How White is Social Work in Australia?

Abstract

How White is social work in Australia? This paper analyses this question, focusing on social work practice and education. In asking the question, the aim is to open space for debate about how the social work profession in Australia should progress practice with Indigenous people and issues. The paper combines Bourdieu's concept of the habitus with “Whiteness” theory to argue that the profession is socially, economically, culturally, and geographically separated from Indigenous people and that the consequences for how social workers engage with their Indigenous clients have yet to be fully explored. Decentring Whiteness requires recognition of epistemological and ontological assumptions so deeply embedded that they are invisible to those who carry them. This invisibility permits White privilege to exist unacknowledged and unchallenged within societal formations. In shifting the focus away from the “Other” to the “non Other”, an examination of Whiteness asks social workers to examine their own racial location and the role of White privilege in their lives. It requires us to go beyond intellectual commitments to antiracism and antioppression, and to make racial issues personal as well as political.

Abstract

Keywords:

• Indigenous
• Whiteness
• Racism
• Social Work Education
• Habitus
• Social Work Theory

Notes

¹Key documents are Australian Social Work Education and Accreditation Standards (Australian Association of Social Workers [AASW], 2010), the Practice Standards for Social Workers: Achieving Outcomes (AASW, 2003), and the Code of Ethics (AASW, 1999).