Critical whiteness theory and social work education: turning the lens inward

ABSTRACT

The social work profession adheres to the values of social justice and equity, yet extensive literature suggests that anti-racism education in social work has room for growth. Research demonstrates that social work practitioners and educators often fail to recognize (1) how structural oppression creates racial inequities and (2) how social workers maintain and reproduce hegemonic power structures. Critical whiteness theory (CWT) seeks to reveal the invisible role of whiteness in constructing racial inequities. As a subject area, critical whiteness studies emerged in the late 1990s as an expansion of critical race theory. A variety of disciplines have incorporated critical whiteness studies as a framework for anti-racism education; however, CWT remains relatively absent from the social work literature. This paper proposes the incorporation of CWT in social work education as a tool to facilitate critical self-reflexivity and combat structural racism within the profession. Engaging with the concepts of white normativity, white ignorance, and white complicity allows social work educators and students to acknowledge and interrogate the formative ways in which social work pedagogy maintains and reproduces white supremacy.

KEYWORDS:

• Anti-racism education
• reflexivity
• complicity
• critical race theory
• critical whiteness theory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. In APA, the Mechanics of Style calls for the names of all racial and ethnic groups to be capitalized. However, throughout this paper I intentionally leave ‘white’ uncapitalized to challenge the normalization of whiteness.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Quinn Hafen

Quinn Hafen is a white, non-binary, and queer individual born and raised in the United States. They are a current PhD student in the School of Social Work at Colorado State University. Quinn seeks to advance social work practice by pushing the institute of academia away from the status quo and toward justice and equity. In their work, Quinn aims to be reflective of how their positionality has influenced the research questions they ask and the conclusions they draw. They strive to interrogate their whiteness in the context of the continual reproduction of white supremacy within the field of social work.