Conferences: Motivating versus Discouraging Crossroads of Information

Last Thursday I attended a symposium on overturning Proposition 209, a proposition that eliminated affirmative action in California, and was stirred with the boldface calls to action. I heard lawyers, professors, and community activists explain litigative and theoretical approaches for taking down a racist initiative that has had real detrimental effects for minority businesses and educational opportunities. They spoke of the problems that disrupted unity among the ACLU when Prop 209 first passed and the lessons they have since learned. For 2008! During the next presidential election there is hope for change! We can win it – panelists and speakers spoke with passion and fervor for social justice and did not shy away from decrying racist policies and practices.

My feelings of energy and activism were not soon after doused by a conference for Title IV-E students, future CPS workers. I sat through a series of monotone speeches about the problems that plagued a failed system we were soon to join as child welfare workers. The disruptive life that we would soon be compelled to offer to foster children. The disregard for siblings and families that we would soon be powerless to prevent. We heard from foster kids who recounted their experiences, prompted by a moderator who asked them to tell their life stories to a room full of future social workers, the sometimes bad guys of those stories. Our future is cast in insensitivity, futility, and exhaustion. Great. Am I in the wrong line of work? But if anything, it got me thinking about foster kids and the possibility of being a foster parent sometime in the future. Not easy by any means, but made me wonder if to help one kid or a sibling group with real care was the way the make a difference in child welfare.

Feeling torn from the reason I entered this profession. Better when out of the classroom and into the field?