Social workers: agents of change or agents of oppression?

Unsettling reflexivity and critical race pedagogy in social work education: narratives from social work students

“…Alternatively, scholars have proposed social work practitioners, scholars, and educators to adopt intersectional indigenous feminist discourses that confronts anti-Blackness, settler colonialism, and neoliberalism by practicing radical relationality where accountability between individuals is grounded and interdependent on building structural accountability through social and political change (Haley, 2020;Snelgrove et al, 2014;Yazzie & Baldy, 2018). Although discussing and acknowledging the embodiment and reproduction of white supremacy at the individual, interpersonal, and institutional level remains challenging for students and faculty, we must keep pressing forward to challenge the ways social work education continues to remain complicit in enacting oppression (Edmonds-Cady & Wingfield, 2017). This presents important implications for social work education to re-examine the ways social work programs are integrating spaces to understand both, the communities we serve and our individual identities embedded within power structures.…”

“…Moreover, social work education and training have reinforced a disproportionate attention to individual symptom management and control ignoring structural determinants of oppression by placing an exceeding emphasis on colorblind, colonial and Eurocentric biomedical and psychological approaches to clinical practice that maintain inequitable structures of power and exacerbate health inequities in oppressed communities including Black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) (Bartoli et al, 2015;Beck, 2019). In order to dismantle systemic forms of racism and oppression, it is imperative to articulate counternarratives and wrestle with theories, knowledge, and culture embedded in social work education that maintain white supremacy and reproduce Euro-centric, white cis-male, anti-Black colonial ideologies (Beck, 2019;Edmonds-Cady & Wingfield, 2017;Reisch, 2019).…”

To Shield or Not to Shield? There Should Be No Question—Black African Social Workers Experiences during COVID-19 in England

“… Heron (2006 , p. 289) found that anti-racism was largely ‘invisible and insignificant’ in students’ written work; consequently, it is important that social work educators address these sorts of issues without delay. However, this is unlikely to be the case as Edmonds-Cady and Wingfield (2017) more recently argued that social work educators reinforce systemic racism through not adequately preparing students for anti-racist practice. They argue that through ignoring or failing to challenge racist and discriminatory views in the classroom setting and through coursework, social work educators are perpetuating the racism they are hoping to disrupt.…”

Removing the knees from their necks: Mobilizing community practice and social action for racial justice

“…They also suggest that social work research replicates the "apartheid of knowledge in academia" (p. 323). Yet, social work researchers can and have exacerbated distrust when they have approached minority communities as their own personal laboratories extracting knowledge with little or no reciprocity or regard for those affected (Edmonds-Cady & Wingfield, 2017). Finally, despite the call to identifying racism as one of the profession's grand challenges (see Davis, 2016), it wasn't until June 2020 that the Grand Challenges for Social Work (2020) added eradicating racism as the thirteenth area of concern for social work scholars and educators.…”