In addition to individual scholars, human services, social work, and advocacy organizations have worked to bring increased recognition to the roles of BIPOC during recent decades. For example, the National Association of Black Social Workers (NABSW) created the Academy for African-Centered Social Work. This organization emphasizes that the work of people of African ancestry has been excluded from social welfare history and from mainstream social work pedagogy and curriculum. Marginalization of past and present BIPOC social workers seriously minimizes their potential contributions to inform and strengthen current policy and practices.The NABSW has challenged the discipline to diversify curricula. They assert that failing to intentionally diversify educational materials leaves students to assume the main contributions to the discipline are White, overtly and covertly reinforcing White supremacy (Bent-Goodley et al., 2017).

2.4.1 Strengths-Based Theories and Trauma-Informed Practices

Looking at Afro-Centered social welfare uncovers that much of what is deemed as White ingenuity for social welfare practice has been routine practice for BIPOC. For example, strengths-based theories (Saint-Jacques et al., 2009), treatment courts, and trauma-informed practices (Maxwell, 2014) have been presented as new concepts. Yet these concepts are foundational and historical to BIPOC communal practices. Often, the Eurocentric pattern is to rename Indigenous practices and reclaim them as their own.

The strengths perspective is a known framework often referred to and utilized in human services. Although many scholars have contributed to the knowledge and understanding of the strengths perspective, Dennis Saleebey, a White scholar, is often associated with the development and advancement of the strengths perspective. According to Saleebey, the strengths perspective seeks to develop the natural abilities of clients and posits that clients already possess various competencies and resources to improve their situation (Saleebey, 2006).

Yet Du Bois, who you learned about in the previous section, also contributed to the knowledge and foundation of what is now the strengths perspective. Du Bois’ work speaks to the “strength” of Blacks to adapt and survive in hostile environments (Bent-Goodley et al., 2017). Progressive era Black social workers, such as Birdye Henrietta Haynes, Elizabeth Ross Haynes, and many others, are known for their work utilizing strength-based models (Brice & McLane-Davison, 2020). Due to the marginalization of communities of color, much of the work of BIPOC pioneers and scholars today focuses on empowerment, pride, self-help, and communal health, and healing practices.

Trauma studies, the research into psychological consequences of mass trauma such as war, political violence, and slavery have remained stuck within Euro-American conceptual and historical frameworks (Visser, 2015). Critics question whether trauma frameworks consider the histories of violence in the colonized world (Rothberg, 2008; Visser, 2015). This model pathologizes individuals who have experienced colonizing trauma because it does not acknowledge violence caused by White dominance. Indigenous scholars, including Eduardo Duran and Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart, contribute to the understanding and conceptualization of historical trauma (Maxwell, 2014).

2.4.2 Excavating BIPOC Roles and Influences

Excavating the histories and stories, and identifying the roles that people of color played in social welfare’s development and ongoing growth, will require various strategies for historical digging and using a critical eye to examine what is found. It requires looking deeply into the roles many people of color played to combat social problems on micro and macro levels. Many people of color have a more communal approach and do not think of the same systems and structures as professional social services(Bent-Goodley, Fairfax & Carlton-LaNey, 2017; Schiele, 2017). In addition the social services model most often includes the concept of an outside expert entering a community to bring resolution, rejecting a more commonly held practice of people of color who engage in healing for its social ails amongst its own members (Duran et al., 1998). Therefore, these BIPOC efforts again may very likely not be advertised even among BIPOC communities because such work is not prized, rewarded, or highlighted; it is the norm (Carlton-LaNey, 2015; Carlton-LaNey et al., 2001).

Efforts to reveal the BIPOC social welfare forerunners must be constructed on more creative and inclusive methods than have traditionally been accepted in the mainstream literature. Two examples include methods that trace groups of people (rather than individuals) and oral tradition. Both serve as viable research methods to find key and influential individuals in the past. Other disciplines have prepared encyclopedias of people groups, highlighting marginalized people groups that often fail to make mainstream textbooks (Low & Clift, 1980; Mjagkij, 2001; Rasmussen, R. K., 2001). Second, oral tradition is another form of historical research that can honor BIPOC and their traditions of communication.

2.4.3 The Role of Education

Another approach to holding up the contributions of BIPOC lies in education. Currently, social welfare-involved work is not taught with an understanding of the ways that White Supremacy interwoven in its history. It seems that few social work education programs have exposed the concept of the “great White hope” yet this needs to be exposed and dismantled. Not only does there need to be a revision of the title upon whom the discipline bestows the honor as founders, there also needs to be a greater understanding of ensuring that what is defined as social work is not defined only from a Eurocentric lens, as this continues to perpetuate White Supremacy (Wright et al., 2021).

For example, Jane Addams supported the eugenics movement and its scientific racism, which grew during the early 20th century and promoted the propagation of “wellborn” people and the prevention of having children among those who were determined to be defective mentally, morally, or physically (Kennedy, 2008). Historical analysis of social welfare work’s White forerunners must also reconcile that Black activists and social services leaders of the Progressive Era were sidelined (McCutcheon, 2019).

It is possible to see these identified “founders” for what they were – individuals who sought to make change in one area of injustice while perpetuating injustice in another area. This is a more sobering reality of individuals considered “founders” or pioneers of the social welfare discipline. Maybe the answer is not to make them an “angel” or a “demon” but to live in the tension of their realities and what they prioritized. It requires telling their stories in the history books in light of such frictions. It also calls for a radical review of who should be embraced as a founder of a discipline that is committed to equity which “include[s] respecting the dignity and welfare of all people” as stated in the Preamble of the National Organization of Human Services (NOHS) and the “inherent dignity and worth of all persons,” a principle embedded in the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) Code of Ethics (NOHS, 2019.; NASW, 2021).

2.4.4 Understanding and Dismantling White Supremacy

To dismantle White supremacy, we will focus on three aspects relevant to the human services profession’s understanding of history. First, White supremacy focuses on the written word. In the White culture if it is not written down, it did not happen (Okun & Jones, 2000). This is a mantra that is learned in most helping professions. Addams and her contemporaries came from a majority culture that valued the written word and richly documented their research, observations, conversations, and findings. In contrast, many BIPOC come from traditional settings where such an effort is a luxury in comparison to focusing one’s energies on survival, especially in Addams’s time period. Communities frequently shared knowledge in many areas, as represented by figure 2.4, including how to help others, the foundations of the human services profession

Figure 2.4 BIPOC communities share knowledge, traditions, and skills verbally and value community collaboration in helping each other.

The second highly relevant aspect of White supremacy that contributes to the marginalization of BIPOC is the belief that there is only “one right way” of doing things (Okun & Jones, 2000). With this characteristic in mind, it is necessary to consider whether the identified founders of social welfare incorporated the opinions of marginalized peoples in their work. Failure to do so perpetuates oppression and White dominance beliefs as it embodies the “one right way” of doing things. “One right way” is at the forefront of Whites bringing their “solutions” to ethnic people groups. Though the “founders” may have done remarkable things, their efforts reduced injustice on one hand, while adding to or sustaining injustices on the other hand by keeping marginalized people from actively engaging in the solution processes.

Third, individualism is highlighted as another relevant characteristic of White supremacy. To single out Addams is to add to the White supremacist notion that highly prizes “individualism” (Okun & Jones, 2000). Individualism focuses on the advancement of one person, rather than the collective whole. This contributes to an atmosphere where cooperation is less valued. Monuments for racial advancements are designated to icons like Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. Likewise, Whites focus on Martin Luther King Jr. as an individual leader, while it is commonplace in the Black community to think of him as synonymous with his collaborators. As human services professionals, we need to embrace more than just White ways of perceiving and seek to call attention to communal contributions to our discipline.

2.4.5 Integrating BIPOC Contributions to Historical and Current Knowledge

We as human services professionals must examine the recorded history of social work with a critical lens. To dismantle racism and authentically work toward social justice, the work of White scholars must be understood within the larger context of BIPOC contributors and a White Supremacist context.

2.4.5.1 How can students make a difference?

As a beginning student in this profession while this understanding is only beginning to be introduced in textbooks, you can play a part. Here are some roles you can play:

1) Become aware of the whitewashing of the discipline.

2) Learn more about scholars who are not the typical White “celebrities” of social work.

3) Acknowledge the complexities of this long tradition of privileging White thought and scholarship.

4) Ask for a more diverse representation of scholars in their course materials.

5) Continue to question their assumptions about what’s important and valued within the discipline.

Textbooks matter. A failure to accurately depict the past will lead to continually slanting the way the future is framed. Without critical analysis, this slant will only continue to perpetuate White Supremacist mindsets. Start paying attention to textbooks in all of your courses. Do you notice other places where the context of White supremacist history is ignored? Vigorous work by educators, researchers, and practitioners is needed to stop reusing the same publications and make intentional attempts to present the history of social work equitably.

The next section of this chapter focuses on some of the skills and knowledge that can be used to work in a way that focuses on community strengths and values while emphasizing diverse voices and viewpoints.

2.4.6 References

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