Session: Interrogating Whiteness across Contexts (Society for Social Work and Research 30th Annual Conference Anniversary)

Scientific inquiry and research have played a fundamental role in proving differences based on "race" to justify inequality and violence (e.g., Native and enslaved peoples). As a result, systems and ideologies of White supremacy were secured and defended--White(ness) as superior, normal, and universal, and everyone else as inferior and other. The methods, logics, and epistemes within social work--including what we now consider "objective" statistical analysis--often reify "race science" and go unexamined as securing and defending Whiteness as superior, normal, and universal. Social work research plays an important role in guiding policy, clinical interventions, and the professional development and education of social work students. The omission of critical examinations of Whiteness within social work is a site of epistemic injustice leading to a distorted understanding of "race" This distorted understanding further normalizes and universalizes Whiteness while othering ways of knowing, being, and doing--vastly limiting liberatory possibilities in social work. The systematic omission of Whiteness as a meaningful phenomenon of study in social work research has propped up the illusion that it does not exist and limits our collective knowledge of how Whiteness operates, reproduces, and adapts over time and across contexts. The profession haphazardly adopts essentialist understandings of race, locating it either as abstract and elusive within systems or within people experiencing obscured disadvantages with seemingly no perpetrator. This results in an abundance of social work interventions aimed at helping racially minoritized populations cope with and "overcome" the effects of White supremacy without disrupting or even naming Whiteness as the cause of unequal outcomes and violence. The overreliance on minoritized populations as research subjects--objects, at times--and the focus of interventions normalizes distorted logics of where change must occur, fracturing the interconnected nature of inequality without ever interrogating or scrutinizing individuals with power, resources, and access. Our current political climate characterized by the Trump presidency, unelected political power of Musk, onslaught of unconstitutional executive orders, backlash against DEI initiatives and language, and infringement on the rights of minoritized populations illustrate the consequences of uninterrogated Whiteness and White supremacy. This symposium will converge a group of scholars who interrogate Whiteness across contexts. The scholars present insights on how social work research engagement with critical Whiteness studies can lead to transformative change within social work policy and practice. Our first presenter examines how White parents utilize their White privilege within the K-12 education system. Our second presenter will explore how Whiteness is credentialed in social work education and practice, leading to institutionalized and professionalized racial capitalism. Our third presenter will empirically discuss social work educational spaces built to problematize Whiteness. Our final presenter illuminates manifestations of settler colonial Whiteness in social work education and practice. Our discussant brings over twenty years of abolitionist praxis to this symposium, and will engage the presenters and participants in a synthesized discussion on the ideological and material impacts of uninterrogated Whiteness. Critical Whiteness studies offers social work a way to engage in anti-racism and pursue social justice without placing the burden solely upon marginalized communities.