SWCAREs: Social Work Coalition for Anti-Racist Educators

SWCAREs finds an inherent conflict in our present form of social work education and our profession’s stated purpose and mission of serving people who are vulnerable and oppressed. There is a disconnect between what we espouse as fundamental to the social work profession and what is being taught in classrooms and then spread into practice. Fundamentally, the disconnect is created by overarching reliance on curriculum content and educational policies that are overtly and/ or covertly racist, oppressive, and inherently supportive of white supremacy culture.

We believe that it is time we, as a profession, begin to thoroughly review the content we share, our teaching pedagogies, and our administrative practices in order to ensure we are truly practicing the values and principles our profession says it holds so dearly. We ask you to join us in seeking out ways to realign our practices and evaluative processes. Our goal is to upend and dismantle these overt and covert practices and move towards social work education that decenters white supremacy culture in both substance and delivery.