Social Work, White Supremacy, and Racial Justice

The profession of social work in the United States has a complex history of upholding White supremacy alongside a goal of achieving racial justice. Moreover, the profession simultaneously practices within racist institutions and systems and works to dismantle them. While there are many ways that the profession of social work has improved quality of life for minoritized groups, there are numerous missed opportunities where we have failed to uphold our values. In the wake of national movements to stop state-sanctioned violence and anti-Black racism and the knowledge of persistent racial disparities in key social welfare institutions (i.e., child welfare, criminal justice, health, housing, and mental health), these paradoxes remain the forefront of discussion in academia, social media, and social work practice. The aftermath of these national efforts provided an opportunity to appraise our profession's relationship to White supremacy and racial justice in order to reimagine and work to achieve an anti-racist future.

In this edited volume, the authors critically examine social work's history, values, and mission, offer innovative strategies for education and practice, and make a call-to-action for social work to eliminate structural racism in education, research, practice, and social service institutions and systems. A collection of 40 chapters using diverse voices, theories, and methods challenges us to conceptualize and enact an anti-racist future through reckoning with our past histories of oppression and resistance, de-centering whiteness, and forging new practices, policies, and pedagogies that can lead to an anti-racist future.

Laura S. Abrams, PhD is a Professor of Social Welfare at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. She received her BA in history from Brandeis University and her MSW and PhD from the UC Berkeley School of Social Welfare.

Sandra Edmonds Crewe, PhD, MSW, BSW, ACSW is Dean and Professor, Howard University School of Social Work. She received her BSW/MSW from the National Catholic School of Social Service, Catholic University of America, and inaugural Ph.D. social work degree from Howard University, Washington, DC.

Alan J. Dettlaff, PhD is Dean of the Graduate College of Social Work at the University of Houston and the inaugural Maconda Brown O'Connor Endowed Dean's Chair.

James Herbert Williams, PhD., MSW, MPA is the Arizona Centennial Professor of Social Welfare Services at the School of Social Work at Arizona State University.