Mapping Whiteness and Coloniality in the Human Service Field: Possibilities for a Praxis of Social Justice in Child and Youth Care

Abstract

<p>This paper explores how a dominant Western ontology rooted in white masculinity and coloniality is embedded in the systems and structures of professional helping in Canada. With a critical, post-colonial feminist analysis, this paper locates Canada’s colonial history as fundamental to ongoing policies and practices in the human services and child and youth care (CYC). The implications of coloniality for CYC suggest that as practitioners we might consciously engage in deconstructing the theories, structures, and values that shape how we practice. Cartographies can assist us in reflexive and deconstructive endeavours. As one maps out the parameters and identifies the existing horizons, one might begin to envision how to then move beyond them. In examining the hegemony of professional helping, the intention is an invitation to work collectively toward models that foreground the social context of problems faced by individuals as well as creative, collective responses. Strategies of an engaged solidarity and a model of socially just, decolonizing praxis offer potential sites for affirmative and transformative social change.</p>

An Ethos for the Times: Difference, Imagination, and the Unknown Future in Child and Youth Care

“…As Chapman, Hoque, and Utting (2013) put it, "white people's naming of racism [frequently] contributes to their exaltation as moral and as on the side of justice" (p. 35). I will say a bit more about how complicated all this is (see also Hoskins, 2012;Skott-Myhre & Little, 2014), but for now, I will just note that Child and Youth Care, as a professional field of helping, is never innocent or outside of this colonial history (Little & Walker, 2014;Loiselle, de Finney, Khanna, & Corcoran, 2012;Saraceno, 2012;SkottMyhre, 2006).…”

“…To say we are all implicated does not mean we are all equally implicated. Transnational feminist frameworks have helped to show us that we are all multiply constituted as well as differentially privileged and disadvantaged along complex intersecting lines of race, class, ability, gender, sexual orientation, and age -all of which play out within particular institutional hierarchies and specific localities (Deepak, 2012;Lee & deFinney, 2008;Patil, 2013;Saraceno, 2012). Because existing systems of domination are interlocking, Fellows and Razack (1998) remind us that we must continuously resist the temptation to view forms of oppression as somehow unrelated.…”

“…The field of CYC, like most fields of professional helping, has emerged out of a Euro-western, liberal humanist tradition and has been strongly influenced by colonial logic and the ideals of the Enlightenment (de Finney et al, 2012;Saraceno, 2012;SkottMyhre, 2006). Among other things, this includes the acceptance of the bounded, autonomous, and individual Western self as natural and desirable, coupled with an unquestioned faith in the value of professional interventions and expertise (Wexler & Gone, 2012;White, 2011).…”

“…For example, how do we conceptualize risk and how do our professional interventions position us and those we work with? An even more difficult question is posed by Saraceno (2012) when she asks, "What are the implications for ethical engagement with our clients and with our communities when our livelihood is dependent on the suffering and disenfranchisement of others?" (p. 258).…”

“…As just one example, if we were to make more explicit connections between so-called private troubles (i.e., PTSD, ADHD, anxiety, disordered eating, self-harm) and the larger sociopolitical and economic context, might traditional CYC problems perhaps rightfully become matters of public consideration and social responsibility (Fusco & Baizerman, 2013;Rossiter, 2005)? While CYC has a long history of working in a "strengths-based way" it may be time to follow the lead of many of our CYC colleagues (Loiselle et al, 2012;Saraceno, 2012;Skott-Myhre, 2006) and start claiming "sociopolitically-engaged" as a defining characteristic of our field as a way to signal that we recognize the limits of individualized, decontextualized, and apolitical interventions. We will also need to think very carefully about how to theorize diversity in ways that go beyond "celebrating multiculturalism" (Skott-Myhre & Little, 2014).…”