Competency 2: Advance Human Rights and Social, Racial, Economic, and Environmental Justice Social workers understand that every person regardless of position in society has fundamental human rights. Social workers are knowledgeable about the global intersecting and ongoing injustices throughout history that result in oppression and racism, including social work’s role and response. Social workers critically evaluate the distribution of power and privilege in society in order to promote social, racial, economic, and environmental justice by reducing inequities and ensuring dignity and respect for all. Social workers advocate for and engage in strategies to eliminate oppressive structural barriers to ensure that social resources, rights, and responsibilities are distributed equitably and that civil, political, economic, social, and cultural human rights are protected. Social workers: a. advocate for human rights at the individual, family, group, organizational, and community system levels; and b. engage in practices that advance human rights to promote social, racial, economic, and environmental justice.

Notice that equality and equity are not synonymous. If everyone who reads this text is gifted a pair of reading glasses because the author indicates a desire to be inclusive and remove any barriers to reading ability, an equality approach might be to send everyone the same pair of glasses with the same prescription as the author. However, this wouldn’t actually level the playing field, would it? In fact, it might actually disadvantage some readers to use a prescription that would cause their eyes further strain, while advantaging people who happen to have the same prescription as the author.