WITHDRAWN: History Is an Antiracist Tool in Social Work

Background: The 2022 conference of the Society for Social Work Research rightly challenges the social work profession “to build a more socially just world.” Though the challenge focuses outward, this project builds that better world by turning social work’s gaze inward—on ourselves and on our history of racism and colonialism.

In order to build that more just world, social workers must see how the world in which we currently live was built upon racist and colonial foundations. Further, social workers must understand how our profession has collaborated in white supremacy, state surveillance, and other forms of oppression. In order to encourage this historicized learning and reflection among graduating MSWs, I developed a module for their final Capstone course.

Methods: First, students read five articles to spark reflection on oppression and resistance in social work history: African-American reformers (Carlton-LaNey & Hodges, 2004); interracialist social workers (Wilkerson-Freeman, 2002); white women and white supremacy (McRae, 2018); settler colonialism (Fortier & Hon-Sing Wong, 2018); and social work’s troubled past (Iaokimidis & Timikliniotis, 2020) and wrote reflections on the impact of those readings on their own thinking. Next, students attended a lecture on these complex histories in our own city. After the lecture, more than 40 historic, local “objects” (e.g., an advertisement discussing enslaved children working in the building that houses our school; a newspaper report racially segregated social services; and a report discussing the need for a “white school of social work”) were made available to students on an online learning platform. Finally, students reflected in writing on the “objects” that were most impactful for them and upon any reconciliation/change they believe is needed for social work to play a meaningful role in creating an antiracist world. Content analysis was used to analyze student reflections qualitatively.

Results: Thirteen students enrolled in the course. The students ranged in age from 25 to 35 years; 3 identified as Black, 2 as Asian, and 8 as white; all identified as women. Students universally wrote that they gained insight from these assignments. For example, one student wrote, “If we don’t address what has happened in the past, we will not be able to move in the future without facing difficulties that have previously been (and still are) part of social work.” Students also reflected on the readings from their own identity standpoints. One white woman reflected, “I found myself feeling angry while reading how white women shaped and sustained white supremacist politics;” while a Black student wrote, “It is important to...realize that my ancestors were a part of it making great change.” Another Black student wrote that the materials made her “feel seen.” Full results will be discussed in the presentation.

Conclusions: Given the positive feedback from students in this pilot class, a unit on local social work history is being integrated into all sections of our MSW Capstone, so that in schoolyear 2021-22, all graduating MSWs will have grappled with these materials. History is an anti-racist tool in social work (Harty, 2021).