Social work’s grandest challenge: re-contextualizing racism and reducing its deleterious effects on its members and those we serve

ABSTRACT

Social work as a profession has a legacy of racism, bigotry, and White supremacy that has harmed a number of racially marginalized groups of people. To this day, social work continues to be beleaguered by racialized activities at the student, practitioner, and research levels that stain its reputation. The author discusses how racist ideologies negatively affect the social work profession and how members of the profession can make immediate changes in social work practice, education, and research in an effort to eliminate racism as one of the grand challenges for social work.

KEYWORDS:

• Social work
• grand challenges
• racism
• practice
• research

America’s obsession with race has defied all attempts to eliminate its counterpart – racism (Hopps, 1982). Racism is America’s grandest challenge, and it is time to engage in significant and meaningful dialogue about its conspicuous presence in the social work profession (Davis, 2016). Racism involves the subordination of a racialized person or persons based on a common characteristic for the sole purpose of controlling and relegating the lived experiences of that person or group of persons to the periphery. The United States’ prediction of major decisions based on race is unrelenting and has been a central element in the historic and contemporary landscape of the country in the political, cultural, and economic arenas (Teasley et al., 2022). Racist practices persist despite scientific evidence that counters any and all racialized depictions of human variation (i.e., superior vs inferior human beings) by biased scientists (American Association of Biological, Anthropologists [AABA], 2019). Given that it is now common knowledge that humans around the world are 99.9% identical in their genetic makeup (National Institute of Health [NIH], 2018), the author will refrain from language that suggests that there are different races. Instead, the author will use racially minoritized and racialized persons in this paper when referencing ethnically diverse people while reserving the use of the words, race and racism, to acknowledge the deleterious effects of both constructed realities on racialized groups of people.

Although the social work profession has long been hailed as a value laden profession that cares about the marginalized and seeks justice (Apgar, 2021; Corley & Young, 2018; Jones et al., 2022; National Association of Social Workers [NASW], 2021a), it has also served as an architect and instrument of racist practices that have egregiously harmed a number of racially minoritized groups of people over time (National Association of Social Workers [NASW], 2021b). As a result, the good deeds and commendable efforts of the social work profession continue to be eclipsed by White supremacy – the grand wizard of uncivilized rhetoric. White supremacy is a political system with multiple contours that encompasses overlapping, interlocking, and intersections of White domination that sustains the permanence of racism (Mills, 1994). It includes the belief that people of color are morally, socially, biologically, and intellectually inferior to people of European descent (AABA, 2019; Schiele & Jackson, 2020). This term is not reserved just for those who identify or are labeled as hateful racists and subscribe to the biological/genetic definition of race, but it also applies to people who perpetuate whiteness whether they are conscious of it or not (Shannon, 1970; Stempler, 1975). The purpose of this article, then, is to discuss social work’s grandest challenge around re-contextualizing racism and reducing its deleterious effects on its members and those we serve. Specifically, the author will discuss social work’s 13th grand challenge to eliminate racism, how racist ideologies and practices negatively affect the social work profession and those we serve, and how members of the profession can make changes in social work practice, education, and research.

Landscape of social work’s grandest challenge related to racism in the profession

The initial 12 Grand Challenges for Social Work were laid out by the American Academy of Social Work & Social Welfare (AASWSW) in 2013 (AASWSW, 2022). Eliminate racism as a grand challenge was added in 2020 (Rao et al., 2021). The current 13 grand challenges cluster around three domains: 1) individual and family well-being; 2) stronger social fabric, and 3) a just society (AASWSW, 2022; Lee et al., 2022; Teixeira et al., 2021). (Please see Figure 1 for a breakdown of these clusters.)

Figure 1. Grand challenges for social work.

As the last grand challenge to be added to social work’s responsibility, Eliminate Racism may just be the most difficult – even for a benevolent profession. Specifically, this particular grand challenge states that,

The United States is built on a legacy of racism and white supremacy that has consistently and significantly impacted the daily lives of millions of people. Today, racist policies, bias, and discriminatory practices continue to promote racial inequality in myriad ways. Social work has provided considerable leadership in the civil rights and race equity movements, but has much more work to do, internal to the profession and for society as a whole. We propose to develop a model for eliminating racism by identifying evidence and practice-based interventions that will end racism and ameliorate the negative outcomes of our history of racism. (AASWSW, 2022, definition of grand challenge)

Additionally, NASW (2021a) asserts that service, social justice, dignity and worth of the person, importance of human relationships, integrity, and competence are core values of the profession. The profession’s record, however, shows discrepancies and complete disregard for these values when it comes to social work practice, education, and research with racially minoritized persons.

Social work practice and education

Historical racist practices by White social workers and social work leaders include prohibiting Black Americans from using settlement houses, blocking Black women from the right to vote, denying admission of Black people to schools of social work, helping to recruit unsuspecting Black men to participate in the Tuskegee Experiment for over 40 years, and writing regulations during the Great Depression that excluded Black people from the country’s safety net. Additional racist practices include supporting eugenics; participating in the involuntary sterilization of women of color who were mainly on welfare, in mental institutions or seeking services from¹Indian Health Services; helping lead efforts where Indigenous children were put in state sponsored schools and removed from their families; and serving as part of the intake team for the incarceration of people of Japanese descent during World War II (Meshelemiah & Lynch, 2020; NASW, 2021b; Schiele & Jackson, 2020; Sloane et al., 2018). These historical events are well documented in the literature with consequences that reverberate among the kindred of those affected to this day.

In contemporary times, social work is plagued with color evasive practices, pedagogy entrenched in Whiteness, and biased decision-making that results in disproportionate involvement of Black, Indigenous and²Latine families in the child welfare system – a longstanding and disruptive practice that continues to break up racialized families and subject them to legal challenges and complex trauma (Children’s Bureau, 2021; Corley & Young, 2018; Gerassi et al., 2022; Grinnell Davis et al., 2022; McMahon & Allen-Meares, 1992; Musto, 2022; NASW, 2021b). Some attribute the targeting of racialized families for child welfare/legal intervention to practices grounded in disproportionality and disparities among those employed in the social work workforce. For instance, the social work profession has a major issue with disproportionality in its workforce and disparity among its license test takers. Disproportion refers to overrepresentation or underrepresentation of an ethnic group compared to its percentage in the total population while disparity indicates unequal outcomes of an ethnic group compared with others in another ethnic group (Children’s Bureau 2021; Choi et al., 2021). Related to disproportionality, social workers are predominately White and female (ASWB, 2022; Kolivoski et al., 2014). This can be partly explained by the reality that White women aged 15–44 make up 54.3% of the U.S. population (March of Dimes Foundation, 2022), and make up the majority of social work degree programs (Becker et al., 2022). There is another explanation for the disproportionality of White women in social work, however – the national social work licensure requirement. White women social workers have a national social work licensure pass rate that significantly surpasses that of Black test takers (ASWB, 2022).

In the United States, individuals must earn a social work degree from an accredited school of social work and pass their state’s licensure examination in order to become a social worker (Ohio Rule 4757-19-01). The licensure exam, however, has been heavily criticized for years for its disparate outcomes for test takers. In its attempt to be transparent among growing allegations that the national licensing board facilitates institutional racism, for the first time in its history, the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) released a (2022) public report on its pass rate across five exams throughout the U.S. and its territories (ASWB, 2022; NADD, 2022). The controversial report indicated statistically significant different pass rates between White test-takers and Black test-takers across all 5 exams in all 50 states. Additionally, Black test-takers tended to have the lowest pass rates of all racial/ethnic groups (ASWB, 2022).

According to the ASWB (2022) report, disparities between Black and White test takers of ASWB exams were reduced to a lack of preparation among Black test takers, lack of time to prepare for the exam, and other burdens and responsibilities pulling on the Black test taker due to societal ills – all individual level explanations. Not a single hypothesis about the prospects of institutional racism playing an explicit role in the national results was proffered despite the fact that Black test takers clustered at the bottom of scores on all five³examinations (ASWB, 2022). This scapegoating is typical in social work. Despite centuries of evidence and documentation about the differential treatment of Black people in America, in particular, the profession continues to be silent, ignore, deny, or assert that more research is needed to actually confirm that Black people, including Black social workers are adversely treated in this society. The author asserts that it is not only conceivable that social work licensure examinations are extremely biased and structurally disadvantage Black applicants, but the results released by the ASWB supports this speculation. This structural disparity offers a plausible explanation for the disproportionality in the social work workforce. It is time to look inward at the reality that the Association of Social Work Board has a flawed and biased examination process that facilitates and maintains the profession’s predominately White workforce.

Another culprit related to the hyper-invisibility of Black, Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) in the social work workforce relates to the admission criteria for social work programs for advanced degrees. That is, those who do not earn an undergraduate degree in social work from an accredited institution, have to earn an advanced degree in social work from an accredited institution in order to be permitted to take the licensure examination. In the past, gaining admission into social work graduate programs often required Graduate Record Examination (GRE) scores. Nowadays, this requirement is usually reserved for doctoral programs, if at all, in social work. It was not until the most recent pandemic, however, that America was forced to reckon with its many racist and disparate practices – including those related to the pursuit of education opportunities and the GRE requirement. As a result, the great GRExit (the decision to stop requiring the GRE exam for admission into graduate programs) took place in an attempt to be fair and more inclusive in the admission process. The GRE was known for its disparate outcomes for its racially minoritized applicants. The Graduate Record Examination (GRE) is not statistically accurate in its predictions about who will be successful in graduate school, and it has disparate impacts on racially minoritized applicants (Hooker et al., 2022; Langin, 2019). GRE scores being dropped as an application requirement among many universities due to its weak predictive abilities and inherent biases demonstrates that long held traditions about standardized tests can be detrimental to all attempts at being inclusive and supportive of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts (Langin, 2019). Considering the GRExit that has taken hold in the U.S., it is time that social work pauses and critically interrogates its standardized licensure examinations. It must come up with a more equitable manner of credentialing its social work graduates.

When it comes to social work students, Becker et al. (2022) found that a color-blind racial ideology (CBRI) presented among a sample of 305 MSW students enrolled in five social work programs. The researchers found that men, students older in age, and those having a BSW were all significantly associated with higher CBRI scores in comparison to their counterparts who were women, younger in age, and held nonsocial work degrees. Higher scores suggest less understanding of race, racism, and privilege. These researchers also discovered that students pursuing a macro or policy focused track had lower CBRI scores, thus suggesting a greater understanding of race, racism, and privilege. They concluded that it is critical to teach social work students about their blind spots in these areas.

Social work research

Currently, social work is still linked to bias, racism, pathologizing of racialized groups, the erasure of marginalized groups, including race as an afterthought in research, and the differential reception of the scholarship of its academic members (Corley & Young, 2018; McMahon & Allen-Meares, 1992). When Rao et al. (2021) examined the infusing of race, ethnicity, and racism scholarship in the 21 concept papers that framed the original 12 social work grand challenges, it was clear that race, ethnicity, and racism were inadequately addressed by social work scholars. Specifically, papers on Asians/Asian Americans (n = 1), Alaskan Natives/American Indians (n = 2), and Pacific Islanders (n = 0) were grossly underrepresented. Only 58% (n = 7) of the original 12 challenges had papers that explicitly included content on race and ethnicity, and only 42.8% (n = 9) of the 21 papers mentioned a specific form of racism (i.e., structural, systemic, interpersonal, etc.) Last, none of the papers defined or conceptualized racism as a term. This is grossly inadequate given that race, ethnicity, and racism were to be fused throughout all the grand challenges. Teasley et al. (2022) conducted a similar content analysis as Rao et al. (2021) of the social work grand challenges and found similar results in the then 22 concept papers that were available. They concluded that antiracist work must begin on the individual level but materialize on all levels of the social work profession. This includes using tools to dismantle White supremacy, adopting critical race theory as a framework in practice and research, utilizing an evidence and practice-based research approach, and rooting out racist policies, practices, and pedagogy in the profession. Last, the profession was encouraged to develop a policy agenda to structurally eliminate racism and White supremacy while continuously undergoing evaluations and keeping social workers accountable in their respective roles.

Teasley et al. (2022) and Rao et al. (2021) findings were not new. In 1992, McMahon and Allen-Meares conducted a content analysis (“Is Social Work Racist?”) using 117 articles from four top-tiered social work journals (Child Welfare, Social Casework, Social Work and Social Service Review) that were published between 1980 and 1989. They found that only 5.95% of 1965 articles focused on social work interventions with Black, Indigenous (Native American), Latine, and Asian American populations; the target audience was generally White social workers when Black Americans were of focus; Black clients were the most frequently studied in two of the journals when non-special issues were examined; and that helping-centered articles tended to ignore structural barriers in society. The authors concluded that the social work profession was naïve and superficial in its antiracist practices despite its perception of being progressive and inclusive (McMahon & Allen-Meares, 1992). Kendi (2019) would argue that one is either racist or anti-racist and there is no middle ground or neutrality on this issue. One is either complicit or one works to eliminate racism – in this case, social work scholars were not engaging in anti-racist practices and therefore – by omission – were engaging in racist practices. Twenty-six years later after the McMahon and Allen-Meares’ study, two more researchers, Corley and Young (2018) begged the question, “Is Social Work Still Racist?.” They too conducted a content analysis, but this time using 123 articles from four top-tiered social work journals (Child Welfare,⁴Research on Social Work Practice, Social Work, and Social Service Review) that were published between 2005 and 2015. They found that only 7.28% of 1690 articles focused on social work interventions with Black, Indigenous (Native American), Latine, and Asian American populations. Additional findings pointed to a focus on Black Americans; 68% of intervention studies with Black Americans focused on the individual versus institutions. Studies on Latine populations tended to focus on immigration issues while ignoring other important realities of this diverse group. Half of the articles on Native Americans were in the Child Welfare journal. This singular focus is consistent with the disproportionate representation of Indigenous families involved in the child welfare system in this country (Grinnell Davis et al., 2022). Corley and Young (2018) conclude their article with the assertion that the social work profession fails to address institutional racism.

Five to ten years in the future: development and challenges and future grand challenges

One of the initial hesitancies to include the elimination of racism as a grand challenge for social work was the grand nature of it and the many centuries it has persisted in this country (AASWSW, 2022). Racism has persisted in this country for hundreds of years. The genocide of Indigenous people, the dispossession of their lands, and the theft of their children coupled with the barbaric enslavement, rape, and denigration of Africans and African Americans for centuries are firmly rooted in racism in this country (Wilkerson, 2020). The incarceration of Japanese Americans under the false pretense of national security during World War II are additional examples of White supremacy at its worst. There are still people in this country, including in the social work profession who are unwilling to recognize social work’s historical complicity in White Supremacy as well as the profession’s contemporary practices that exude White privilege and complicity in perpetuating structural, institutional, and interpersonal racism in this country (Becker et al., 2022; Stempler, 1975). Historically and to this present day, the profession of social work has been and continues to be shortsighted in its embrace of the importance of and urgency in addressing racism and reducing the deleterious effects of it on its members, first and foremost, and then those the profession serves.

Five to ten years in the future, the profession will most likely continue to examine its current grand challenges because they are all persistent and complex problems in this country and this world. Racism threads through them all and it has been very difficult to eliminate due to the many reasons already discussed in this article.

Why social work has not moved the needle

Social work has failed to authentically incorporate justice into its professional framework. The social work profession has been and continues to be vectors of structural racism in social work practice, education, and research. Today, 100+ years later after the development of the social work profession, the profession is still dealing with the same issues around race and racism in this country as it has in the past. As a result, little progress has been made and social work has not moved the needle. As stated in the opener of NASW’s 2021 apology, the organization acknowledges its wrongdoings and pitfalls in this way,

As our nation turns more attention to addressing its long history of systemic racism, the National Association of Social Workers acknowledges that our profession has not always lived up to its mission of pursuing social justice for all. We apologize for supporting policies and activities that harm people of color and we will strengthen our efforts to end racism in the social work profession and in society. (NASW, 2021b, Opening Statement)

As evidenced by this apology, the profession owns up to its grave misdoings and pledges to do things differently in the future. Owning its oppressive past while using language to suggest that the profession is still not out of the woods (e.g., will strengthen our efforts) speaks directly to the reality that the profession is out of alignment with its historical mission to promote social justice through social action and to care for the disenfranchised. This public apology is a big step in the right direction. As a profession that takes great pride in its bragging rights on how social workers are trained, prepared, and even expected to embrace a set of values that condemns injustices, embraces emancipatory frameworks, and understands systems and institutions, the profession must avoid its repeated veering from its charge and lead the way to a true shift in practices, policies, and procedures. A challenge in doing so, however, is grounded in the reality that social work exists within a larger racist and harmful ecosystem – the U.S.’s deeply engrained sociopolitical systems. Although the author would like to believe that anyone who chooses to become a social worker would value all humans equally, the preponderance of evidence says otherwise about social workers as a group. Unfortunately, many social workers have latched on to the narrative that some people are less than human and/or are not as worthy of assistance as the descendants of European Americans – as espoused throughout the corridors of Western countries. For instance, the child welfare system’s response to BIPOC families in need is flawed. Oftentimes, requests for services are met with charges of child maltreatment – child neglect specifically. Counter to prevailing beliefs, neglect allegations are far more prevalent than abuse allegations in child welfare cases (Roberts, 2022). As a result, some scholars unapologetically advocate for the dismantling of the entire child welfare system. Dorothy Roberts, an esteemed scholar, is one such advocate. She asserts that the child welfare system is not an appropriate system to seek assistance from for BIPOC families due to their malevolent treatment in the system (Roberts, 2022). Alarmingly, the Children’s Bureau (2021) reports that racial disparities present at every major decision-making point on the child welfare continuum. Decision points include stages involving reporting, investigation, substantiation, and child removal from the home (Children’s Bureau 2021; Grinnell Davis et al., 2022). These decision-making persons are often social workers who are entangled in a system that seeks to maintain White supremacy instead of helping families in need. Until the social work profession understands the impact of this carceral system, its complicit actions, and starts to create systems that are not reliant on government funding and its coercive control, social workers will not move the needle and truly start to help BIPOC families with children in need.

Like many laypersons in society, some social workers have been deceived by the works of pseudoscientists who spew vitriol regarding the humanity of BIPOC people for White supremacy purposes. This discourse has resulted in harmful practices embedded in racist ideologies that were and continue to be supported by laws, rules, regulations, policies, procedures, and processes over the last 500 years (AABA, 2019; Anderson et al., 2018; Butler, 2015; Chang et al., 2022; DeGruy Leary, 2005; World Populations Group, 2011). Notwithstanding this reality, the author asserts that willful ignorance and personal denial do not absolve one’s racialized transgressions toward others (Shannon, 1970; Stempler, 1975) – especially for social workers who are charged with eliminating racism.

Potential preventive and innovative solutions that could effectively address the issue and its challenges in a way that will promote racial and social justice as well as embrace diversity, equity, and inclusion

As a profession with several boards and organizations that dictate and guide the direction and operations of the profession, social work has the authority and power to make changes within the profession if it wants to. It can curtail the pathologizing of racially minoritized social work clients, faculty, and practitioners and make changes in rules and regulations that are in concert with the tenets of the progression. Combined, the National Association of Social Workers (NASW), the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB), the Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR), the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE), the Group for the Advancement of Doctoral Education in Social Work (GADE), the National Association of Deans and Directors of Schools of Social Work (NADD), the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW), the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare (AASWSW) and journal editorial boards have the ability to change how the profession moves forward in social work practice, education and research (AASWSW, 2022; ASWB, 2022; Council on Social Work Education’s Commission on Accreditation & Commission on Educational Policy, 2022; GADE, 2022; IFSW, 2022; NADD, 2022; NASW, 2021a; SSWR, 2022). It is time, as a profession to move toward eliminating racial hierarchies and to increase racial literacy as a whole. Using the words, must and required to do so, versus can and should in our rules and regulations will result in changes – immediately, if that is the will of the social work profession. Many of the organizations and individuals just identified have the authority and responsibility to hold social work students, deans/chairs, faculty, and practitioners accountable for eliminating racism in the profession. This cannot be done, however, if we allow our members to minimize disproportionality and disparities as coincidence, pathology, and the fault of the racially minoritized client, consumer, student, faculty researcher, practitioner, or leader. We must move past the innate tendency to blame the victim and instead examine and dismantle systems riddled with gaps, biases, and a mockery of social work values. We must do better. One of the ways to innovate and address diversity, equity, and inclusion in social work is to examine the social work workforce and to do something to remedy the disproportionalities among its members.

Opportunities for social work practice, education and research

As a helping profession, social work has the potential to be a trailblazer. Given its historical mission to care for and advocate for the disenfranchised and oppressed, social workers have the potential to do great things in society (Allen-Meares & Burman, 1995; Jones et al., 2022). Important steps must first be addressed in-house, first, so that all its members can perform at their highest levels. Specifically, the profession must take a number of steps to reduce the deleterious effects of racism on its racially minoritized members at all levels. Racially minoritized social work students, faculty researchers, practitioners, and leaders cannot perform at their highest levels when they are being victimized, marginalized, devalued, and harmed. The profession must reexamine how it conducts its affairs from a lens that is inclusive and equitable. It must cease to reproduce racially biased narratives that are malignant, cancerous, and inequitable. For example, blaming Black licensure examination test takers for not passing a biased examination is egregious. Black social workers have been quick, in the past, to call out carceral systems that affected Black people and would have easily detected inequity in the social work licensure examination process long before ASWB reluctantly shared their data in 2022. For instance, social work pioneers, E. Franklin Frazier, Forrester B. Washington, and Whitney Young, all engaged in race work during their time. These pioneers felt that it was essential to approach the profession’s work through a lens that conceptualized race, racism, and justice as priorities when it came to practice, research, and education. This included efforts around increasing the number of Black social workers in the workforce to work with Black populations and curating a social work education that was anti-oppressive (Schiele & Jackson, 2020). Future pioneers will not be present to engage in this type of anti-oppressive social work if they cannot pass the licensure examination and become social workers. Frazier, Washington, and Young’s approach to social justice is needed just as much today as it was back then.

Social work education and practice

The social work profession must engage in social work practices that are grounded in culturally specific and integrative frameworks and paradigms that are centered on Black, Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) groups (Schiele & Hopps, 2009). It must stop struggling to empathize and treat marginalized clients equitably due to a lack of cultural humility (Sloane et al., 2018).

CSWE accredits social work programs at the baccalaureate and master’s program levels and operates from nine competencies as explicated in the 2022 Educational Policies and Accreditation Standards (EPAS). According to these competencies, social work students must demonstrate competent preparation in the areas of 1) ethical and professional practice, 2) human rights and social, racial, economic and environmental justice; 3) anti-racism, diversity, equity and inclusion in practice; 4) practice-informed research/research-informed practice; 5) policy practice, and 6–9) engage/assess/intervene/evaluate when working with individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities (Council on Social Work Education’s Commission on Accreditation & Commission on Educational Policy, 2022). These competencies are interrelated and overlap in education, practice, and research. Competency 2 centers justice in a holistic manner, while Competency 3 calls for the profession to address anti-racism, diversity, equity, and inclusion in practice. It charges social workers to fully understand power, privilege, intersectionality, social and racial injustices, oppression, discrimination, cultural humility, and the impact of White supremacy (Council on Social Work Education’s Commission on Accreditation & Commission on Educational Policy, 2022). Given these competencies, it is with utmost urgency that the social work profession starts to address the innumerable ways that Black, Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) are harmed by racist ideologies by social workers that are grounded in misinformation, antiquated language, bigotry, and White supremacy. For instance, language matters. The social work profession must abandon all use of the word race as a biological term from our social work vernacular. If further used in social work education and practice, race must be put in quotes or italics and/or accompanied by language that convincingly asserts that there is only one human species and that the word is used in the context of recognizing and acknowledging the deleterious effects of racism on people today (Labelle, 2016). We must not be co-opted by other disciplines, pseudoscientists, and professional organizations that assert that change simply takes time and that we must be patient with others in accepting new evidence around the term, race, or making the transition in how we use the term day to day. The profession’s language around race and racism must be changed today in social work education, practice, and research. Others will adapt and follow.

Social work programs must also change their pedagogical approaches to education given the breadth and depth of the grand challenges for the profession (Rodriguez et al., 2017). This includes offering more courses on human rights, justice, anti-racism, privilege, social work’s-stained history, and anti-oppression immediately. Several scholars recommend offering content on critical race theory (CRT) or some compatible framework in tandem with White supremacy and Whiteness because this content is critical to the development of social work students (Curran et al., 2022; Kolivoski et al., 2014; Smith & Mak, 2022; Teixeira et al., 2021). Increasing social work students’ interest in policy analysis and macro practice upon graduation is also important given that students in these concentrations tend to show a deeper understanding of environmental and structural barriers for social work clients and are more likely to engage in social action (Apgar, 2021; Becker et al., 2022; Rodriguez et al., 2017; Teixeira et al., 2021).

The social work charge is clear. We must examine the lived experiences of racially minoritized persons and other marginalized populations and dismantle oppressive practices throughout social work education and practice so that social work programs stop producing social workers who mirror society and fail to develop into progressive critical thinkers and doers. Social work education must align with its current and historical mission of promoting social justice and preserving human rights.

Social work research

Given the diverse backgrounds of social science researchers, the profession of social work, and its accomplished cadre of social scientists, the profession is ideal to use its repertoire of methodologies and subject areas of expertise to address societal ills, like social work’s grand challenges (Davis, 2016). This cannot be accomplished, however, until social work refrains from its apartheid of knowledge (Corley & Young, 2018). In the academy, research that centers Blackness, White supremacy, BIPOC, racism, CRT, racially minoritized persons, and racialized groups are often relegated to the periphery (Mills, 1994). This is evidenced by the types of journals that accept this type of scholarship, the academies that induct scholars into them based on the preferred markers of what scholarship is valuable, the funders who subsidize research studies, and the type of scholarship that results in promotions. Marginalized scholarship is often limited to journals with low impact factors or classified as specialty journals aimed at practitioners or racialized groups. Additionally, this type of scholarship is often limited to special issues only (Corley & Young, 2018; McMahon & Allen-Meares, 1992). This forces the racialized scholar to live and work in two heterogeneous universes as scientists – another disparate outcome of racism.

Social scientists must focus on real problems of the world – like social work’s grand challenges – especially the challenge to eliminate racism. Harley and Fleming (2021) critique elite journals and editors in an article entitled, Not Even Trying to Change the World … Eloquently argued, the scholars assert that editors worry about being too political, controversial, and subjective when deciding to accept manuscripts – all things that social work scholarship should be about in the opinion of the author. In agreement with Harley and Fleming, this author asserts it is time for social work editors and reviewers to recalibrate, pivot, and start to focus on scholarship that changes the world – especially in the context of the grand challenges for social work. This includes getting real-world research and scholarship into the hands of practitioners, students, educators, policymakers, and governing social work organizations.

Conclusion

In addressing the Grand Challenges for Social Work, the profession must develop an acute understanding of the root causes of inequality, oppression, and racism. This includes developing a personal understanding of White supremacy because it is this longstanding and central belief that results in hazardous conditions for racially minoritized people. At this precarious moment in time for the social work profession, it is imperative that the profession returns to its fundamental precepts of promoting social justice and serving the disenfranchised through a practice framework, research trajectory, and educational paradigm that is social work specific and social justice centered. The social work profession must continue to evolve in a direction that markedly shifts from the past, demonstrates that it has learned from its mistakes in the present, and commits to doing things differently in the future. Thus, if we are going to make transformational changes in the social work profession, we must make systemic and comprehensive changes at all levels and in all areas. We must give students, new clinicians, seasoned practitioners, social work leaders, policymakers, and social work researchers the tools and knowledge to do things differently so that we become aligned with the profession’s historical mission. As discussed in this article, addressing the 13^th grand challenge on Eliminating Racism in a comprehensive manner is paramount. Practice, education, and research must all be simultaneously tackled and prioritized in this grand challenge. Addressing one at a time is inadequate and will only serve to further delay change and hurt the social work profession, its reputation, those who serve in the profession, and those we work for.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Indian Health Service is a unit within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

2. Latine is used in this article to better reflect the linguistic norms of the Spanish language.

3. The examinations include the Clinical, Masters, Bachelors, Associates, and Advanced Generalists (ASWB, 2022).

4. This journal replaced Social Casework, which is no longer in print as of 1989.