The Absence of Racism as a Fundamental Concern in Ethics in Social Work

BY MERLINDA WEINBERG, PHD, RSW

Social work as a profession has always been a normative based profession, focusing on ethics as a foundational concept. Ethics refers to a systematic exploration of our relationships to others, paying attention to harms and benefits, and concern for human flourishing and social justice. However, when one looks at the vehicles for evaluating ethics, such as codes and decision-making models, and the texts addressing ethics in social work, the absence of the recognition of racism as a fundamental problem in social work ethics is striking. For instance, in the Nova Scotia Code of Ethics, while there is recognition of ‘diversity’ and one mention of ‘discrimination’, a search of the term ‘racism’ does not reveal a single mention. Respect for and celebration of diversity are laudable goals, but they ‘whitewash’ the more troubling and insidious reality of racism in social work in Canada generally, and Nova Scotia in particular.

Racism is an organizing principle for social relations through the systematic use of power by whites to dominate nonwhites. It extends beyond individual acts to whole structures, ideologies and epistemologies. It results in the reduced life chances for racialized individuals in longevity, health, employment, and material wealth, to name just some of the areas in which racism has been well documented.

Social work is not immune to racism. The over inclusion of racialized service users in our social welfare and justice systems is not new.

Racialized refers to those who are of African descent, people of colour, and Indigenous individuals. For instance, Aboriginal children are vastly over-represented in out of home placements in the child welfare system in Canada, being 12 times more likely to be placed in care than non-Aboriginal children (TRC, 2015). In Halifax, street checks were declared illegal since the police disproportionately checked racialized individuals, especially young Black men (Wortley, 2019), leading to increased rates of incarceration. Now with the novel coronavirus, those inequities have been exacerbated. It is no wonder that the pandemic of racism has been re-exposed and the Black Lives Matter movement reinvigorated.

How do we explain that as a profession, despite atrocious disparities facing racialized communities and many of our service users, there has been so little attention to this as a fundamental issue in ethics? Based on two research projects in Canada, I found a huge divide between what racialized and white practitioners regarded as ethical problems. Those who were racialized consistently raised issues of racism as ethical challenges directed towards service users and themselves, while that discourse was generally absent from white settler practitioners in these studies. For example, a racialized worker was horrified at the apprehension of a child from a family she knew well, having no explanation except that the mother “was Black and she had a disability.” A hospital social worker of African descent stated that a patient “didn’t want the Black girls looking after him.” In relation to her work colleagues, another racialized social worker stated, “you are measured against [the] mainstream which is [a] Eurocentric, white viewpoint.” A fourth argued, “microaggressions happen every single day…It’s the subtle messages … that this is not your place.”

There are many reasons of this absence in social work ethics. A key one for me is that codes of ethics are based on deontology. Deontology, a philosophical theory, contends that morality is founded on one’s intentions to fulfill one’s obligation based on respect for persons, treating them as ends, not means; and on the utilization of universal principles to guide ethical decision-making.

However, Immanuel Kant, who was the key theorist for deontology, was also the architect of a hierarchy of races. Who ‘counted’ as a ‘person’ did not include racialized individuals, for him or other white, urban, privileged male philosophers whose work led to the construction of present-day approaches to ethics (Mills, 1997).

Even if one argues that we can separate the failings of men from their theories, questions arise about what constitutes ‘universal’ principles? Universal, according to whom? How do we account for context and history? How do we deal with the structural elements of racism that are so deeply embedded in our practice and institutions?

In my study, an Indigenous worker reported: “the ethical dilemma isn’t in the duty to report. It’s what happens after the duty to report. That you set a whole mechanism in place that doesn’t recognize…the history of why someone would act in the way that they do. That doesn’t recognize the disrupted attachment, doesn’t recognize …the impact of generational trauma … And our social workers … that …aren’t Aboriginal, do they understand what happens … when you have to enforce a duty to report with Aboriginals sitting in front of you?” Thus, when utilizing ‘universal’ principles for examining ethics, how are issues of diversity and difference taken into account when one is not part of the dominant group? Whose notion of ‘universal’ counts? Regardless of the reasons for these omissions, we as professionals, and white social workers in particular (myself included), must make dealing with racism a top priority, recognizing its absence as a basic ethical shortcoming in our profession.

REFERENCES:

1. Mills, C. W. (1997). The racial contract. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University.

2. Wortley, S. (2019). Halifax, Nova Scotia: Street checks report. Human rights commission. University of Toronto.

3. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. (TRC). (2015). Honouring the truth, reconciling for the future. Summary of the final report of the truth and reconciliation commission. www.trc.ca. http://www.trc.ca/websites/ trcinstitution/index.php?p=3. Downloaded May 23/17.

MERLINDA WEINBERG is a professor of social work at Dalhousie University. Before obtaining her PhD. in 2004, she was a practicing social worker for 25 years. Research interests include ethics in social work practice, and the impacts of neoliberalism and diversity on professional ethics. She has a published book, Paradoxes in Social Work Practice. Mitigating Ethical Trespass as well as a website on ethics: http://ethicsinthehelpingprofessions.socialwork.dal.ca. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council short-listed Dr. Weinberg in 2008 as the top new researcher in Canada and she was awarded a Senior Fellowship at Durham University, UK, in 2017.

Dr. Merlinda Weinberg