Challenging White Privilege: Critical Discourse for Social Work Education

What can discourse about White privilege reveal about social work education and how can that discourse catalyze action and transformation? These are the questions that Nocona Pewewardy tackles in her insightful and provocative book, Challenging White Privilege. Contemporary discourse about White privilege emphasizes the constructed social meanings that society has attached to the concept of race. In order to eradicate racial oppression in the U.S., people with privilege must come to the realization that the racial hierarchy in the U.S. is built on and maintained by falsely constructed notions of White supremacy. Pewewardy believes that social work's present response to racism is inadequate because it lacks sufficient effort directed at deconstructing White privilege. Challenging White Privilege provides information and strategies that can be used to envision and apply liberatory alternatives in social work education.

Council on Social Work Education

We are a nonprofit national association representing individual members and graduate and undergraduate programs of professional social work education. Founded in 1952, this partnership of educational and professional institutions, social welfare agencies, and private citizens is recognized by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation as the sole accrediting agency for social work education in this country.

CSWE Press is a niche publisher that addresses the needs of social work educators. Some of our areas of publishing specialty are

-The philosophy, theory, and practice of teaching
-The process and evaluation of learning
-The organization and structure of social work education
-Diversity in all forms in social work practice and education
-Social work in multiple contexts

Nocona Pewewardy is an assistant professor in the Department of Social Work Education at California State University, Fresno. In 2003, Pewewardy earned her PhD from the School of Social Welfare at the University of Kansas. This book is based, in part, on her doctoral dissertation.