Suchergebnisse

Institutions that frame social work education and prepare future practitioners are firmly rooted in hegemonic philosophies and practices that perpetuate colonization, oppression, and white supremacy. In recognizing that white supremacy is a mechanism of social control, that our current social structure is grounded in liberal-patriarchal capitalism, and that social work conforms to prevailing social norms, we, as social workers, must acknowledge our complicity in perpetuating a white supremacist master narrative (Pewewardy & Almeida, 2014). The white supremacist ideology inherent within Western social work literature, teaching methodologies, and practice strategies only serves to perpetuate an oppressive system. This structure does not envision social workers as agents of change, but rather as essential cogs of the status quo who foster client dependence on a system that is inherently marginalizing. One mechanism for disrupting the white supremacy that has become a master narrative in social work is to create a counter-narrative (Pewewardy & Almeida, 2014). This paper creates a counter-narrative by using the pyramid of white supremacy framework (Safehouse Progressive Alliance for Nonviolence, 2008; Tuzzolo, 2016) to critique social work and deconstruct post-racial fallacies ascendant within the profession, and re-visualizes ecological systems framework as a mechanism for de-centering whiteness in social work scholarship, practice, and education.

Black women scholars have and continue to make significant contributions to the social work profession; however, their experiences within the profession are mostly absent in the literature. In general, Black women face numerous challenges within schools of social work. Black women scholars endure a compound form of anti-Blackness in higher education known as gendered anti-Blackness due to their multiple marginalized statuses associated with race and gender. This study examined the phenomenon of gendered anti-Blackness as experienced in academia by a diverse group of Black and mixed Black faculty and PhD students. We intentionally utilized a new methodology, Black Feminist Polyethnography, to provide an affirming and communal space for us to dialogically reflect on our collective experiences of gendered anti-Blackness in predominantly white schools of social work. Our findings uncovered six Black woman-centered proverbs that symbolize the ways we collectively thrive as scholars despite gendered anti-Blackness.