Whiteness and White Supremacy

Abstract

The profession and practice of social work is steeped in whiteness and white supremacy. Whiteness can be viewed as the normalization of helping those who are marginalized via a set of practices and techniques that, in the end, work to maintain the status quo of failing to recognize systemic and structural inequalities that privilege white people. A review of how the social work profession, primarily in North America and around the world, has been shaped by the historical and global evolvement of whiteness and supremacy is considered.