An Exploration of Whiteness in Social Work

This study explores whiteness in social work, starting from the root of whiteness as a social problem; namely, how we understand the phenomenon of whiteness in the first place—an issue that remains contested, notwithstanding oversimplifying claims to the contrary and tendencies both within and beyond social work to rush to ostensibly multi-cultural or anti-racist projects despite never having established foundational understanding of the central definitional issue to begin with. Specifically, this study raises the question of how whiteness manifests in contemporary social work according to social workers who do not identify as white. Research and scholarship on the topic of whiteness are grounded overwhelmingly in the perspectives of white people and institutions. The present study sees this as a problem and seeks to ascertain the long misconceived, always evolving, immediately relevant phenomenon of whiteness from a vantage point outside of whiteness by relying upon the interpretations of people who do not identify as white. To that end, this study interviews a national sample (n=30) of U.S. social work master’s students, doctoral students, and faculty who do not identify as white in order to collect data capable of clarifying how to understand whiteness in social work in the present moment. Participants report their experiences with and perceptions of whiteness in social work curricula, in their own work, and in their institutions. The results of these interviews, therefore, incorporate viewpoints from previously overlooked and excluded populations; voices without which whiteness cannot be fully apprehended.Through individual, semi-structured, in-depth, qualitative, interviews, participants’ reports cohere inductively around three categories of experience: the “what” of whiteness (i.e., description), the “why” of whiteness (i.e., interpretation), and the “how” of whiteness (i.e., explanation). Taken together, and scaffolded by existing sociological and psychoanalytic theories, these categories render a ...