Providing social services to meet the needs of society is at the foundation of the United States political system. Social Security and related social services, created to protect the integrity of our political system, has been a moral triumph. But an important question remains: ”Are we...

Traditional social service language is embedded in an ideological framework that views individuals as the primary source of their predicaments and the solution to their problems, ignoring racism, poverty and other structural inequities. Stigmatizing language serves to maintain those inequities...