The purpose of this assignment is to help students explore their own background and begin to examine how race, culture, and socioeconomic class may affect your practice skills with your clients, in a more advanced way than in previous classes, as well as to examine racial and class disparities that affect social, economic and environmental justice issues in the country. Other aspects of cultural identities including gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, educational level, or religion may be included. This paper should be about 8-10 pages double-spaced, with APA 6th ed. citations and should incorporate ideas from the required readings especially the Stevenson memoir on correctional justice.

You need to have an introductory paragraph that explains the intent of the paper to focus the paper for the reader. This is an analysis, not a description. An analysis answers the questions of why and how something has meaning or has occurred. Don’t forget to use a concluding paragraph that summarizes the main points. Each paper should include: 

1. Discussion of universal human rights and how they are relevant to the memoir. Examine racial and class disparities in relation to government and institutional policies as reflected in the Stevenson memoir. 
2. An understanding of how Stevenson developed his own identity and how that related to his lifelong commitment to human rights and social, economic, and environmental justice? How did he respond to oppression and social justice disparities?
3. What have you learned from this autobiographical assignment? Discuss how your identity memberships (e.g., race, class) will inform your social work practice and how you might respond to discrimination, oppression and social justice disparities on both micro and macro levels?