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Greg Wright:
Welcome to Social Work Talks. My name is Greg Wright. Today's issue is one involving Baltimore, and it is the squeegee kids there. Squeegee kids are young people who basically panhandle and wash car windows at intersections. It sounds like an innocent thing, but it's actually proved to be a controversial issue with a lot of the business owners saying that they are disrupting business there and they're also turning people away from Baltimore.
We're going to have a conversation with Dr. Kyla Liggett-Creel, who is a associate clinical professor at the School of Social Work at the University of Maryland in Baltimore. Dr. K actually did a study to look more into the story of the squeegee kids and why they are doing what they are doing. I welcome you to Social Work Talks, Dr. K.
Kyla Liggett-Creel:
Thank you so much for having me here, I appreciate the invitation. I'm excited to talk about this topic.
Greg Wright:
A squeegee kid, what is that exactly? How old are they, and where are these young people coming from?
Kyla Liggett-Creel:
We refer to the young people as squeegee workers, or sometimes it's youth who squeegee, because person first. They can really range in age. We have seen kids that are as young as eight years old out there to 24, 25 years old. They are from Baltimore. There's various reasons that they're out there. Most of them are male, about 98%. Vast majority, if not a hundred percent, are African American.
Greg Wright:
What is the controversy over them? I live in Baltimore, there are panhandlers at intersections of all races, male and females, but it seems like there's been a visceral reaction to people who squeegee for some reason.
Kyla Liggett-Creel:
You can't talk about that without talking about bias, you just can't. To your point, there are panhandlers of all races, and so on certain streets, if you drive up the street, you're going to see white panhandlers on the roads, they're going to be holding signs saying, "Please give me money," whatever the issue is. They're not getting the same level of attention. Again, you have to look at the demographics that we're describing. We're talking about young Black men. I think that because of racial violence, because of the white gaze, there are people who are like, "Oh my God, they're threatening, they're aggressive."
Well, hold on. Let's think about the words that are being used, and we can apply those directly to the historical racism, current racism of describing Black men as scary. When they see five young men coming towards their car, there is this bias that comes up where it's like, "Oh my God, they're going to attack me." It's like, no, they're going to wash your window. If you say no, many of the young people will put a heart on your window and wave and say, "Have a good day." I think that is driving quite a bit of this reaction, in my opinion, that you cannot take out the racial component of this.
I think that the vast majority of young people who are squeegeeing are respectful. When somebody says, "No, don't touch my car. I don't want that. Please don't do that." There is a small percentage group of young people who maybe they don't respect that and they're like, "No, I'm going to wash your window anyways." Sometimes they want money, sometimes they're just like, "I washed your window. Have a good day." Then there's even a smaller, smaller, smaller number of young people who they have other things going on. You don't really know what's happening. But yes, are they hitting a car with their squeegee? Yes, that might happen. Did they pull a scam with Cash App? Yep, that happened. But we're talking about 150 to 200 young people, and these incidents of actual damage to cars or taking money on Cash App or whatever. You're talking about a handful. It's not all of the young people who squeegee, but because of media and the narrative that has been put out there, it's like, "Oh, all the squeegee workers are doing this," and that's just not true.
Greg Wright:
Baltimore, I've lived there for a decade myself, and my daughter is a graduate of the School of Social Work there, just a shout out to you. But it's a city of haves and have nots, and it's also gentrifying slowly in a similar way to what happened in DC, about 30 miles distance. Is this an economic thing too? Are there people there who are gentrifiers moving in and they don't want to see that, they don't want to see the poverty? They want to enjoy the harbor, the aquarium, the restaurants, but they don't want to acknowledge that there's a lot of economic disparities going on in Baltimore.
Kyla Liggett-Creel:
A hundred percent. You cannot talk about squeegee workers without looking at the historical racism that has happened in Baltimore, and then that takes us to today of gentrification. Baltimore is the birthplace of redlining. This is where it started nationally, where they said, "Okay, well, here are predominantly Black neighborhoods and we're going to say banks can't give money to open businesses, to buy homes, to invest in those neighborhoods because they're predominantly Black." Lawrence Brown did this work, where they literally had maps and they circled neighborhoods with red and said, "Okay, you cannot invest in these neighborhoods because they're predominantly Black." Well, if you then look at who are the squeegee workers, they're coming from those neighborhoods, they are coming from the redlined neighborhoods. That's the historical that now applies to today.
Then, you are a hundred percent right, there are two Baltimores. There is the Inner Harbor, there is Fells Point, there is certain neighborhoods going to the stadium where people are like, "We're going to come in and this is going to be 'our space'." Then when you have young people who are standing there, they're having to stand there to help feed their families at the age of 14, that is an inconvenient thing. That is something that's like, "Ooh, that's not what we want to see." Yeah, you definitely have this clash. Then, again, you put in that bias and now it's like, "Oh no, no, I'm coming in for a night of theater and then go to a nice restaurant and now I have five young men coming and saying they want to wash my car." Those two things are not working together and that's why there has to be a narrative change.
Greg Wright:
You are at an organization, it's called The Collaborative.
Kyla Liggett-Creel:
The collaborative is part of the University of Maryland School of Social Work. Really what our focus is, is making sure that the voices and experiences of people with lived experience are at the table, are driving the programming, driving evaluations, that their voices are being listened to and heard. We work with various partners on that, we have three buckets of work that we do. We do youth development, we do violence prevention, and then we do consulting work within the community.
Greg Wright:
When I read the news about squeegee kids, almost all the time it's negative social media comments on them. It's always like, "Baltimore is a rat hole, and the reason why is that they have these youth here," et cetera. It's really biased and you don't hear their voices a lot. Interestingly, I learned you actually did a study where you heard them and why they are out here.
Kyla Liggett-Creel:
I wanted to make sure the youth were being heard, their voices were being heard. One, people use study and research and all of that, but I think it's important to recognize that "research" has been done to the Black community for generations, for hundreds of years. I want to make sure that we weren't studying them, we were lifting up their voices and making sure that they were being heard, because as you said, everybody's talking about this but very few people are talking with the youth and making sure that the youths' story is being heard.
The way I did it was I contacted some incredible messengers. These are guys who have been out in the community, sometimes they were out in the corners, they were returning citizens, so they've been imprisoned and then they've been released in the past couple of years. They knew the kids who squeegee. I asked them to connect me with the young people, I met with a handful of youth who squeegee and said, "What is it that you want people to know about your community, and your community being the squeegee worker community?"
They came up with the questions and said, "Well, I want people to know these things." They created the survey. Then I said, "Okay, well, you've created this wonderful survey. Go out and collect the data. Go and talk to your community, talk to your peers, ask them these questions, and then we'll come back and go over the responses." As I said, there's about 150 to 200 squeegee workers, and they got 31 surveys collected, which is pretty good representation. I met with them again, with a larger group, so we had 16 squeegee workers come together and we went through the data. "Okay, X amount of people said this," and then asked more qualitative questions, "Does this ring true to you? Why do you think this is? What does this really mean? How does this really impact young people?"
Then from that conversation, we took notes. That conversation was facilitated by youth, it was youth facilitating the conversation with youth. I was the secretary in the room and took notes. I wrote up just quotes and put it in a PowerPoint and then met with a subset of youth again, so about five of the workers, and said, "Okay, this is what I heard you say. Is this accurate?" Again, these were quotes. It wasn't my interpretation, it was just direct quotes. They read through it and said, "Yep, that's accurate." Then I said, "Okay, well, how do you feel about presenting this to the Squeegee Collaborative," which is a group of about 120 to 140 people who had convened for the past three months to really talk about this and what we can do to try to address some of these challenges.They then presented the outcomes from both the quantitative and qualitative data gathering, and then answered questions that people had regarding the data, the statements, things like that.
I think two things were important to lift up about some of the information that we did. One was people want to talk about accountability for the squeegee workers, or enforcement, like clear the corners. If they're on the corner, you should arrest them, charge them, all this other stuff. Accountability kept being a conversation, but I said to the youth, "You are not the only ones that are accountable in this situation. There are systems." As social workers, we're always thinking Bronfenbrenner, individual, family, community, policy. "Let's go through that. What are the systems that are impacting you that you engage with and what has that impact been?" They went through and talked about, let's talk about education, let's talk about housing, let's talk about employment. These are the systems we have to look at. That's one thing.
The second thing is when we were going through the PowerPoint, I had to put pictures on the PowerPoint because of the literacy issues that some of these young people are facing. We're talking about 21-year-olds, where the direct quotes were from them. This is language they use, I'm not writing a high level whatever, I had to put pictures because they couldn't read on the slide. I think those are important things that people have to understand.
Greg Wright:
People are blaming them and saying, "Go get a job," but you're finding that when you look at their systems, they don't have the education sometimes, there are not jobs available. Baltimore also has a transportation issue, it's really hard and it's also expensive to go to places where there are work. What was their story? Why were they out there?
Kyla Liggett-Creel:
There are several things that came up. One, the vast majority of the young people said, "I'm out here because if I don't do this my brothers and sisters aren't going to eat. We're not going to be able to pay rent. My family cannot afford the bills that are coming in and so I have to make up that gap between what's coming in and what it costs to live in Baltimore." That was one thing, is that the vast majority of the kids were saying that, "I'm helping to pay the bills of the family." We had kids where they were saying, "I am the only income for the family and I have five brothers and sisters," and they're 17 years old.
That's one thing, but system wide, they talked about, "Why would I go to school? Sometimes I'm not even there and I'm still getting passed, so why would I even go? I'm just getting passed through." Some kids were saying, "I was in a school. I had to go into a special school because there was an incident at my original school. I went there, it was right by my house, great, but I was only allowed to go there for 45 days. Then they assigned me to a different school, which required me to take two buses to get there. It was on the other side of Baltimore, so it might take me an hour and a half to get there." Well, that's a system issue. That is not okay, that we're telling a 16-year-old, "Take two buses, go an hour and a half by yourself to the other side of Baltimore." That doesn't even make sense.
Then the education is a direct correlation with employment. There were young people who graduated from high school, they learned a trade so that they could be a certified X, whatever that X is, and they have all of the skills, but when it came time to take the certification exam, they can't pass it because they don't have the literacy skills to be able to read the test and pass it. Well, that's a setup. Okay, we're going to teach you this thing, but you can't pass the certification, which means that you cannot get the level of pay that you would if you got certified, which means that you're getting a subcontract of a subcontract. Instead of making $60 an hour, now you're making $20 an hour, which then feeds into housing. To afford a two-bedroom apartment in Baltimore City, you have to make $28 an hour. The average income of somebody with a high school diploma in Baltimore City is like $16 an hour.
Well, there's the gap. People want to know why young people are squeegeeing, there's the gap. We do not have a guaranteed income, we do not have a living wage, our education system is setting kids up so they can't pass the certification exam, and then they can't get employment that allows them to pay for housing.
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Greg Wright:
Dr. K, you've actually broken a lot of stereotypes that I read almost daily, that they are lazy, this is easy money, they don't have to pay taxes on it, some of them are making a few hundred dollars a day. I don't know whether that's correct, but there's a gap in understanding between the public and the politicians and these people. How do you get them to talk about a solution? I also want to add, there was a murder a few months back, where a motorist got in an altercation with a group of people who squeegee. That fueled even more controversy over it. In the aftermath of all of this happening, how hard is it to find a solution?
Kyla Liggett-Creel:
Again, you have to look at the bias in this situation. There was an altercation, but an adult male got out of his car with a baseball bat to come after youth, young people, children, and then one of the young people had a gun and shot the gentleman. Sometimes there's this misrepresentation of what happened, like the young person was just standing around shooting. This was an adult male who came after a child with a baseball bat. So yes, that did light fire under this and say, "Hey, something has to happen."
I do want to point out before I go into the solution conversation that as I was talking with youth, they were saying, "But nobody's telling the story about how drivers are hitting children with their cars." Literally, there's a young man who's been hit twice with a car and ended up in the hospital. All of his teeth have been knocked out and he broke his pelvis, okay? Let's talk about that and the harm that's happening to the children. But also, they talked about there are people who drive by and call them the N word. There are people who drive by and have a knife sitting in their lap and looking at the young people, threatening them with a knife. There are assaults that are happening to the young people that people aren't talking about.
Now as far as bringing people together for a solution, in the Collaborative, there has been a representation of all these different groups. We have the squeegee workers in the room, we have businesses in the room, we have nonprofits in the room, we have racial justice leaders in the room. We're all coming together and doing that work of really saying let's start with the idea that we have to recognize the role of racism and systems of oppression in how we got here. Now let's talk about how we're going to try to address this issue. It's hard work, it's hard conversations, but we're going to get to a place that there is a solution that offers safety for everyone and wellbeing. Our children are not being taken care of, we need to do something about that as a community. If we are the village, we need to act as one.
Greg Wright:
I'm a resident of Baltimore, I attend a church. We are part of BUILD, which is an organization of faith-based ones who are working to uplift Baltimore. I always keep a few dollars I give, but what could I do more?
Kyla Liggett-Creel:
I think that's a great question. One, help with the narrative and help get the word out and remind people, these are young people, these are teenagers, these are children. When people are using all of these derogatory words describing young people, these young gentlemen as all these negative things, we all have a responsibility to challenge that narrative and educate people, "Hey, wait a minute, did you know," da, da, da, da, da. That's one thing, is education.
The second thing is as the solution, the plan comes out, Everybody should be looking at that plan to see what role can they play. Whether it be, "Oh, you want to help the squeegee workers? Here is a way that you can donate," and maybe it's a direct donation plan. I don't know what the plan is yet, we're still coming up with it, But it may be that there's a, "Okay, if you want to give to squeegee workers, here's a way you can do that." It could be that they say, "Well, we need volunteers." You could volunteer in that plan. If you have a business, you could say, "Okay, I'm happy to have a squeegee worker come and have them as part of the business."
These are all things that each person, every person, can do. Also, voting and political advocacy. We can't sit back and say, "Well, these kids got to figure this out." No, no, no, no, we need to be voting and saying, "Okay, well, let's talk about a living wage. Let's talk about guaranteed income. Let's talk about education reform." Those things have to be part of this because these are the systems of oppression that are causing this situation to happen.
Greg Wright:
Sometimes, Dr. K, it seems so overwhelming. I love Baltimore. I live in a neighborhood that's not gentrified fully, there are really good people there. There's a stereotype that it's Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, and it isn't, it's real people. But as you had said, there's historic systemic racism, there's a redlining issue. Our governor of Maryland, I was really angry because they wanted to build a light rail that went from west side, east side, where it's needed. No, it actually goes up through areas that are gentrified, so it's not helping. How do you not get overwhelmed with your work and discouraged? Because it's micro, meso, macro, it's all levels.
Kyla Liggett-Creel:
The challenges that I face as a social worker pales in comparison and is nothing compared to what people that I work with experience on a daily basis. That's to start with. I am a very privileged person, I am a white female with a PhD. I almost check every box of privilege, except for the female thing, that's not so much, but I have all of these privileges. Even when I have a day or I look at my work and go, "Am I making any difference at all?" I have to think about the folks that I work with, where they are in almost every category of oppressed populations and yet every day they get up and try to make the city better. I got nothing, I got nothing that I can look at and say, "Oh, I'm stressed." Well, have a minute with some of the guys I work with, right?
Greg Wright:
Yeah.
Kyla Liggett-Creel:
I think as social workers, it's important for us to recognize our own privilege. By definition, if we're social workers, at least in Maryland, you have to have a master's degree, you have to have licensing, which means you had a way to go to school, you have education, you have literacy, you have employment opportunities. That's a lot of privilege that we have to recognize. Then that really helps with I'm not going to be overwhelmed because look at the folks that I work with and what they have to deal with every day. I'm thankful and I'm blessed and I'm privileged, so move on and do the work.
Greg Wright:
You had mentioned earlier that you're working on a plan about squeegee workers.
Kyla Liggett-Creel:
Oh yeah. Like I said, the Collaborative is made up of people from the city government, nonprofits, business community, squeegee community, higher ed, all of that, and it's really a collaborative process. The plan is not ready yet, it's not out yet, but we do hope to have it out this fall sometime.
Greg Wright:
I want to definitely follow up with you on it.
Kyla Liggett-Creel:
Yeah.
Greg Wright:
Before we let you go though, I want to find out more about how you entered the social work profession. Where are you from and how did you end up where you are now, doing this wonderful work?
Kyla Liggett-Creel:
Thank you. I grew up in Washington, DC. I grew up in Shaw, which is down the street from Howard University. I grew up in the '80s in Shaw, Shaw today is not the Shaw of the '80s.
Greg Wright:
No, it isn't.
Kyla Liggett-Creel:
When I was growing up, it was at the height of the crack epidemic. DC was mostly crack, there was some heroin. It was also during the height of the AIDS epidemic. I did grow up with crack pipes at the front, guys and gangs on the corners, open air drug markets, shootings regularly. I also grew up going to schools that were failing schools. They usually have a rating system one to 10 and one is the lowest, those were the schools. I went to school, honor roll, honors society, all of this. Then when I graduated and I went to college, I was confused as to why I was in remedial classes. I was like, "Wait a minute, that doesn't make sense." Now, I was the only white kid in my neighborhood, in my church, in my elementary school. I grew up in a predominantly Black community, learning about systems of oppression, racism, civil rights movement. I went to Shiloh Baptist Church, which is a historically Black church founded by 19 runaway enslaved people.
Greg Wright:
I sang in the choir there a few times in my youth, so small world.
Kyla Liggett-Creel:
Oh my gosh, the children's choir?
Greg Wright:
Mm-hmm, yeah. I grew up outside of DC, in Upper Marlboro, and some of my neighbors attended there. They would grab me on Sundays, "Come on and sing." Yeah, I know it well. I've actually been in at a few weddings there. Go ahead, enough about me.
Kyla Liggett-Creel:
No, no, no, no. I did grow up in the children's choir, the youth choir, they have a deaf ministry so I was signing at the deaf ministry.
Greg Wright:
Wow.
Kyla Liggett-Creel:
I was there three, four days a week. On Sundays in a Black baptist church, we start at nine and we end on Tuesday. I was there there all the time. When I went to college and I was like, "Well, why am I in a remedial class, but yet I was in honors society in my high school?" Then I started to really think more, why did I have teachers giving us coloring sheets in AP biology? When I asked, "Why are we coloring?" the response from the teacher was, "You're never going to be anything but a ditch digger, so it doesn't matter what I teach."
Greg Wright:
Wow, wow.
Kyla Liggett-Creel:
My major was family sciences with a focus on the African American family, minor in women's studies. I did more of the academic learning and saying, "Oh, wait, now I have to understand." I had learned about systems of oppression, I had learned about civil rights, and now I'm putting it at the micro level and going, "Oh, when redlining happens, this is how it impacts the family and the person. Oh, now I'm making these connections."
I went to Smith College for my master's in social work, it's an anti-racist institution, so that all of my education was with an anti-racism lens so that I could understand their clinical meaning. Also, as we're learning about some of the "fathers of psychology," first of all, let's talk about fathers, we'll talk about the men, but we'll keep going, but also the misdiagnosis of the African American community, the role of mental health in oppression, going back to the days of slavery.
From there, I did my internship in Baltimore, Maryland where I worked at Kennedy Krieger Family Trauma Center for 10 years. Then I came to the University of Maryland, where I did place-based programming, but I was very clear when people said, "Oh, can you go into this community and create a parenting program?" well, that doesn't make any sense. I am a white woman, not from Baltimore, I am not going to go into this neighborhood and say, "Hey, Black moms, this is how you should raise your children in the neighborhood you grew up in."
I really focused on partnering with people in the neighborhoods. We were co-creating, like, "Oh, there's a parenting program. What do you think we should be important?" My dissertation was comparing the outcomes between when the mothers and fathers implemented the group to when social workers implemented the group. We had the same outcomes, so why are we paying social workers? Why are we having white social workers come into this predominantly Black neighborhood and say, "Okay, I'm going to tell you how to raise your children." That is not okay. It's patronizing, it's paternalistic, and it upholds the racism that occurs in this country.
That has been my work for the past 13 years, is really partnering with community and trying to say to predominantly white institutions or communities of privilege, we are not the experts in the life and experience of the communities we partner with, they are the experts. Our role should be to support, remove barriers and access resources, not tell people how to raise their children or how to address the challenges that are currently happening.
Greg Wright:
Wow.
Kyla Liggett-Creel:
That's my journey.
Greg Wright:
Yeah, a wonderful one, wow, and interesting. I could do a podcast episode on a white woman at Shiloh Baptist Church just on its own.
Kyla Liggett-Creel:
Right.
Greg Wright:
But Dr. K, it has really been a pleasure. I'm so glad that we had this opportunity to have you on. Thanks for being a guest with Social Work Talks.
Kyla Liggett-Creel:
Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate you.
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