NASW Social Work Talks - EP58: Meet NASW President Mit Joyner

Episode Date: August 11, 2020

In July 2020, Mildred "Mit" C. Joyner, DPS, MSW, LCSW, started her three-year term as NASW's President. We talk with her about her vision for the association in the midst of a global pandemic and a reckoning around racism. Visit the show notes to learn more about Dr. Joyner.

Welcome to Social Work Talks. This is Greg Wright. Mitt Joyner began her three-year term as NASW's president on July 1st. Joyner has been a professor of social work at West Chester University for nine years, and she served as NASW's vice president from 2015 to 2018. What is her vision for NASW in the next three years? We sat down to talk to her about that. Welcome to Social Work Across Podcast, Mitt. Hi, how are you doing, Greg?

You have been a social worker for a long time. What actually attracted you to Social Work, Mitt? You know, I was listening and read John Lewis's statement in the New York Times, and he stated that his George Floyd moment was the moment that he saw Emmett Till's death when I think at that time John Lewis was 15 and Emmett Till was 14. And that resonated with me because the moment I wanted to become a social worker when I was definitely committed to social justice is watching the assassinations of Medgar Evers, of Martin Luther King Jr., of Malcolm X, of robert kennedy of john f kennedy it seemed like every time you turned on the television

there was an assassination and it was an assassination of a leader who was trying to do what was right for all people and at that moment i um decided wow that's something that i wanted to do i wanted to make sure that i just couldn't understand watching people being hosed down and Bull Connors just, you know, doing horrific things to people and watching people on television being beaten. I just couldn't imagine why do people do that? So I decided that I was going to become a change agent. Are you aware that there were social workers playing a major role in the civil rights movement? I didn't know they were social workers at the time. Um, the day that I decided to become a social worker was when I was about 14 years of age.

My mother made me work at a hospital as a candy striper because she felt that I needed to know where I was going in life. I was working in an emergency room one day and there was a social worker that came in. I didn't even know she was a social worker. There was a child that was hit by a car and he had died. And the mother was coming into the ER room, the person who hit the child, and I watched this person come in and direct and tell everybody, you go to, you know, the mother is to go into this room, the child is to go into this operating area, waiting area, and the person who hit the person is to go here. and she just made such order at a mess and I said to myself who is that person and someone said to me who it was and I ran home and I told my mother I know what I want to be I want to be a society

worker and she's like a society worker what the heck is that right and I said you know I said there was this woman by the name of uh and I told her her name and my mother knew their family and my mother said oh she is a social worker and I said that's exactly what I want to do and the moral of that story is I don't think Janet Robinson ever knew how she impacted my life. I never told her. I never had another conversation with her. But that's the moment when I decided I can do that. I can come in and somebody can tell me a big problem and I can figure out not how to solve the entire problem, but how to make it a little bit order so we could actually problem solve it together. Those were the elements. And why I think I really became a social worker

is my dad. My dad had me call people up on the telephone. He was very active when he went to, he was in World War II. He came home, he became an electrical contractor, had his own business. He just did great things, but he was very involved politically. And so I would have to get on the phone with his list and call people and ask them where they're going to go vote. So it has been a part of my life. When I found out more about social work, as I said, it was later on in life when I went to Central State University, an HBCU, and that was my course of study. Wow. You have been active with our association for a long time, and you also served as our vice president back between 2015 and 2018. Why are you so dedicated to NASW?

you? Well, actually, I was involved in social work since I went to academia. I was the president of the Baccalaureate Association, BPD, Baccalaureate Program Director. Ron Federico, who was a child welfare person, actually put my name on the ballot, and I told him I wouldn't win because I was new, and he said, you're right, you won't win, but we're going to run you twice, and the second time you'll win. And that's exactly what happened. And I was a member at large. And then I moved into the role of president of that association. So I got to know everyone at the table. I got to know NASW, CSWE, all the different organizations. From BPD, I went over to the Council on Social Work Education and served as vice president. And from there, Alberta Godunzi kind of said, you know,

you need to move into the president's role. And I was like, I don't think so. And he said, no, you need to do that. You need to put your, your, your name in the hat. So I was president of the council on social work education, again, with the same partners around the table. Once I left academia, I, I was decided to retire or begin my next chapter. And I started again, and someone called and said, would you run for vice president of NASW? And I was like, I don't think so. And they were like wow you know all the parties at the table you know all the organizations so why not try it and I wanted to end my career with how I began and that's working in practice because I never ever wanted to go to the academy the reason I went to the academy is because God blessed me

with twins and I had to make a decision about how to raise children and still work and I wanted to do that and and the Academy was one place where I was able to achieve that goal so I ran and I learned I mean I really learned about NASW had no idea how vast the enterprise was and what people did but I you know I was there under the tutelage of Darrell Wheeler who was someone that I greatly admire I I consider Daryl to be a genius almost, and I learned from him, and then when the opportunity came, I decided to go ahead and throw my hat in the ring for president. I've always been involved in, you know, I mean, it goes back to grade school. I was homeroom rep, you know. I was

always involved in being able to hopefully bring voices to the table to help everyone understand that everybody has a place at the table and how to come up with some of the best solutions. You are entering at a momentous time. We are dealing with a coronavirus pandemic. There is a lot of racial unrest happening, and our economy is in a shambles. So it's like a three-pronged disaster going on. I think that you are looking also as an opportunity. So I was wondering, how are you going to help this association through all of these issues?

You know, you're right. I had no idea that, you know, when I put my hat in the ring, I actually wanted to go back and resonate Gary Bailey's public education campaign about social work. And that was really what my goal was going to be once I took office in July. In March, actually, everything turned on a dime. It actually started in February with the coronavirus. And then it went into a horrific watching on our TV, the death of an individual, Mr. George Floyd and Rashawn Brooks. and then we had also Breonna Taylor who we learned about was shot in her bed and then we had Ahmaud Arbery who was running it changed everything and it will change the world actually

and I am still sorting out how to bring all these together going back to spirituality you know you know I love Native Americans philosophy I used to bring Charles Clark who whose father was chief of the Nanticoke tribe to my class often, and he often talks about, you know, sometimes Mother Earth has a different path for you to walk, and so I accept this path, and it is not going to be Mitt Joyner who makes any kind of major changes. It's bringing all these voices together, hopefully, so we can make change together. The issue that I want all of us to look at is, is you know on the back of whitney young who everybody knows was one of the architects of the march on washington with john lewis martin luther king james farmer uh alvin poussaint

and roy wilkins they they were the big six right and they're the ones that decided that we needed to have a march on washington so the very fact that he was president of nasw and i'm president of nasw i'm very proud of that legacy to be standing on his shoulders but i know as i stand on his shoulders he would want us to be forward thinking you know what are some of the issues that we're going to have to resolve you know i'm looking at opening up the schools in the midst of a pandemic and i'm watching a lot of the superb suburban schools where i live say we're going to go virtual we're not going to bring your kids back to school and yet i watch again this human test that we sometimes do of putting more vulnerable kids in places where they have to go back to

school or their parents have no other choices. So we have to be forward thinking about that. We can't make our children our human guinea pigs. We can't do that. At the same time, we also need to think about when schools do open, what do we need to put in place so that kids can feel comfortable about coming back? I mean, we should be thinking about that now. We should be leading that effort now to think down the road when the doors do open should we be should we make a statement and say um that there has to be year-round school that there has to be social workers that work with kids about the trauma of being home and now going back to school and that mistrust versus trust that so many people talk about i know i have a grandson that's due to go

to kindergarten his whole life is going to be shaped out of he had to do it online right um And you always refer back to your kindergarten years as we're watching college students go to be their first year as freshmen. That's where you make all of your friends forever. I mean, my best friend to this date is someone that I met my first year, right? So we really need to start thinking about and getting the Department of Education to think about how can we make these schools work year round for a period of three to four years to get catch up. That's what we need to do as a society. How are we going to mobilize because we are facing almost a depression? How are we going to let people work two or three jobs without having to worry about I've got to stop and find daycare for my kids in the summer? I've got to send them to summer camps and pay more money. As a society, we need to think about that now. And that's what I would like social work, and I think social work does that, but I'd like us to articulate it even more, is what is the vision that we have because of the COVID virus?

You know, let's be forward thinking. How are we going to put things back so that they're never, ever going to go back to the way it was? But how are we going to make things so that people are able to achieve and still be able to succeed um and that's that's kind of what i see our role of social workers i see our role i see whitney young did that when he thought about the march on washington what did he really what did that big six what was their vision what was john lewis's vision of the future that allowed him to go out there and be the youngest person to give a speech at times where people weren't even accepting of uh african-americans i mean you know there there was a still separate but equal was still being practiced um throughout this country in

so many ways and that's the role of social work the role of social work is to help people where they are and to help people problem solve their issues the way they want to problem solve not not not what we dictate they do, but at the same time is to drive policy so that we change and make it so that people are able to succeed. On the issue of a policing reform, now it has divided the social work community. There are some social workers who are for a total defunding, others are seeing a greater role for social workers in a police force. So is this an issue that the social work profession should have a bit more conversation about? It definitely is an issue that we all have to look at. There's no question that police

reform is necessary. There are some calling for just to abolish police, but what I say to all parties, and social work has a tendency, so sometimes we try and rescue people, and I'm not of that mindset. I'm of the mindset that the community knows what's best for them, and whatever the community tells me they want, then that is what we should do. You know, often when you go back and you look at our history we have created uh you know right now child welfare they're looking at that the same way and so some of the people who started child welfare thought that they knew what was in the best interest of children and they made programs and policies and rules for the best interests of children but they didn't check with families what's the best

interest for their children um and and perhaps we could have sidestepped some issues as it relates to gross physical neglect when people had didn't have enough money to be able to care for their children we could have actually maybe supplemented rather than to destroy their family well i see that the same way with police reform you know until we go out and i would ask social work to do what we always should do is follow the facts so let's commission a study where we go into the rural the urban the suburban every facet of our community to ask how do the people want to be safeguarded and what recommendations do they have i sit here right outside of philadelphia and unfortunately this week we had a young fella of seven years old who was out on his porch

playing and he got hit by crossfire people were shooting guns up and down the street and he was shot in the head he lived for two days and he died yesterday and the community is saying i mean they're demanding they call the police and they're demanding why can't our kids sit on our porch you are not safeguarding us and they talked about the need of community police or community safeguards i mean i don't know if the word police anymore but but someone coming in and making sure that their kids can do the same things that kids in the suburbs can they have the kids in the suburbs are going outside having playing and having water fights and all kind of things and enjoying the summer months where kids in the in the city without any air condition are forced to

stay inside because the drug wars are up during the pandemic so we need to be at the table and need to ask communities what do you need so that you can have a better quality of life and once we commission that and once we get the data back on that and it doesn't have to be a long long study that takes two or three years there's ways to do something um rapidly if that's the desire of the social work community then we can work off those recommendations but i don't want to be a leader that 30 years from now someone says they took the police from my neighborhood who did the social workers did did you ask them to do so no i think we have to look at that we we cannot come from the academy or any spot and make this just a research test because it affects real

people in their community we have to go in and ask so that's where my position is and then my secondary point on that is racism is what killed george floyd racism and there was a police officer who was racist that knelt on his neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds racism is what killed emmett till there were a group of men who because they thought he said bye babe decided that he wasn't going to live another day at 14 years of age and racism is what brought us over on the ship in 1619 so i challenged the social work community to have a conversation a much-needed conversation on race we skip over that for whatever reason that is not a conversation that people like to have yet as you've heard me say and you've seen in my writings and i will continue to say

that racism is the human stain of america it is what got us to where we are it is in our educational system it is in our political system it is in our police system criminal justice system It permeates through every system in America, and we need to address that. Larry Davis did the best conference I ever attended, and that was Race in America, and came out with some really good recommendations, and he brought people from every discipline together to kind of talk about the issue of race. Larry Davis was the dean at the University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work. He developed a conference and found a lot of funders to have race in America, oh, about four or five years ago.

I mean, you know, people are always saying, oh, you know, that's old. We don't want to talk about race. But that's what gets us to where we are. It's time for social workers to recognize that we have a duty and an obligation in every major system that there is to address racism. I think now, though, we are seeing a momentum. So are you at all confident that this profession is really ready to tackle this issue at this time? I hope that we bring in leaders that will stand on my shoulders, that are just as committed as I am. And that's what it's going to take because it's going to take a longer time.

I'm a systems, you know, at Howard University, systems theory was what I studied. and and i i believe in systems theory i sometimes say we we will always move forward with three steps and then when things calm down we tend to take two steps back you get a little closer but it takes a longer time you know three steps forward two steps back three steps forward two steps back you know i'm not going to be a prognosticator as to whether we're going to take steps back because it all depends on how well we in social work can come together and work on one common issue. You know, there's so many issues that we're facing in society that we sometimes keep our eyes off that particular prize. So I'm hoping that we can. We'll see.

This is Tom Skerritt for The Borgen Project. Each year, nearly 2 million children die from preventable diseases. Each day, 30,000 people die from hunger. 500 each hour are children. The Borgen Project is turning this around. We need your help. To learn more, go to borgenproject.org. That's B-O-R-G-E-N project dot org. I want to shift to our membership. There has been some criticism that this association is out of touch, that it's too elitist.

On Instagram, we've heard that people are thinking that NASW is too female, that it's too white, even though a lot of our membership are, in fact, people of color. So I was wondering how you are planning to address issues like these and also bring a lot more voices into the fold of this association. Well, as you said, NASW is a membership organization. So it is what, you know, we work on program goals and it's what our members bring to the table. Those are the issues that we focus on, you know, that is in our bylaws and in our mission. I am a person of color. I am not a social worker who puts my race last. It's always first. And so bringing people to the table, if anybody ever wants to go back and explore the writings of Mitt Joyner or talk to people who've worked for Mitt Joyner, they're always going to say that social justice is always first and foremost in everything that I've done. Every speech that I make, I've always addressed that issue. I think what I learned about being at the table

is something I learned again at Howard. You're not going to make changes if you don't come to the table. And you don't say to people that some of these policies may keep me out and make those changes. So I invite people to come to the table of change. I firmly believe that we must have new voices at NASW. Membership is one of the criteria for coming inside. But at the same time, You know, there's 800, there's predicted to be about 800,000 social workers in the United States. And there is about 115, up some, down some, who belong to NASW. And we are the largest organization of social work membership. So something tells me, the way that I analyze that is that we need to do a little bit more work in our schools of social work

for them to understand that in order to bring change, you need to have, you need to use your voice and to look at social work history. I would love to have 800,000 social workers, members of NASW. And I would love to have, but even if I couldn't get that, again, let's get back to being realistic. If I could get one third of the people at the table, and then even that third saying this is where we want change to be that's the change that we will see right so john lewis representative john lewis told me way back when i was president of cswe that you you can't it is important to show up if you want to make change it's important to show up it's it's important to speak up stand up and it's important to speak up and i believe that so um i i urge

people who are are because the thing with nasw is that it's something that i see is that internally i mean you know the staff they do great work i mean i would not belong to believe me i would not belong to an organization that i feel does not do great work in our society yes and in social work the majority of people are women and the majority of uh the the racial group is white yes that is true so how do we attract more people of color into social work because if you go back in the 70s a lot of people of color started going after the civil rights movement into social work and so how do we recruit more and more people into social work i was listening this morning before the podcast, black men in social work, you know, how do we recruit more men into social work,

black men into social work, Latino men into social work, Latino women into social work, it is important for us to kind of spread our net wide, because that's where people are more effective. So I think we have a job at NASW is to, and what I'm trying to do is to go out there and throw a large net in, but to also make sure those individuals are on the various committees that we have and that their voice is being heard. Because oftentimes you can bring people in, but they're not on any of the committees. So they don't even really understand the structure. So that's where I plan on looking and making sure that everything is as inclusive as possible. Well, I was wondering if there are other issues that you are also looking to tackle. I think that

Voting is also one of those, but are there any others, Mitt? Well, voting is the most important to me. I vowed, you know, a couple of months ago as I was watching George Floyd and I was watching all of the things that popped up is that November is one of the most critical days for social work, for vulnerable people in our society, for people of color. it is you know I'm not putting my faith on one person but I do know that under this current administration the setbacks that have occurred I mean I do know that there's a pile of legislation that NASW has supported that's sitting and waiting for the senate to to listen to that but it doesn't even get to the floor so if we want to bring about change out of any injustice we really have to get out there and work and then we have to protect the right to vote i mean i just told you about my dad

who uh served in a colored only troop in world war ii came back and established his own um company based on that i do that for my dad my dad told us we should never ever miss a vote and it is our job and obligation to bring other people to the ballot and so it is our job and responsibility as social workers too so i call on social work to look at that after that election i call on us to get up to the hill and and put our demands into hopefully if there's a change of administration of things that we want and and to be able to say to every senator and every representative and to the president himself this is how many people we represent and these are the changes that we need to see occur. Now, I do predict that our world is in a mess, and it's

going to take a long time to get back to some sense of order. So I do know that the next administration is going to have every professional association trying to do the same thing that we're trying to do. So it's important that we understand how to prioritize that as well, and how to be tactical, and how to be strategic about what we ask for, how to work with our other partners and other professions to say, what's your ask? Is their ask similar to ours? If it is, then perhaps we should back their ask so that we have an ask and keep our second maybe number one. So it's a very strategic time for social work if we're able to change some things in November. Thank you. Well, I want folks to like also know a bit more about you because we've actually

covered um a lot of very deep deep questions so i'm just going to ask you a few things fun things hopefully so um you are a grandmother of how many two two boys and i had all girls so this is fun another question you had uh already mentioned that um a social worker who was um a a hospital social worker was, um, an inspiration, but, um, I'm wondering if you have, uh, any other, um, heroes. Well, my, my biggest hero is my dad. You know, he, he's the one who, uh, who, who, who literally gave me the lessons of life. And I, and also my mom, you know, I watched the two of them from, you know,

having nothing to my father, having his own business in the tri-state area being the one businesses that had electrical contractors from a union shop i know people didn't want him to do that because he was a he was african-american so he is my biggest hero and um a final question what's your favorite food anything with lemon i do not like chocolate but if you give me a lemon square i'm happy I like that. I like that. I love them as well. So I thank you for being our guest on Social Work Talks, man. Thank you so much. Thank you. You have been listening to NASW Social Work Talks, a production of the National Association of Social Workers.

We encourage you to visit NASW's website for more information about our efforts to enhance the professional growth and development of our members, to create and maintain professional standards, and to advance sound social policies. You can learn more at www.socialworkers.org. Don't forget to subscribe to NASW Social Work Talks wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for joining us. We look forward to seeing you next episode. Thank you.