‘What good is anti‐racist social work if you can’t master it’?: exploring a paradox in anti‐racist social work education

Abstract

Anti‐racist pedagogies, pedagogies built around the idea of self‐reflexivity and the examination of white privilege, confront enormous obstacles in a profession such as social work that defines its mandate as the practical and benevolent treatment of society’s marginalized and ‘unfortunate’ individuals and groups. Pedagogy about race and racism within soical work education is structured to fit within the accepted parameters of how practice is defined. Yet the day‐to‐day practices on which the profession rests, and which sustain the profession, reproduce whiteness. Thus ‘doing’ race following this same formula functions to reproduce whiteness and race as one more skill at which to be competent. As long as social work practice is synonymous with diversity management and the development of competencies, we remain unable to reconcile being a ‘good’ social worker with anti‐racist practice.

Notes

1. Most of the interview participants were members of national social work education committees and boards as well as educators in university‐based social work programs. Almost half of those interviewed had been members of the Task Force on Multicultural and Multiracial Issues in Social Work Education in 1989–91.

2. While participants spoke of a range of situations from the acceptance of the need for an anti‐racist analysis to the ramifications when people reject or deflect such an analysis, my focus here is on the case where the analysis is both accepted and acted on.