Positionality Statement

Positionality refers to how one's social location — the intersection of identities, experiences, and structural positions — shapes perception, interpretation, and practice. This document maps my positionality as it relates to CSWE EPAS Competency 2 (Advance Human Rights and Social, Racial, Economic, and Environmental Justice) and the NASW Code of Ethics standards on cultural humility, anti-discriminatory practice, and self-awareness.

Identity Snapshot

I occupy the following identity locations simultaneously:

• Black man in America
• Gay man — publicly out, with a history of concealing sexual orientation in professional and clinical settings due to perceived safety risks
• Person in recovery from substance use disorder — with significant lived experience across the behavioral health system
• Adult child of a family system affected by intergenerational addiction and poverty
• Person of Christian faith navigating the tension between religious community and LGBTQ+ identity
• Returning adult learner and first-generation college completer
• Behavioral health professional — currently employed as a Case Manager and Certified Recovery Specialist

No single identity on this list operates in isolation. The course's emphasis on intersectionality is not an abstraction for me — it is the architecture of my lived experience.

Positionality Within Systems of Privilege and Oppression

Competency 2 requires social workers to understand how oppression operates — and to examine their own position within those systems, including where they hold privilege. An honest positionality account requires both.

Where I Experience Marginalization

Race: As a Black man, I have navigated racist systems across healthcare, education, housing, and employment. The racial disparities in addiction treatment access and behavioral health outcomes are not statistics I encountered in a textbook — they are conditions I have lived inside.

Sexual Orientation: I have experienced homophobia as a structural force that directly shaped my care-seeking behavior. For years, I presented as straight in treatment settings because full disclosure felt unsafe. This is not merely a personal story — it is a case study in how homophobia functions as a systemic barrier to affirming, effective care.

Substance Use History: People in recovery from substance use disorder navigate ongoing stigma in employment, healthcare, and social contexts. My history includes more than a decade of engagement with behavioral health systems that delivered sequential rather than integrated treatment — a structural failure, not a personal one.

Economic Marginalization: My biography includes periods of homelessness and poverty. I have navigated public assistance, vocational rehabilitation, and underpaid human services employment. I understand economic injustice from the inside.

Where I Hold Privilege

An honest positionality account does not focus only on marginalization. I also carry privileges that shape what I assume and what I may not see:

Gender: As a man, I benefit from male privilege in professional contexts, even while navigating other forms of marginalization. Gender-based violence, the wage gap, and reproductive justice are areas where my direct experiential understanding is limited.

Citizenship and Documentation: I am a U.S.-born citizen. The experiences of undocumented immigrants, asylum seekers, and people navigating immigration enforcement are not part of my direct experience, and I must approach those populations with active humility.

Disability Status: I do not identify as having a physical disability. I may carry unconscious assumptions about ability that require ongoing examination.

English Fluency: English is my primary language. I have not navigated systems in a language other than my native tongue — a form of access that is often invisible to those who hold it.

Connection to CSWE EPAS Competency 2

Competency 2 asks social workers to advance human rights and social, racial, economic, and environmental justice. My connection to each dimension is direct:

Social and Racial Justice: My experience as a Black man in American systems provides first-person evidence of how racial inequity operates at structural levels — not just in interpersonal bias, but in policy design, institutional gatekeeping, and differential outcomes.

Economic Justice: I have navigated poverty, public benefits systems, and under-resourced communities. My advocacy for economic justice is grounded in the experience of financial precarity, not observation of it.

Human Rights: Health equity, LGBTQ+ rights, and freedom from discrimination in healthcare settings are human rights issues I engage professionally through my behavioral health work — including the barriers stigma creates to prevention, treatment access, and affirming care.

Intersectionality in Practice: The populations I am most qualified to serve — Black gay men with trauma and addiction histories, LGBTQ+ people with religious backgrounds, people living with HIV — are precisely the populations whose needs are most frequently misaddressed by non-intersectional practice. Competency 2 is my vocational calling, not merely a course framework.

Cautions, Blind Spots, and Growth Edges

Cultural humility requires not only acknowledging positionality but actively managing where it may limit or distort practice:

Proximity to client experience: My lived experience is a clinical asset that requires active boundary management. The NASW Code of Ethics and EPAS standards call for self-regulation — the ability to use personal experience to inform practice without allowing it to drive unsanctioned self-disclosure or over-identification with clients.

Risk of proximity bias: My strongest empathic connection is with populations that mirror my own experience. I must actively cultivate informed empathy for populations whose oppressions operate differently from mine — including women, people with disabilities, undocumented individuals, and populations whose cultural frameworks differ significantly from my own.

The burden of representation: In academic and practice settings, I may be one of very few people present who hold my particular combination of identities. I am not obligated to serve as an educator for every diversity-related question the class raises. My participation in self-reflection discussions should be purposeful and boundaried — serving my own learning and contributing to the group, not functioning as personal processing.

Power differential as future practitioner: As a social work student training for licensure, I am preparing to hold institutional authority over clients — including clients who may share my history. The shift from service recipient to service provider carries its own ethical responsibilities, which Competency 2 and the NASW Code of Ethics directly address.

Governing Commitments

• Engage honestly with self-reflection requirements while maintaining appropriate disclosure boundaries.
• Actively examine the dimensions of my own privilege alongside my experiences of marginalization.
• Approach populations whose experiences differ from mine with deliberate humility and a commitment to learning.
• Apply the NASW standard of critical self-awareness — recognizing when my values, assumptions, or reactions may be influencing my interpretation of course material or peer contributions.
• Use this course as preparation for culturally humble, justice-informed clinical practice — not as personal therapy.

Anchor Scripture