Who Positioned Social Work as the Noble Alternative to Policing?
Keywords:
policing, social work, racial oppression, accountability, transformative practiceAbstract
Events of 2020 further illuminated policing’s history of oppression, white supremacy, ableism, sanism, and misogyny (Mohapatra et al., 2020). In response, calls to defund the police and abolish the carceral system that enables state-sanctioned violence became louder, and social workers were elevated as the noble alternative to police (Wilson & Wilson, 2020). This paper examines the positioning of social work as innocent of the surveillance, scrutiny, and criminalization of racialized populations associated with policing. Critically reviewing social work’s history with relevant vignettes from the classroom, research, as well as practicum and community settings, we lay bare the profession’s checkered history of complicity with racial subjugation. We deconstruct claims of benevolence, good intentions, and ignorance usually held up in defense of ills perpetrated by social workers and conclude that the collective amnesia created by whitewashing social work’s history forestalls accountability and transformative practice.
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