From social justice to abolition: living up to social work’s grand challenge of eliminating racism

ABSTRACT

How can social work live up to the 13^th Grand Challenge of Eliminating Racism? In this article we argue for the replacement of the predominant social justice paradigm with a framework for anti-racist social work praxis informed by abolitionist principles. The primary aim of anti-racist social work praxis needs to be the building of power in Black, Indigenous, or Brown and poor communities. We define additional praxis principles, including engaging with critical theories, advancing macro-approaches, targeting racism at the source, and developing interventions to eliminate and address the effects of racism. We end by sharing concrete anti-racist praxis tools.

KEYWORDS:

• Social justice
• social work
• abolition
• racism
• anti-racism

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the racial justice and abolitionist movements that have provided many of the insights reflected on in this paper. We have no known conflicts of interest. Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analyzed in this study.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. After pushback from faculty and students around the country, in August 2020 CSWE launched a taskforce to Advance Anti-Racism in Social Work Education. Drafts of the upcoming EPAS may address the unacceptable absence of anti-racist practice in the standards.