Social Work, White Supremacy, and Racial Justice

Abstract

Abstract The profession of social work in the United States has a complex history of upholding White supremacy alongside a goal of achieving racial justice. Moreover, the profession simultaneously practices within racist institutions and systems and works to dismantle them. While there are many ways that the profession of social work has improved quality of life for minoritized groups, there are numerous missed opportunities where it has failed to uphold its values. In the wake of national movements to stop state-sanctioned violence and anti-Black racism and the knowledge of persistent racial disparities in key social welfare institutions (i.e., child welfare, criminal justice, health, housing, and mental health), these paradoxes remain the forefront of discussion in academia, social media, and social work practice. The aftermath of these national efforts provided an opportunity to appraise our profession’s relationship to White supremacy and racial justice in order to reimagine and work to achieve an antiracist future. In this edited volume, the authors critically examine social work’s history, values, and mission; offer innovative strategies for education and practice; and make a call to action for social work to eliminate structural racism in education, research, practice, and social service institutions and systems. A collection of forty chapters using diverse voices, theories, and methods challenges social workers to conceptualize and enact an antiracist future through reckoning with past histories of oppression and resistance, acknowledging early champions of social justice, de-centering Whiteness, and forging new practices, policies, and pedagogies that can lead to an antiracist future