
causal factors to explain racial group socioeconomic disparities and outcomes,
and racialized behaviors. In the proposed colorblind society, race is not a
factor and at worse is conceived as a marginal factor in society—racism as a
form of happenstance. Although there are times when race is a marginal
factor, the fact that many in society are uninformed and often unaware of how
race and racism worked as central factors in the functionality of a historical
caste system hinders our ability to create an antiracist society. This is because
there is an absence of forethought on the reality of race and racism in
American, which has resulted in the development of a form of social cognitive
dissonance, manifested from the canons of Western knowledge serving as the
foundation of the American schooling process. Overtime, standards of
whiteness as the optimal state of being and as a form of achievement for
citizenship status, in the creation of the American dream, fomented racialized
thought and practice as the norm. (Teasley, n.p.)

Finally, in examining the centrality of race and racism, one is

compelled to examine the conceptualization of Whites versus non-
Whites, and the reality of White racial entitlement versus non-White
subordination, including the many internal distinctions between
these categories (Jeyasingham, 2012; Jones, 2020; Mill, 1997). As
Mills pragmatically states in The Racial Contract, many non-Whites
see race as, paradoxically, “everywhere” and “nowhere” in
structuring their lives, which is a process that is formally missed or
not recorded morally or politically, mainly, because such existence
seems quite normal in a racialized society. Consequently, Mills
proclaims, “But in a racially structure polity the only people who can
find it psychologically possible to deny the centrality of race are
those who are racially privileged, for whom race is invisible precisely
because the world is structured around them . . .” (1997, p. 76).
Those who deny the centrality of race do so because it is invisible to
them as a non-factor in their privilege. As a metaphor, Mills
contends, “The fish do not see the water, and whites do not see the
racial nature of a white polity because it is natural to them, the
element in which they move” (p. 76). Therefore, the investigation of
racism requires careful study, critical thought, and engagement in
order to decipher the ways in which race is applied and given
meaning in the social milieu.
Non-White populations are not the only groups affected by the
realities of race. As Baldwin notes, White supremacy forces Whites
to engage in fantastic rationalization to support their belief system,
which borders on the pathological given its insistence of superiority.
According to Baldwin in his 1963 bestseller, The Fire Next Time, this
pathological approach to understanding race generated a torched
existence for Whites, accompanied by a “sort of structured
ignorance” of the reality of non-Whites, such that one cannot raise
certain issues with Whites. Simply put, as long as whiteness exists,
racism will exist. From this line of thought, one wonders what
subjects are taboo about whiteness within the social work profession
(Jeyasingham, 2012). To investigate such thinking means that a bold
search for truth must take place in the midst of White self-deception,
and the accompanying denial and disagreement.
What is clear from this position is that if the social work
profession is going to tackle eliminating racism as a grand challenge,
it must extend the professional knowledge base though a historical
lens, conceptual and theoretical approaches, research methods, and
practical approaches to inform macro, meso, and micro perspectives
in order to better understand the centrality of race and racism. The
review of race and racism within this chapter attempts to promote
greater understanding of the breadth and depth of race and racism
in our lived experiences. It is not intended to be a comprehensive
overview, but more a narrative illustration of the fluid and flexible
meanings of these concepts and how they transition from time and
place while maintaining meaning.
One of the positions discussed in the Eliminate Racism working
paper is the development of an anti-racism social workforce that
promotes access to resources, opportunities, and transdisciplinary
collaboration and advances community empowerment to build racial
equity (Teasley et al., 2021). Of necessity in this process is the
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slaying. But now that tower would be grim with silence, dreaming the
composite dreams of Paris—dreams that were heavy with blood and
beauty, with innocence and lust, with joy and despair, with life and
death, with heaven and hell; all the curious composite dreams of Paris.
Then crossing the river they would reach the Quarter and their
house, where Stephen would slip her latchkey into the door and would
know the warm feeling that can come of a union between door and
latchkey. With a sigh of contentment they would find themselves at
home once again in the quiet old Rue Jacob.

They went to see the kind Mademoiselle Duphot, and this visit
seemed momentous to Mary. She gazed with something almost like
awe at the woman who had had the teaching of Stephen.
‘Oh, but yes,’ smiled Mademoiselle Duphot, ‘I teached her. She
was terribly naughty over her dictée; she would write remarks about
the poor Henri—très impertinente she would be about Henri! Stévenne
was a queer little child and naughty—but so dear, so dear—I could
never scold her. With me she done everything her own way.’
‘Please tell me about that time,’ coaxed Mary.
So Mademoiselle Duphot sat down beside Mary and patted her
hand: ‘Like me, you love her. Well now let me recall— She would
sometimes get angry, very angry, and then she would go to the stables
and talk to her horse. But when she fence it was marvellous—she
fence like a man, and she only a baby but extrémement strong. And
then. . . .’ The memories went on and on, such a store she possessed,
the kind Mademoiselle Duphot.
As she talked her heart went out to the girl, for she felt a great
tenderness towards young things: ‘I am glad that you come to live with
our Stévenne now that Mademoiselle Puddle is at Morton. Stévenne
would be desolate in the big house. It is charming for both of you this
new arrangement. While she work you look after the ménage; is it not
so? You take care of Stévenne, she take care of you. Oui, oui, I am
glad you have come to Paris.’
 Julie stroked Mary’s smooth young cheek, then her arm, for she
wished to observe through her fingers. She smiled: ‘Very young, also
very kind. I like so much the feel of your kindness—it gives me a warm
and so happy sensation, because with all kindness there must be
much good.’
Was she quite blind after all, the poor Julie?
And hearing her Stephen flushed with pleasure, and her eyes that
could see turned and rested on Mary with a gentle and very profound
expression in their depths—at that moment they were calmly
thoughtful, as though brooding upon the mystery of life—one might
almost have said the eyes of a mother.
A happy and pleasant visit it had been; they talked about it all
through the evening.

CHAPTER 41

B urton, who had enlisted in the Worcesters soon after Stephen

had found work in London, Burton was now back again in Paris,
loudly demanding a brand-new motor.
‘The car looks awful! Snub-nosed she looks—peculiar—all tucked
up in the bonnet;’ he declared.
So Stephen bought a touring Renault and a smart little landaulette
for Mary. The choosing of the cars was the greatest fun; Mary climbed
in and out of hers at least six times while it stood in the showroom.
‘Is it comfortable?’ Stephen must keep on asking, ‘Do you want
them to pad it out more at the back? Are you perfectly sure you like
the grey whip-cord? Because if you don’t it can be re-upholstered.’
Mary laughed: ‘I’m climbing in and out from sheer swank, just to
show that it’s mine. Will they send it soon?’
‘Almost at once, I hope,’ smiled Stephen.
 Very splendid it seemed to her now to have money, because of
what money could do for Mary; in the shops they must sometimes
behave like two children, having endless things dragged out for
inspection. They drove to Versailles in the new touring car and
wandered for hours through the lovely gardens. The Hameau no
longer seemed sad to Stephen, for Mary and she brought love back to
the Hameau. Then they drove to the forest of Fontainebleau, and
wherever they went there was singing of birds—challenging, jubilant,
provocative singing: ‘Look at us, look at us! We’re happy, Stephen!’
And Stephen’s heart shouted back: ‘So are we. Look at us, look at us,
look at us! We’re happy!’
When they were not driving into the country, or amusing
themselves by ransacking Paris, Stephen would fence, to keep herself
fit—would fence as never before with Buisson, so that Buisson would
sometimes say with a grin:
‘Mais voyons, voyons! I have done you no wrong, yet it almost
appears that you wish to kill me!’
The foils laid aside, he might turn to Mary, still grinning: ‘She fence
very well, eh, your friend? She lunge like a man, so strong and so
graceful.’ Which considering all things was generous of Buisson.
But suddenly Buisson would grow very angry: ‘More than seventy
francs have I paid to my cook and for nothing! Bon Dieu! Is this
winning the war? We starve, we go short of our butter and chickens,
and before it is better it is surely much worse. We are all imbeciles, we
kind-hearted French; we starve ourselves to fatten the Germans. Are
they grateful? Sacré Nom! Mais oui, they are grateful—they love us so
much that they spit in our faces!’ And quite often this mood would be
vented on Stephen.
To Mary, however, he was usually polite: ‘You like our Paris? I am
glad—that is good. You make the home with Mademoiselle Gordon; I
hope you prevent her injurious smoking.’
And in spite of his outbursts Mary adored him, because of his
interest in Stephen’s fencing.

2
One evening towards the end of June, Jonathan Brockett walked in
serenely: ‘Hallo, Stephen! Here I am, I’ve turned up again—not that I
love you, I positively hate you. I’ve been keeping away for weeks and
weeks. Why did you never answer my letters? Not so much as a line
on a picture postcard! There’s something in this more than meets the
eye. And where’s Puddle? She used to be kind to me once—I shall lay
my head down on her bosom and weep. . . .’ He stopped abruptly,
seeing Mary Llewellyn, who got up from her deep arm-chair in the
corner.
Stephen said: ‘Mary, this is Jonathan Brockett—an old friend of
mine; we’re fellow writers. Brockett, this is Mary Llewellyn.’
Brockett shot a swift glance in Stephen’s direction, then he bowed
and gravely shook hands with Mary.
And now Stephen was to see yet another side of this strange and
unexpected creature. With infinite courtesy and tact he went out of his
way to make himself charming. Never by so much as a word or a look
did he once allow it to be inferred that his quick mind had seized on
the situation. Brockett’s manner suggested an innocence that he was
very far from possessing.
Stephen began to study him with interest; they two had not met
since before the war. He had thickened, his figure was more robust,
there was muscle and flesh on his wide, straight shoulders. And she
thought that his face had certainly aged; little bags were showing
under his eyes, and rather deep lines at the sides of his mouth—the
war had left its mark upon Brockett. Only his hands remained
unchanged; those white and soft skinned hands of a woman.
He was saying: ‘So you two were in the same Unit. That was a
great stroke of luck for Stephen; I mean she’d be feeling horribly lonely
now that old Puddle’s gone back to England. Stephen’s distinguished
herself I see—Croix de Guerre and a very becoming scar. Don’t
protest, my dear Stephen, you know it’s becoming. All that happened
to me was a badly sprained ankle;’ he laughed, ‘fancy going out to
Mesopotamia to slip on a bit of orange peel! I might have done better
than that here in Paris. By the way, I’m in my own flat again now; I
hope you’ll bring Miss Llewellyn to luncheon.’
 He did not stay embarrassingly late, nor did he leave suggestively
early; he got up to go at just the right moment. But when Mary went
out of the room to call Pierre, he quite suddenly put his arm through
Stephen’s.
‘Good luck, my dear, you deserve it;’ he murmured, and his sharp
grey eyes had grown almost gentle: ‘I hope you’ll be very, very happy.’
Stephen quietly disengaged her arm with a look of surprise:
‘Happy? Thank you, Brockett,’ she smiled, as she lighted a cigarette.

They could not tear themselves away from their home, and that
summer they remained in Paris. There were always so many things to
do, Mary’s bedroom entirely to refurnish for instance—she had
Puddle’s old room overlooking the garden. When the city seemed to
be growing too airless, they motored off happily into the country,
spending a couple of nights at an auberge, for France abounds in
green, pleasant places. Once or twice they lunched with Jonathan
Brockett at his flat in the Avenue Victor Hugo, a beautiful flat since his
taste was perfect, and he dined with them before leaving for Deauville
—his manner continued to be studiously guarded. The Duphots had
gone for their holiday and Buisson was away in Spain for a month—
but what did they want that summer with people? On those evenings
when they did not go out, Stephen would now read aloud to Mary,
leading the girl’s adaptable mind into new and hitherto unexplored
channels; teaching her the joy that can lie in books, even as Sir Philip
had once taught his daughter. Mary had read so little in her life that the
choice of books seemed practically endless, but Stephen must make a
start by reading that immortal classic of their own Paris, Peter
Ibbetson, and Mary said:
‘Stephen—if we were ever parted, do you think that you and I could
dream true?’
And Stephen answered: ‘I often wonder whether we’re not
dreaming true all the time—whether the only truth isn’t in dreaming.’
Then they talked for a while of such nebulous things as dreams, which
will seem very concrete to lovers.
 Sometimes Stephen would read aloud in French, for she wanted
the girl to grow better acquainted with the lure of that fascinating
language. And thus gradually, with infinite care, did she seek to fill the
more obvious gaps in Mary’s none too complete education. And Mary,
listening to Stephen’s voice, rather deep and always a little husky,
would think that words were more tuneful than music and more
inspiring, when spoken by Stephen.
At this time many gentle and friendly things began to bear witness
to Mary’s presence. There were flowers in the quiet old garden for
instance, and some large red carp in the fountain’s basin, and two
married couples of white fantail pigeons who lived in a house on a tall
wooden leg and kept up a convivial cooing. These pigeons lacked all
respect for Stephen; by August they were flying in at her window and
landing with soft, heavy thuds on her desk where they strutted until
she fed them with maize. And because they were Mary’s and Mary
loved them, Stephen would laugh, as unruffled as they were, and
would patiently coax them back into the garden with bribes for their
plump little circular crops. In the turret room that had been Puddle’s
sanctum, there were now three cagefuls of Mary’s rescues—tiny bright
coloured birds with dejected plumage, and eyes that had filmed from a
lack of sunshine. Mary was always bringing them home from the
terrible bird shops along the river, for her love of such helpless and
suffering things was so great that she in her turn must suffer. An ill-
treated creature would haunt her for days, so that Stephen would often
exclaim half in earnest:
‘Go and buy up all the animal shops in Paris . . . anything, darling,
only don’t look unhappy!’
The tiny bright coloured birds would revive to some extent, thanks
to Mary’s skilled treatment; but since she always bought the most
ailing, not a few of them left this disheartening world for what we must
hope was a warm, wild heaven—there were several small graves
already in the garden.
Then one morning, when Mary went out alone because Stephen
had letters to write to Morton, she chanced on yet one more desolate
creature who followed her home to the Rue Jacob, and right into
Stephen’s immaculate study. It was large, ungainly and appallingly
thin; it was coated with mud which had dried on its nose, its back, its
legs and all over its stomach. Its paws were heavy, its ears were long,
and its tail, like the tail of a rat, looked hairless, but curved up to a
point in a miniature sickle. Its face was as smooth as though made out
of plush, and its luminous eyes were the colour of amber.
Mary said: ‘Oh, Stephen—he wanted to come. He’s got a sore paw;
look at him, he’s limping!’
Then this tramp of a dog hobbled over to the table and stood there
gazing dumbly at Stephen, who must stroke his anxious, dishevelled
head: ‘I suppose this means that we’re going to keep him.’
‘Darling, I’m dreadfully afraid it does—he says he’s sorry to be such
a mongrel.’
‘He needn’t apologize,’ Stephen smiled, ‘he’s all right, he’s an Irish
water-spaniel, though what he’s doing out here the Lord knows; I’ve
never seen one before in Paris.’
They fed him, and later that afternoon they gave him a bath in
Stephen’s bathroom. The result of that bath, which was disconcerting
as far as the room went, they left to Adèle. The room was a bog, but
Mary’s rescue had emerged a mass of chocolate ringlets, all save his
charming plush-covered face, and his curious tail, which was curved
like a sickle. Then they bound the sore pad and took him downstairs;
after which Mary wanted to know all about him, so Stephen unearthed
an illustrated dog book from a cupboard under the study bookcase.
‘Oh, look!’ exclaimed Mary, reading over her shoulder, ‘He’s not
Irish at all, he’s really a Welshman: “We find in the Welsh laws of
Howell Dda the first reference to this intelligent spaniel. The Iberians
brought the breed to Ireland. . . .” Of course, that’s why he followed me
home; he knew I was Welsh the moment he saw me!’
Stephen laughed: ‘Yes, his hair grows up from a peak like yours—it
must be a national failing. Well, what shall we call him? His name’s
important; it ought to be quite short.’
‘David,’ said Mary.
The dog looked gravely from one to the other for a moment, then
he lay down at Mary’s feet, dropping his chin on his bandaged paw,
and closing his eyes with a grunt of contentment. And so it had
suddenly come to pass that they who had lately been two, were now
three. There were Stephen and Mary—there was also David.

CHAPTER 42

T hat October there arose the first dark cloud. It drifted over to Paris
from England, for Anna wrote asking Stephen to Morton but with
never a mention of Mary Llewellyn. Not that she ever did mention their
friendship in her letters, indeed she completely ignored it; yet this
invitation which excluded the girl seemed to Stephen an intentional
slight upon Mary. A hot flush of anger spread up to her brow as she
read and re-read her mother’s brief letter:
‘I want to discuss some important points regarding the
management of the estate. As the place will eventually come to you, I
think we should try to keep more in touch. . . .’ Then a list of the points
Anna wished to discuss; they seemed very trifling indeed to Stephen.
She put the letter away in a drawer and sat staring darkly out of the
window. In the garden Mary was talking to David, persuading him not
to retrieve the pigeons.
‘If my mother had invited her ten times over I’d never have taken
her to Morton,’ Stephen muttered.
Oh, but she knew, and only too well, what it would mean should
they be there together; the lies, the despicable subterfuges, as though
they were little less than criminals. It would be: ‘Mary, don’t hang about
my bedroom—be careful . . . of course while we’re here at Morton . . .
it’s my mother, she can’t understand these things; to her they would
seem an outrage, an insult. . . .’ And then the guard set upon eyes and
lips; the feeling of guilt at so much as a hand-touch; the pretence of a
careless, quite usual friendship—‘Mary, don’t look at me as though you
cared! you did this evening—remember my mother.’
 Intolerable quagmire of lies and deceit! The degrading of all that to
them was sacred—a very gross degrading of love, and through love a
gross degrading of Mary. Mary . . . so loyal and as yet so gallant, but
so pitifully untried in the war of existence. Warned only by words, the
words of a lover, and what were mere words when it came to actions?
And the ageing woman with the far-away eyes, eyes that could yet be
so cruel, so accusing—they might turn and rest with repugnance on
Mary, even as once they had rested on Stephen: ‘I would rather see
you dead at my feet. . . .’ A fearful saying, and yet she had meant it,
that ageing woman with the far-away eyes—she had uttered it
knowing herself to be a mother. But that at least should be hidden from
Mary.
She began to consider the ageing woman who had scourged her
but whom she had so deeply wounded, and as she did so the depth of
that wound made her shrink in spite of her bitter anger, so that
gradually the anger gave way to a slow and almost reluctant pity. Poor,
ignorant, blind, unreasoning woman; herself a victim, having given her
body for Nature’s most inexplicable whim. Yes, there had been two
victims already—must there now be a third—and that one Mary? She
trembled. At that moment she could not face it, she was weak, she
was utterly undone by loving. Greedy she had grown for happiness, for
the joys and the peace that their union had brought her. She would try
to minimize the whole thing; she would say: ‘It will only be for ten days;
I must just run over about this business,’ then Mary would probably
think it quite natural that she had not been invited to Morton and would
ask no questions—she never asked questions. But would Mary think
such a slight was quite natural? Fear possessed her; she sat there
terribly afraid of this cloud that had suddenly risen to menace—afraid
yet determined not to submit, not to let it gain power through her own
acquiescence.
There was only one weapon to keep it at bay. Getting up she
opened the window: ‘Mary!’
All unconscious the girl hurried in with David: ‘Did you call?’
‘Yes—come close. Closer . . . closer, sweetheart. . . .’

2
Shaken and very greatly humbled, Mary had let Stephen go from her
to Morton. She had not been deceived by Stephen’s glib words, and
had now no illusions regarding Anna Gordon. Lady Anna, suspecting
the truth about them, had not wished to meet her. It was all quite clear,
cruelly clear if it came to that matter—but these thoughts she had
mercifully hidden from Stephen.
She had seen Stephen off at the station with a smile: ‘I’ll write
every day. Do put on your coat, darling; you don’t want to arrive at
Morton with a chill. And mind you wire when you get to Dover.’
Yet now as she sat in the empty study, she must bury her face and
cry a little because she was here and Stephen in England . . . and then
of course, this was their first real parting.
David sat watching with luminous eyes in which were reflected her
secret troubles; then he got up and planted a paw on the book, for he
thought it high time to have done with this reading. He lacked the
language that Raftery had known—the language of many small
sounds and small movements—a clumsy and inarticulate fellow he
was, but unrestrainedly loving. He nearly broke his own heart between
love and the deep gratitude which he felt for Mary. At the moment he
wanted to lay back his ears and howl with despair to see her unhappy.
He wanted to make an enormous noise, the kind of noise wild folk
make in the jungle—lions and tigers and other wild folk that David had
heard about from his mother—his mother had been in Africa once a
long time ago, with an old French colonel. But instead he abruptly
licked Mary’s cheek—it tasted peculiar, he thought, like sea water.
‘Do you want a walk, David?’ she asked him gently.
And as well as he could, David nodded his head by wagging his tail
which was shaped like a sickle. Then he capered, thumping the
ground with his paws; after which he barked twice in an effort to
amuse her, for such things had seemed funny to her in the past,
although now she appeared not to notice his capers. However, she
had put on her hat and coat; so, still barking, he followed her through
the courtyard.
They wandered along the Quai Voltaire, Mary pausing to look at
the misty river.
 ‘Shall I dive in and bring you a rat?’ inquired David by lunging wildly
backwards and forwards.
She shook her head. ‘Do stop, David; be good!’ Then she sighed
again and stared at the river; so David stared too, but he stared at
Mary.
Quite suddenly Paris had lost its charm for her. After all, what was
it? Just a big, foreign city—a city that belonged to a stranger people
who cared nothing for Stephen and nothing for Mary. They were exiles.
She turned the word over in her mind—exiles; it sounded unwanted,
lonely. But why had Stephen become an exile? Why had she exiled
herself from Morton? Strange that she, Mary, had never asked her—
had never wanted to until this moment.
She walked on not caring very much where she went. It grew dusk,
and the dusk brought with it great longing—the longing to see, to hear,
to touch—almost a physical pain it was, this longing to feel the
nearness of Stephen. But Stephen had left her to go to Morton . . .
Morton, that was surely Stephen’s real home, and in that real home
there was no place for Mary.
She was not resentful. She did not condemn either the world, or
herself, or Stephen. Hers was no mind to wrestle with problems, to
demand either justice or explanation; she only knew that her heart felt
bruised so that all manner of little things hurt her. It hurt her to think of
Stephen surrounded by objects that she had never seen—tables,
chairs, pictures, all old friends of Stephen’s, all dear and familiar, yet
strangers to Mary. It hurt her to think of the unknown bedroom in which
Stephen had slept since the days of her childhood; of the unknown
schoolroom where Stephen had worked; of the stables, the lakes and
the gardens of Morton. It hurt her to think of the two unknown women
who must now be awaiting Stephen’s arrival—Puddle, whom Stephen
loved and respected; Lady Anna, of whom she spoke very seldom,
and who, Mary felt, could never have loved her. And it came upon
Mary with a little shock that a long span of Stephen’s life was hidden;
years and years of that life had come and gone before they two had
finally found each other. How could she hope to link up with a past that
belonged to a home which she might not enter? Then, being a woman,
she suddenly ached for the quiet, pleasant things that a home will
stand for—security, peace, respect and honour, the kindness of
parents, the good-will of neighbours; happiness that can be shared
with friends, love that is proud to proclaim its existence. All that
Stephen most craved for the creature she loved, that creature must
now quite suddenly ache for.
And as though some mysterious cord stretched between them,
Stephen’s heart was troubled at that very moment; intolerably troubled
because of Morton, the real home which might not be shared with
Mary. Ashamed because of shame laid on another, compassionate
and suffering because of her compassion, she was thinking of the girl
left alone in Paris—the girl who should have come with her to England,
who should have been welcomed and honoured at Morton. Then she
suddenly remembered some words from the past, very terrible words:
‘Could you marry me, Stephen?’
Mary turned and walked back to the Rue Jacob. Disheartened and
anxious, David lagged beside her. He had done all he could to distract
her mind from whatever it was that lay heavy upon it. He had made a
pretence of chasing a pigeon, he had barked himself hoarse at a
terrified beggar, he had brought her a stick and implored her to throw
it, he had caught at her skirt and tugged it politely; in the end he had
nearly got run over by a taxi in his desperate efforts to gain her
attention. This last attempt had certainly roused her: she had put on
his lead—poor, misunderstood David.

Mary went into Stephen’s study and sat down at the spacious writing-
table, for now all of a sudden she had only one ache, and that was the
ache of her love for Stephen. And because of her love she wished to
comfort, since in every fond woman there is much of the mother. That
letter was full of many things which a less privileged pen had best left
unwritten—loyalty, faith, consolation, devotion; all this and much more
she wrote to Stephen. As she sat there, her heart seemed to swell
within her as though in response to some mighty challenge.
Thus it was that Mary met and defeated the world’s first tentative
onslaught upon them.
 CHAPTER 43

T here comes a time in all passionate attachments when life, real

life, must be faced once again with its varied and endless
obligations, when the lover knows in his innermost heart that the
halcyon days are over. He may well regret this prosaic intrusion, yet to
him it will usually seem quite natural, so that while loving not one whit
the less, he will bend his neck to the yoke of existence. But the
woman, for whom love is an end in itself, finds it harder to submit thus
calmly. To every devoted and ardent woman there comes this moment
of poignant regretting; and struggle she must to hold it at bay. ‘Not yet,
not yet—just a little longer’; until Nature, abhorring her idleness, forces
on her the labour of procreation.
But in such relationships as Mary’s and Stephen’s, Nature must
pay for experimenting; she may even have to pay very dearly—it
largely depends on the sexual mixture. A drop too little of the male in
the lover, and mighty indeed will be the wastage. And yet there are
cases—and Stephen’s was one—in which the male will emerge
triumphant; in which passion combined with a real devotion will
become a spur rather than a deterrent; in which love and endeavour
will fight side by side in a desperate struggle to find some solution.
Thus it was that when Stephen returned from Morton, Mary
divined, as it were by instinct, that the time of dreaming was over and
past; and she clung very close, kissing many times—
‘Do you love me as much as before you went? Do you love me?’
The woman’s eternal question.
And Stephen, who, if possible, loved her more, answered almost
brusquely: ‘Of course I love you.’ For her thoughts were still heavy with
the bitterness that had come of that visit of hers to Morton, and which
at all costs must be hidden from Mary.
There had been no marked change in her mother’s manner. Anna
had been very quiet and courteous. Together they had interviewed
bailiff and agent, scheming as always for the welfare of Morton; but
one topic there had been which Anna had ignored, had refused to
discuss, and that topic was Mary. With a suddenness born of
exasperation, Stephen had spoken of her one evening. ‘I want Mary
Llewellyn to know my real home; some day I must bring her to Morton
with me.’ She had stopped, seeing Anna’s warning face—
expressionless, closed; while as for her answer, it had been more
eloquent far than words—a disconcerting, unequivocal silence. And
Stephen, had she ever entertained any doubt, must have known at
that moment past all hope of doubting, that her mother’s omission to
invite the girl had indeed been meant as a slight upon Mary. Getting
up, she had gone to her father’s study.
Puddle, who had held her peace at the time, had spoken just
before Stephen’s departure. ‘My dear, I know it’s all terribly hard about
Morton—about . . .’ She had hesitated.
And Stephen had thought with renewed bitterness: ‘Even she jibs,
it seems, at mentioning Mary.’ She had answered: ‘If you’re speaking
of Mary Llewellyn, I shall certainly never bring her to Morton, that is as
long as my mother lives—I don’t allow her to be insulted.’
Then Puddle had looked at Stephen gravely. ‘You’re not working,
and yet work’s your only weapon. Make the world respect you, as you
can do through your work; it’s the surest harbour of refuge for your
friend, the only harbour—remember that—and it’s up to you to provide
it, Stephen.’
Stephen had been too sore at heart to reply; but throughout the
long journey from Morton to Paris, Puddle’s words had kept
hammering in her brain: ‘You’re not working, and yet work’s your only
weapon.’
So while Mary lay sleeping in Stephen’s arms on that first blessèd
night of their reunion, her lover lay wide-eyed with sleeplessness,
planning the work she must do on the morrow, cursing her own
indolence and folly, her illusion of safety where none existed.

2
They soon settled down to their more prosaic days very much as quite
ordinary people will do. Each of them now had her separate tasks—
Stephen her writing, and Mary the household, the paying of bills, the
filing of receipts, the answering of unimportant letters. But for her there
were long hours of idleness, since Pauline and Pierre were almost too
perfect—they would smile and manage the house their own way,
which it must be admitted was better than Mary’s. As for the letters,
there were not very many; and as for the bills, there was plenty of
money—being spared the struggle to make two ends meet, she was
also deprived of the innocent pleasure of scheming to provide little
happy surprises, little extra comforts for the person she loved, which in
youth can add a real zest to existence. Then Stephen had found her
typing too slow, so was sending the work to a woman in Passy;
obsessed by a longing to finish her book, she would tolerate neither let
nor hindrance. And because of their curious isolation, there were times
when Mary would feel very lonely. For whom did she know? She had
no friends in Paris except the kind Mademoiselle Duphot and Julie.
Once a week, it is true, she could go and see Buisson, for Stephen
continued to keep up her fencing; and occasionally Brockett would
come strolling in, but his interest was centred entirely in Stephen; if
she should be working, as was often the case, he would not waste
very much time over Mary.
Stephen often called her into the study, comforted by the girl’s
loving presence. ‘Come and sit with me, sweetheart, I like you in here.’
But quite soon she would seem to forget all about her. ‘What . . .
what?’ she would mutter, frowning a little. ‘Don’t speak to me just for a
minute, Mary. Go and have your luncheon, there’s a good child; I’ll
come when I’ve finished this bit—you go on!’ But Mary’s meal might be
eaten alone; for meals had become an annoyance to Stephen.
Of course there was David, the grateful, the devoted. Mary could
always talk to David, but since he could never answer her back the
conversation was very one-sided. Then too, he was making it obvious
that he, in his turn, was missing Stephen; he would hang around
looking discontented when she failed to go out after frequent
suggestions. For although his heart was faithful to Mary, the gentle
dispenser of all salvation, yet the instinct that has dwelt in the soul of
the male, perhaps ever since Adam left the Garden of Eden, the
instinct that displays itself in club windows and in other such places of
male segregation, would make him long for the companionable walks
that had sometimes been taken apart from Mary. Above all would it
make him long intensely for Stephen’s strong hands and purposeful
ways; for that queer, intangible something about her that appealed to
the canine manhood in him. She always allowed him to look after
himself, without fussing; in a word, she seemed restful to David.
Mary, slipping noiselessly out of the study, might whisper: ‘We’ll go
to the Tuileries Gardens.’
But when they arrived there, what was there to do? For of course a
dog must not dive after goldfish—David understood this; there were
goldfish at home—he must not start splashing about in ponds that had
tiresome stone rims and ridiculous fountains. He and Mary would
wander along gravel paths, among people who stared at and made fun
of David: ‘Quel drôle de chien, mais regardez sa queue!’ They were
like that, these French; they had laughed at his mother. She had told
him never so much as to say: ‘Wouf!’ For what did they matter? Still, it
was disconcerting. And although he had lived in France all his life—
having indeed known no other country—as he walked in the stately
Tuileries Gardens, the Celt in his blood would conjure up visions: great
beetling mountains with winding courses down which the torrents went
roaring in winter; the earth smell, the dew smell, the smell of wild
things which a dog might hunt and yet remain lawful—for of all this and
more had his old mother told him. These visions it was that had led
him astray, that had treacherously led him half starving to Paris; and
that, sometimes, even in these placid days, would come back as he
walked in the Tuileries Gardens. But now his heart must thrust them
aside—a captive he was now, through love of Mary.
But to Mary there would come one vision alone, that of a garden at
Orotava; a garden lighted by luminous darkness, and filled with the
restless rhythm of singing.

The autumn passed, giving place to the winter, with its short, dreary
days of mist and rain. There was now little beauty left in Paris. A grey
sky hung above the old streets of the Quarter, a sky which no longer
looked bright by contrast, as though seen at the end of a tunnel.
Stephen was working like some one possessed, entirely re-writing her
pre-war novel. Good it had been, but not good enough, for she now
saw life from a much wider angle; and moreover, she was writing this
book for Mary. Remembering Mary, remembering Morton, her pen
covered sheet after sheet of paper; she wrote with the speed of true
inspiration, and at times her work brushed the hem of greatness. She
did not entirely neglect the girl for whose sake she was making this
mighty effort—that she could not have done even had she wished to,
since love was the actual source of her effort. But quite soon there
were days when she would not go out, or if she did go, when she
seemed abstracted, so that Mary must ask her the same question
twice—then as likely as not get a nebulous answer. And soon there
were days when all that she did apart from her writing was done with
an effort, with an obvious effort to be considerate.
‘Would you like to go to a play one night, Mary?’
If Mary said yes, and procured the tickets, they were usually late,
because of Stephen who had worked right up to the very last minute.
Sometimes there were poignant if small disappointments when
Stephen had failed to keep a promise. ‘Listen, Mary darling—will you
ever forgive me if I don’t come with you about those furs? I’ve a bit of
work here I simply must finish. You do understand?’
‘Yes, of course I do.’ But Mary, left to choose her new furs alone,
had quite suddenly felt that she did not want them.
And this sort of thing happened fairly often.
If only Stephen had confided in her, had said: ‘I’m trying to build
you a refuge; remember what I told you in Orotava!’ But no, she
shrank from reminding the girl of the gloom that surrounded their small
patch of sunshine. If only she had shown a little more patience with
Mary’s careful if rather slow typing, and so given her a real occupation
—but no, she must send the work off to Passy, because the sooner
this book was finished the better it would be for Mary’s future. And
thus, blinded by love and her desire to protect the woman she loved,
she erred towards Mary.
 When she had finished her writing for the day, she frequently read
it aloud in the evening. And although Mary knew that the writing was
fine, yet her thoughts would stray from the book to Stephen. The deep,
husky voice would read on and on, having in it something urgent,
appealing, so that Mary must suddenly kiss Stephen’s hand, or the
scar on her cheek, because of that voice far more than because of
what it was reading.
And now there were times when, serving two masters, her passion
for this girl and her will to protect her, Stephen would be torn by
conflicting desires, by opposing mental and physical emotions. She
would want to save herself for her work; she would want to give herself
wholly to Mary.
Yet quite often she would work far into the night. ‘I’m going to be
late—you go to bed, sweetheart.’
And when she herself had at last toiled upstairs, she would steal
like a thief past Mary’s bedroom, although Mary would nearly always
hear her.
‘Is that you, Stephen?’
‘Yes. Why aren’t you asleep? Do you realize that it’s three in the
morning?’
‘Is it? You’re not angry, are you, darling? I kept thinking of you
alone in the study. Come here and say you’re not angry with me, even
if it is three o’clock in the morning!’
Then Stephen would slip off her old tweed coat and would fling
herself down on the bed beside Mary, too exhausted to do more than
take the girl in her arms, and let her lie there with her head on her
shoulder.
But Mary would be thinking of all those things which she found so
deeply appealing in Stephen—the scar on her cheek, the expression
in her eyes, the strength and the queer, shy gentleness of her—the
strength which at moments could not be gentle. And as they lay there
Stephen might sleep, worn out by the strain of those long hours of
writing. But Mary would not sleep, or if she slept it would be when the
dawn was paling the windows.
 4

One morning Stephen looked at Mary intently. ‘Come here. You’re not
well! What’s the matter? Tell me.’ For she thought that the girl was
unusually pale, thought too that her lips drooped a little at the corners;
and a sudden fear contracted her heart. ‘Tell me at once what’s the
matter with you!’ Her voice was rough with anxiety, and she laid an
imperative hand over Mary’s.
Mary protested. ‘Don’t be absurd; there’s nothing the matter, I’m
perfectly well—you’re imagining things.’ For what could be the matter?
Was she not here in Paris with Stephen? But her eyes filled with tears,
and she turned away quickly to hide them, ashamed of her own
unreason.
Stephen stuck to her point. ‘You don’t look a bit well. We shouldn’t
have stayed in Paris last summer.’ Then because her own nerves
were on edge that day, she frowned. ‘It’s this business of your not
eating whenever I can’t get in to a meal. I know you don’t eat—Pierre’s
told me about it. You mustn’t behave like a baby, Mary! I shan’t be able
to write a line if I feel you’re ill because you’re not eating.’ Her fear was
making her lose her temper. ‘I shall send for a doctor,’ she finished
brusquely.
Mary refused point-blank to see a doctor. What was she to tell him?
She hadn’t any symptoms. Pierre exaggerated. She ate quite enough
—she had never been a very large eater. Stephen had better get on
with her work and stop upsetting herself over nothing.
But try as she might, Stephen could not get on—all the rest of the
day her work went badly.
After this she would often leave her desk and go wandering off in
search of Mary. ‘Darling, where are you?’
‘Upstairs in my bedroom!’
‘Well, come down; I want you here in the study.’ And when Mary
had settled herself by the fire: ‘Now tell me exactly how you feel—all
right?’
And Mary would answer, smiling: ‘Yes, I’m quite all right; I swear I
am, Stephen!’
 It was not an ideal atmosphere for work, but the book was by now
so well advanced that nothing short of a disaster could have stopped it
—it was one of those books that intend to get born, and that go on
maturing in spite of their authors. Nor was there anything really
alarming about the condition of Mary’s health. She did not look very
well, that was all; and at times she seemed a little downhearted, so
that Stephen must snatch a few hours from her work in order that they
might go out together. Perhaps they would lunch at a restaurant; or
drive into the country, to the rapture of David; or just wander about the
streets arm in arm as they had done when first they had returned to
Paris. And Mary, because she would be feeling happy, would revive for
these few hours as though by magic. Yet when she must once more
find herself lonely, with nowhere to go and no one to talk to, because
Stephen was back again at her desk, why then she would wilt, which
was not unnatural considering her youth and her situation.

On Christmas Eve Brockett arrived, bringing flowers. Mary had gone

for a walk with David, so Stephen must leave her desk with a sigh.
‘Come in, Brockett. I say! What wonderful lilac!’
He sat down, lighting a cigarette. ‘Yes, isn’t it fine? I brought it for
Mary. How is she?’
Stephen hesitated a moment. ‘Not awfully well . . . I’ve been
worried about her.’
Brockett frowned, and stared thoughtfully into the fire. There was
something that he wanted to say to Stephen, a warning that he was
longing to give, but he did not feel certain how she would take it—no
wonder that wretched girl was not fit, forced to lead such a deadly dull
existence! If Stephen would let him he wanted to advise, to admonish,
to be brutally frank if need be. He had once been brutally frank about
her work, but that had been a less delicate matter.
He began to fidget with his soft, white hands, drumming on the
arms of the chair with his fingers. ‘Stephen, I’ve been meaning to
speak about Mary. She struck me as looking thoroughly depressed the