ABSTRACT

The ability of individual-level interventions to improve people’s financial conditions is compromised when the root causes of precarity develop at systems levels. While it can be a challenge to intervene at the systems-level, we contend that one approach is for social work and allied professions to treat financial education as political education. Building on the activist organizing approaches of Paulo Freire and the Black feminist scholarship of bell hooks, we offer a framework to target systems as critical sites for change. If we wish to empower people to transcend rather than cope with the oppressive power of racial capitalism, there may be no choice but to find ways to raise people’s consciousness about structural oppression as the root cause of financial precarity. Implications for practice are discussed in the contexts of labor organizing and the Black cooperative movement.

摘要

当不稳定的根本原因在系统层面发展时，个人层面干预改善人们财务状况的能力就会受到损害。虽然在系统层面进行干预可能是一个挑战，但我们认为一种方法是让社会工作和相关专业将金融教育视为政治教育。基于 Paulo Freire 的激进组织方法和铃钩的黑人女权主义学术，我们提供了一个框架，将系统定位为变革的关键场所。如果我们希望使人们能够超越而不是应对种族资本主义的压迫性力量，除了想方设法提高人们对结构性压迫是金融不稳定的根源的认识之外，别无选择。