The document is a personal statement from Miriam Holbrook describing her childhood and what led her to become a social worker. She grew up in a liberal family but attended a conservative southern school where she was isolated for being different. She was placed in remedial classes despite having average intelligence. This experience of being marginalized motivated her to pursue a career helping disadvantaged communities gain empowerment and independence through education and community programs rather than just welfare assistance. Her goal is to embrace differences and give people confidence to change their world.

1. Wiseman, SW 502-004
Miriam Holbrook
Assignment 1
October 15, 2013
I was at the grocery today and I saw her again. I see her once every couple of
months. She is young, between seven and twelve years old and very thin. She is
usually alone, but today she is with an unkempt, and possibly drunk paternal figure.
Her clothes are old and too small; her hair is long and tangled. She looks around but
tries not to make contact. I find her eyes for a split second and smile at her. She
seems surprised by this and quickly looks away. Her name is Miriam and she is why
I am a social worker.
I spent most of my childhood sandwiched between two very different
communities- my family, their friends and colleagues- and my school, teachers and
neighbor kids. My parents were college professors. My father was an artist from
Pakistan. My mother was a musician from North Carolina. They divorced when I was
seven years old.
My mother left when we lived in Ohio. My father held parties that would last
all night. I poured drinks for faculty and students and changed the records when the
stacks ran out. I sat on top of the VW bus when we rode through campus singing
protest songs. We took music and dance lessons and appeared in our father’s
bizarre art plays at the college. Supper was never served before ten o’clock at night.
As a seven year old, I did not really recognize the two distinct worlds I
inhabited. I once called my third grade teacher at two in the morning to invite her to
our party. She declined, but later invited me for dinner. She even took me to her
church. I had never been to church before. She served supper when it was still light
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2. outside and made the same strange food many of my friend’s parents served- mushy
casseroles, meat without bones, and sandwiches with soft white bread. My father
always served rice with raisins and whole spices that had to be removed before
eating. How I wanted minute rice and hamburger helper! My father would not hear
of this.
When I was eight, I moved to East Tennessee to stay with my mother who
was living with a lesbian opera singer. She and several of her friends started a
performing arts school at the college. She worked at a theater in Knoxville at night
and when there were opportunities, she had my brothers and me audition so we
could help pay the bills. My first acting job paid twenty-five dollars a week. My
mother rented a room in our house to a gay couple- an actor from the theater and a
pianist at the college- they were my best friends. I continued to study acting, dance
and music. I loved the actors at the theater and the musicians at the college. I
belonged.
We lived in a small conservative town. We often ended a night at the theater
or symphony at the only restaurant, Sambo’s, a name my mother and her friends
found hilarious. Most of the joking was in regards to the ignorance and intolerance
of the people in our town, of whom my teachers, and classmates included. Tourists
and republican politics followed closely behind. We were all carefully taught.
While my mother and her friends got to get up and go to the theater or
college the next morning, I had to work to assimilate at school. I started at Sam
Houston Elementary in the middle of my third grade year. They were still very
proud confederates there; the flag was painted all over the walls of the cafeteria and
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3. we were called the “rebels.” The teachers and students could not pronounce my first
or last name, so my mother changed the spelling of my first name to make things
easier for them. It didn’t work.
Each morning opened with a bible study. We had to pick a story from the
bible and discuss it. I had no idea what these stories were about, and it was clear
that I should know these things. The students sang songs from church camp that I
had never heard before. I sang Stephen Sondheim and hummed Shubert’s
unfinished symphony.
I’m not sure when it started, but by forth grade, I had pretty much become a
freak show for the kids at school. I was the one they loved to pick on and the
teachers didn’t seem to notice or care. I was told I came from a broken home and
when I explained to the school counselor that I didn’t watch “Little House on the
Prairie,” she decided this was because my family was not American.
We were poor, so I was very thin and most of my clothes came from
Goodwill. I hid away at recess up on a hill and watched the kids play. I attempted to
conform. I watched how my classmates walked, how they talked and conducted
themselves. My neighbor gave me a bible, which I attempted to memorize. I started
attending the church down the street. But none of these things really worked; I was
just too weird.
I was scheduled to see the school counselor every week and soon they had a
lot of other counselors asking to see me and even helping me in the classroom. My
father was asked to fly down for a meeting with my mother and school
administrators. They explained that I had a “dull normal range” IQ (84, apparently)
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4. and that I would need to be placed in remedial classes. My father became very
angry, called them racists and went back to Ohio. My mother was mortified and
cooperated with the teachers. I was put in classes with students who could barely
read. I was not able to control my class schedule again until high school.
Mullaly (2007) outlines four general paradigms relative to political thought
behind the practice of social work. The society and institution (my school) outside of
my liberal family would best be described within his neoconservative paradigm.
This community isolated and me as I attempted to fit in. It was closed out or maybe
in denial of my differences, leaving me feeling ashamed and confused. The adults in
my community saw my name, my lifestyle, and my parents as a handicap. If I could
not assimilate into the southern white middle class Christian culture, there was
something wrong with me. According to Malcolm Payne (2005), my response of
psychological and social withdrawal was typical of people who are marginalized by
society.
I am mindful, however, that I have many privileges. I can walk in to a
department store and not worry about looking suspicious. I also rarely get pulled
over when I am driving. My father was a very light skinned Pakistani, so I look
white; I can chose to flaunt my ethnicity or hide it. I don’t have to worry about my
children being subjected to racism. They also have a well recognized, easy to
pronounce and seemingly more “American” name. I am free to love whomever I
wish without risking harassment or violence. So many of my gay friends in
Tennessee had no choice; they had to hide who they were in public.
I used to believe that we could alleviate poverty putting more money into the
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5. welfare system by taxing the rich to feed the poor. But after working several years
for family services in Indiana, I found that the conservative model does have some
footing in reality. As a neoconservative may suggest, I don’t think we should
continue to give away something for nothing. But this isn’t because I think they will
take advantage of the assistance and become lazy, but rather because I am sure this
leads to a break down in their self-perception. I began to see welfare as a cycle that
seems to keep families in poverty. Children born from parents on welfare would
come to my office soon after moving out on their own. They dropped out of high
school just like their parents. Nothing in their culture fit in with academia; many of
these families had no idea how to apply for college. They often told me they were
“not smart enough” for school. They learned this through the dominant culture;
giving them money is only going to reinforce it. I felt we were saying, “since you are
too stupid to do anything for your own independence, here is something to tide you
over until next month; see you then.”
It seems that welfare, to an extent, is a handicap, creating a disabled
population where there may not be one at all. We have built a welfare culture with
individuals who may not feel they have the power to create a life without the
dominant culture’s welfare system. Their neighbors, friends and family all receive
assistance; perhaps it becomes easier (on both sides) to simply maintain rather than
determine how to become a more productive contributing member of society. We
have taught them this. A Marxist might declare that this is all by design, as it is quite
convenient for both parties to have an entire society kept quiet and held in reserve
for use during campaign season.
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6. I don’t believe it is advantageous to assess blame or responsibility on an
individual for their financial predicament since it is irrelevant to the solution.
Mullaly (2007) argues that social problems are at the heart of the structures in our
society, not the individual. I believe that it is the responsibility of the financially
privileged to help those in need become more independent.
The problem with welfare is that it not creative. Liberals and
neoconservatives both are more interested in maintaining poverty rather than
building a solution or prevention to the problem. I advocate a more radical or
critical view. The nature of our welfare programs fundamentally marginalizes an
entire population. It maintains a clear division between the dominant culture and
the needy.
The liberal view is not comprehensive enough for me; its insistence that
poverty will always exist is a fundamental flaw in their concept of welfare. I will not
accept that poverty simply needs to be maintained. I have to consider that it can be
conquered or at least significantly limited. I imagine my view of social work is best
aligned with the social democratic paradigm.
Having grown up in a family that valued education, my focus has continued in
that direction. When I taught social studies in Indiana, I tried to help the students
celebrate their individual and unique heritage. I wanted to create a classroom of
children that perceived differences as an asset and balked at conformity. I suppose I
hoped that the student who seemed most different might now be envied in a way. If
we could incorporate a more diverse cultural experience into the public school
standards, we would be using the differences among students as a teaching method
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7. and encouraging a diverse student body in all schools. This creates inclusion and
empowerment, two strengths of the social democratic paradigm of social work.
I often felt isolated as a child and therefore I have a strong belief in the
necessity for inclusion. I learned while studying history that we cannot change
society from the outside in. Change must come from within the community in need.
We cannot just come in to another country, put in a new leader and fight a war for
them; they have to want it enough to fight for it themselves. And if they didn’t create
it, why would they work to maintain it?
Perhaps we could initially invest in something like quality educational
childcare provided by members of the community and adding resources and
technology most poor families cannot provide at home. As social democrats, we are
not coming in and fixing the community, but the community is working together
toward a solution. This is fundamental if we are interested in lasting change. People
trained in the community could teach parenting classes and others could pool
resources to deal with transportation problems. What if we invested in
apprenticeship and other educational programs for young adults and offered easy
access to these programs through a constant and inclusive campaign designed by
those from all factions of society, but run by the community? These programs would
be costly, deterring the neo-conservatives, but if we could demonstrate the new
welfare system as a means to dependence and a path to social contribution and
responsibility, we might be able to convince them to collaborate. The goal is to aid in
community growth and then let it go to flourish on its own unique and independent
creativity.
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8. I might also borrow a bit from the Feminist critique since this also adopts the
theme of celebrating our differences (Sands & Nuccio, 1992). Girls are still learning
that they are only as good as the man they can catch. I learned this as well. My father
often worried aloud that I might “never get a man,” and my mother repeatedly
advised me to “marry a doctor” when I grow up. It had not occurred to me that I
could become a doctor myself. At work, I counseled many young women with
several children, often with different fathers. These women were desperate to find
someone who would just stay with them. They continued to make the same
mistakes, never recognizing the flaws already well incorporated into their schemas
for life, home and family. It is a hard habit to break, but perhaps one that needs to be
taught. Single women led most of the households I saw every day. The fathers of
their children usually played no role in helping raise them and were free to live and
work on their own. The welfare system needs to cater to women’s specific needs
since they are often trapped between staying in a violent relationship and raising
their children in a safe place with no income, no transportation and no childcare.
Underlying my vision of social work is the empowerment theory, which
focuses on a bottom-up perspective. Marc Zimmerman describes the process where
an individual is trained to lead and manage, is given access to resources and
opportunities to work with others in their community to make decisions toward
common goals (Handbook of Community Psychology, 2007).
What is so important to me surfaces whenever I reflect on my early
childhood, when I was that poor girl in rags at the grocery store, sure that anyone I
might see was going to think I was awkward or strange. I want to teach her to
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9. embrace her differences; I want to give her the power of confidence and the respect
for her own individualism. I want her to know that she has the power to change her
world.
References
Mullaly, B. (2007). The new structural social work. (3rd
ed.). Ontario: Oxford
University Press.
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10. Payne, M. (2005). Modern social work theory (3rd
ed.). Chicago, IL: Lyceum.
Rappaport, J., & Seidman, E. (Eds.). (2000). Handbook of community psychology. New
York, NY: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers.
Sands, R. G., & Nuccio, K. (1992). Postmodern feminist theory and social work.
Social Work. (37.6), 489-494.
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