Essential Knowledge: James Baldwin - No Credit
Essential Knowledge: James Baldwin - No Credit
Note from Kimberly:
I had an extremely distressing experience this summer.
I was talking to someone in the mental health field, a person who is educated; a person I respect.
This informed, empathetic, capable mental health worker - someone who specialized in working with transgender people - had not heard of James Baldwin.
This rattled me deeply. No therapist today - no therapist who works with marginalized patients or racialized patients - no one should be unaware of the work of James Baldwin.
It’s not our fault that some pieces of knowledge were left out of our education.
It’s our duty - our ethical and moral responsibility as care workers - to put that information back in.
It’s not okay for responsible therapists to “do everything right,” and still never learn essential knowledge. I am going to change this situation the only way I know how.
In the immortal words of a terrible news man, “F**k it, we’re doing it live.”
In this CEU, we will watch video of James Baldwin. Hear his own perspectives in his own voice. Then, we’ll reflect on how this information directly relates to your work, and social work as a whole.
The work of James Baldwin is inextricably connected to being a therapist.
“If one is continually surviving the worst that life can bring, one eventually ceases to be controlled by a fear of what life can bring; whatever it brings must be borne. And at this level of experience one's bitterness begins to be palatable, and hatred becomes too heavy a sack to carry.”
— James Baldwin
I work with transgender youth - adolescents terrified of the world around them and struggling to find their place in a society full of discrimination and hatred. The work of James Baldwin directly addresses their situation. He examines what it means to have hope and resilience in situations where none can be found.
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Frequently Asked Questions
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The Self-Study Module does not provide continuing education credit.
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The module is a self-paced combination of slides and (captioned) videos.
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This module involves discussion of racism, transphobia, police violence, suicide, and despair.
This is a difficult module about having difficult conversations.