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Australian Social Work
ISSN: 0312-407X (Print) 1447-0748 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rasw20
How White is Social Work in Australia?
Maggie Walter , Sandra Taylor & Daphne Habibis
To cite this article: Maggie Walter , Sandra Taylor & Daphne Habibis (2011) How White is Social
Work in Australia?, Australian Social Work, 64:1, 6-19, DOI: 10.1080/0312407X.2010.510892
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/0312407X.2010.510892
Published online: 24 Feb 2011.
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How White is Social Work in Australia?
Maggie Walter, Sandra Taylor, & Daphne Habibis
School of Sociology and Social Work, University of Tasmania, Australia
Abstract
How White is social work in Australia? This paper analyses this question, focusing on
social work practice and education. In asking the question, the aim is to open space for
debate about how the social work profession in Australia should progress practice with
Indigenous people and issues. The paper combines Bourdieu’s concept of the habitus with
‘‘Whiteness’’ theory to argue that the profession is socially, economically, culturally, and
geographically separated from Indigenous people and that the consequences for how
social workers engage with their Indigenous clients have yet to be fully explored.
Decentring Whiteness requires recognition of epistemological and ontological assumptions so deeply embedded that they are invisible to those who carry them. This invisibility
permits White privilege to exist unacknowledged and unchallenged within societal
formations. In shifting the focus away from the ‘‘Other’’ to the ‘‘non Other’’, an
examination of Whiteness asks social workers to examine their own racial location and
the role of White privilege in their lives. It requires us to go beyond intellectual
commitments to antiracism and antioppression, and to make racial issues personal as
well as political.
Keywords: Indigenous; Whiteness; Racism; Social Work Education; Habitus; Social Work
Theory
How does ‘‘Whiteness’’ affect the assumptions, presumptions, and perspectives that
guide social work practice with Indigenous people and peoples? This question is one
many social workers may not have considered, despite our use of a reflexive praxis
framework in working with clients from different cultural backgrounds. Yet, the
predominant Whiteness of Australian social work is a crucial issue for the profession
and practitioners to engage with to progress our practice with Indigenous people and
communities.
Research from the United States finds the question ‘‘What does it mean to be
White?’’ ontologically untranslatable for many Euro-Americans. The psychologist Sue
(2003) described interviewing people in downtown San Francisco for a documentary
on ‘‘The Invisibility of Whiteness’’. The commonest response was to ask if it was a
Correspondence to: Dr Maggie Walter, School of Sociology and Social Work, University of Tasmania, Locked
Bag 17, Hobart, Tasmania 7000, Australia. E-mail: [email protected]
Accepted 20 June 2010
ISSN 0312-407X (print)/ISSN 1447-0748 (online) # 2011 Australian Association of Social Workers
DOI: 10.1080/0312407X.2010.510892
Australian Social Work
Vol. 64, No. 1, March 2011, pp. 6
19
trick question. Incredulity was usually followed by a declaration that this was not
something they ever think about, and comments along the lines that they regard all
people, Black, White, and brindle as equal, so race is not something that matters to
them. When pressed to answer, many became first annoyed and then offended. They
perceived persistence in asking about their own racial experience as somehow
inferring that they were racist. In contrast, when the same question was put to people
of colour, most responded with neither umbrage nor hesitation that Whiteness meant
being privileged at all points within society and at every interface of the individual
with social arrangements. Sue (2003) argued that they know this, because being
explicitly excluded from such privilege they are keenly aware of its operation. They
also know that the social privileges of Whiteness are invisible to those who benefit
from them; it is so normal that it is not even recognised as occurring (pp. 118
121).
Nor did they experience difficulty answering the question ‘‘What does it mean to be
Black?’’ Sue (2003) suggested this is because constant reminders that they ‘‘are racially
and culturally different’’ from those around them imposes an identity they have no
choice but to accept (p. 120).
Our opening question disrupts the taken-for-granted neutrality of Whiteness, which
tends to obscure across multiple planes the obvious: We are all raced. And our race,
which for Australian social work is predominantly White, is an omnipresent reality
within our practice and our profession. Yet, engaging meaningfully with Whiteness is
not easy, for individuals or the profession. Enmeshed within the lived unconsciousness
of White as normal, entering a raced space not confined to non White races can be
deeply unsettling. To aid the process of turning the lens, from ‘‘the Other’’ to the ‘‘non
Other’’ we venture an analysis of how Australian social work, as a profession, is
currently engaging with Whiteness. Our central premise is that this examination can
uncover new knowledge into race-based barriers to practice and that this is especially
pertinent to social work’s practice with Indigenous people and peoples.
We begin with a brief outline of Whiteness theory and an empirical analysis of the
social, cultural, and spatial distance of White people from those who are not White in
Australia, linking these to ideas of a White habitus and the implications for social
work and social workers. The next section examines the ‘‘Whiteness gap’’ in social
work education through an analysis of progressive social work theories and current
practice and education standards. In the final sections, we explore the threats and
opportunities represented by Whiteness theory and argue for a specifically Australian
focus on Whiteness if the profession is to achieve its goal of constructive engagement
with Indigenous people and communities in this country.
Repositioning Social Work Through an Understanding of Whiteness
Moreton-Robinson (2004) defined Whiteness as ‘‘the invisible norm against which
other races are judged in the construction of identity, representation, subjectivity,
nationalism and the law’’ (p. vii). Thus Whiteness is understood not as a biophysical
phenomenon, but as a multilayered social construct: more than identity and more than
skin colour. It includes discourses, structure, and location (Frankenberg as cited in
Australian Social Work 7
Haggis, 2004, p. 51) and is both personal and political. As an embodied social
construction, Whiteness, like gender, forms the invisible ‘‘absolute vertical’’ by which all
else is defined and judged (de Beauvoir, 1989, p. xxi). For Moreton-Robinson (2000),
the category of race subsumes all other sources of social division including gender.
A central tenet of Whiteness theory is that the seeming universality of Whiteness,
in societies such as Australia, allows it to mask its privilege. American sociologist
Frankenberg pioneered the identification of its central dimensions. Whiteness, she
argued, needs to be conceived across three dimensions: location of structural
advantage or privilege; standpoint as the place from where those who are White
look at themselves and others; and as a set of cultural practices that are unmarked and
unnamed (Frankenberg, 1993, p. 1). It is the standpoint aspect that contributes
specifically to the ontological untranslatability. For members of the dominant White
grouping it is easy to conceive of the self as an individual, normal person rather than
as member of a social race group; individualism is a pervasive and central aspect of
the normalised terrain of Whiteness. To be grouped by ethnicity or race can feel both
unfairly stigmatising and not applicable to the self we know. A comparison with how
we understand class and gender is helpful here. Being a man, or from a privileged
class background, is not something we choose, nor does it equate to individual
exploitation of women or the working classes. A lack of individual participation in
maintaining gender or class and, in this discussion, racial and cultural inequalities
however, does not negate the accrual to individuals of the gender, class, or race
privileges that flow from that social positioning. Ironically, it is the power inherent in
belonging to the dominant White group that allows the often successful resistance to
being labelled White.
Central to conceptions of Whiteness is a recognition that race is an omnipresent
feature of human relationships. Race relations, at the structural and professional level
at least, are essentially relations of power and in the Australian context, such
relationships take place against the backdrop of colonisation and our shared colonial
and postcolonial history. McIntosh’s (1988) well-known analogy of invisible White
privilege as a knapsack full of resources, highlights how Whiteness generates
structural and personal power and a Whiteness perspective allows an unsettling,
but insightful, examination of the assumption of privilege and how this influences
interactions within race relations. Reframing cross-racial relationships, the question
changes from how the Other is represented to how the non Other represent
themselves and what this means for relationships of power. The answer also changes:
from the deficiencies and failures of the Other to where and how standards and
measures of failure and success are derived, who benefits from their existence and
what the alternatives could be.
Therefore, Whiteness may best be understood as an analytical concept that points to
the role of racially defined discourses that shape power relations. Its value to social
work is evident from Young’s statement that Whiteness theory provides ‘‘a description
of how privilege is raced and invisible: a method of unsettling this privilege; and it
offers guidance for more inclusive and respectful human relationships’’ (2008, p. 103).
8 M. Walter et al.
More particularly, a concern with the discursive power of Whiteness leads directly to a
scrutiny of the regulatory power of the helping professions. It extends postmodern
insights into the disciplining power of professional knowledge (Pease, 2002), by
demanding that this include an analysis of how the unspoken hegemony of race is used
to problematise Indigenous culture. This shifts the focus from indigeneity to
Whiteness. It opens the door to reproblematising the issues as something to do
with the dominant us rather than the racialised them. It identifies what early US critical
theorist, du Bois (as cited in Roediger, 1999, p. 6) termed ‘‘the White problem’’.
Comparative Positionings
The public and political discourse around Indigenous people and peoples in Australia
invariably dichotomously positions Indigenous circumstances with those of the non
Indigenous (mostly White) population. The emphasis is almost invariably on remote
Australia. Yet in 2006, about three quarters of the Indigenous population lived in
major cities or regional areas with the areas currently experiencing the highest rates of
Indigenous population increase being Brisbane, Broome, and Coffs Harbour. Even so,
non Indigenous lives remain separated socioeconomically from Indigenous ones. In
an embedded pattern, large disparities exist, no matter where Indigenous people live,
between these populations in: the burden of disease and life expectancy; rates of
suicide; infant mortality and low birth weights; household overcrowding; home
ownership; education and educational achievement; unemployment, income support
reliance; and aggregate household income levels (Walter, 2008).
Socioeconomic separations are aligned with spatial ones. Generating a map of
nearly any Australian town from 2006 Census using Socio-Economic Indexes for
Areas (SEIFA), rankings and Indigenous population provides graphic proof of how
Indigenous and non Indigenous Australians might live in the same places, but not in
the same spaces. The places where the relatively affluent tend to reside, a group
composed in significant measure of middle-class professionals such as social workers,
has almost no overlap with the places where Indigenous people largely live. In Sydney,
for example, the relatively affluent congregate in and around the city area, while
Sydney’s large Indigenous populations are concentrated in the disadvantaged
suburban corridors (e.g., the south-west of Sydney).
What can be construed as a spatial, economic, and geographic segregation is
accompanied by a social separation. Put bluntly, non Indigenous Australians largely
live their lives in an Indigenous free zone; Indigenous people are not their
neighbours, their workmates, their service providers, or their friends. Recent research
(Atkinson, Taylor, & Walter, 2010), using data from the 2007 Australian Survey of
Social Attitudes, found the level of social proximity between non Indigenous and
Indigenous people to be extremely low. When asked to nominate their level of
interaction with Aboriginal people from three categories: mix regularly on a day-today basis; know Aboriginal people but do not mix regularly with them; and do not
know any Aboriginal people personally, less than 10% of the sample of non
Indigenous Australians reported that they mixed regularly with Indigenous people.
Australian Social Work 9
As shown in Figure 1, being urban and advantaged reduces the likelihood of
interaction even further.
Are these social-economic, spatial, and social distances a problem for Australian
social work in its interrelationship with Indigenous people and peoples? Absolutely.
The polarity of cultural and social milieu of a significant majority of social work
practitioners and academics and that of Indigenous people means that most non
Indigenous social workers and social work academics are unlikely to ‘‘know’’
Indigenous people except as clients, data sources, or a specific client group that must
be covered within the curriculum. This ‘‘everyday life’’ of racial segregation goes
largely unnoticed and unmentioned.
Whiteness, Social, Spatial Separations, and the Habitus of Social Work
Bourdieu’s (1977, 1979) conceptual framework of habitus is pertinent to understanding critical outcomes of this non intersectorality for social work practice.
Theorising our lives as shaped by our cultural, economic, and social positionings,
Bourdieu posited that, as individuals, we occupy a three-dimensional social space. As
individuals, and as groups place in similar positions in three-dimensional social
space, we are subject to the forces that structure this space. Different social space
positions result in different modes of acquisition of dispositions, Bourdieu’s term for
our tastes, both acquired, and more critically, derived from our position in social
space, yet mostly understood as ‘‘natural’’ preferences (Bourdieu, 1979, p. 110). While
Bourdieu’s theorising concentrated on cultural tastes and their relationship to class,
his concept is far wider. Our position in social space and the dispositions that flow
from it have ontological dimensions. Socially acquired predispositions serve as a
‘‘matrix of perceptions, appreciations, and actions,’’ causing individuals to view the
world in a particular way (Bourdieu, 1977, p. 83). In addition to tastes and
preferences, our dispositions incorporate values and perspectives. They shape the way
we see the world and our own position within it.
The coalescence of our dispositions and our place in social space is the habitus.
Because different conditions of existence produce different habitus, the particular
Mix regularly with Aboriginal people on a day to day basis

8 6 4 2 0
10
12
14
16
Female Low
Ed
Male Medium
Ed
High
Ed
18-34 35-49 50-64 65+ Capital Other
Urban
Rural
Percentage
Figure 1 Gender, education, age, and locality and Aboriginal social proximity
Percentages refer to the proportion of respondents who report they mix regularly with
Aboriginal people on a day to day basis.
Source: Australian Survey of Social Attitudes (AuSSA) 2007 Data.
10 M. Walter et al.
practices engendered by a particular habitus appear objective and possessing of a
‘‘synthetic unity’’ (Bourdieu, 1979, p. 173). Our habitus provides a socially acquired
set of practices, preferences, and understandings that ‘‘make sense’’ to us, and the
pervasiveness of this set among those similarly positioned in social space confirms
their naturalness as both a set and worldview. Our habitus determines what we do
and how we do it (our meaningful practices) and the interpretative framework (our
giving of meanings), by which we evaluate or judge our own lifestyle and, critically,
that of others. Therefore, habitus is not about an individual’s character or morality,
but rather it encapsulates the deep cultural conditioning that reproduces and
legitimates social formations.
Critical race theorists now explicitly incorporate the additional dimension of race
into Bourdieu’s theories to conceptualise the White habitus. American sociologists
Bonilla-Silva, Goar, and Embrick (2006) defined White habitus as ‘‘a racialized
uninterrupted socialization process that conditions and creates Whites’ racial taste,
perceptions, feelings, emotions, and views on racial matters’’ (p. 325). This definition
accords with our argument that within habitus, racial positioning matters, and
critically, this positioning applies to all racial colours, including Whiteness. Therefore,
growing up and existing within a White habitus is a powerful determiner of
perceptions and ideologies, including those relating to racially defined groups. The
hegemonic assumptions inherent in the habitus also tend to out-group dichotomies
in which members of ‘‘Other’’ groups, such as Aboriginal peoples, are treated as a
unified social category. The hermetic boundedness and power asymmetries inherent
in the White middle-class habitus can also play directly into over-worn, but
unreflected upon, themes of Indigenous disadvantage, crisis, and lack of empowerment (Atkinson et al., 2010). Indigenous Australia is an idea, not a lived experience.
This point is specifically salient to social workers; as professionals, we participate
predominantly in the habitus of the White middle class.
The next section moves from the separation of social workers from the Indigenous
population and what this might mean, to an examination of how Australian social
work education is currently engaging with the issue of Whiteness, starting with a
review of key theoretical perspectives.
How White is Australian Social Work Education?
Whiteness and Social Work Theory
Whiteness, as a concept, theory, and reflective practice has a low visibility within the
pedagogy and curriculum of Australian social work. This is not to suggest a largescale lack of awareness of the concept of Whiteness. Australian scholars have written
on the topic and many individual academics (e.g., Gair, Thomson, & Miles, 2005;
Young, 2004, 2008) incorporate Whiteness theories into their teaching. Rather, we
suggest that within our discipline’s pedagogy and curriculum there remains a
significant ‘‘Whiteness gap’’. This gap has already been identified by Young (2004,
2008), who has argued convincingly that social work in Australia ‘‘has yet to fully
Australian Social Work 11
engage with an understanding of itself as racialised and to explore what this might
mean for practice’’ (2004, p. 104).
Social work’s pedagogy and curriculum does include a significant engagement with
emancipatory theories. Feminist theory, critical theory, antiracist theory, antioppressive theory, radical theory, and structural social work all start with an understanding
of the need to challenge existing social arrangements, especially as they relate to
power relations. However, from the perspective of filling the ‘‘Whiteness gap’’, these
theories have significant flaws. The most prominent centres on their modernist
assumptions, and the tendency to use core concepts (patriarchy, class, and Black and
White), in a unitary way that does not do justice to the complexity and
multidimensionality of lived experience (Healy, 2005). Another major concern is
the limited capacity of these theories to move beyond an hierarchical construction of
the relationship between practitioner and client (Briskman, 2007). For example,
Pease’s (2002) discussion of empowerment argued that the usual conceptualisations
position the task as something ‘‘done’’ to others, thereby risking its opposite,
disempowerment. Similarly, theorising of cross-cultural awareness and competence,
despite the emphasis on respectful, client-centred relationships, is criticised as a topdown model of professional expertise and service delivery (Baltra-Ulloa, 2008; Gray,
Coates, & Hetherington, 2007). The cross-cultural perspective appears one directional with the more powerful determining the how, where, and what they learn and
respect about the less powerful. The focus is on ‘‘what can we learn from Indigenous
knowledge’’, rather than on ‘‘what are we doing, how are we doing it, what are our
assumptions, and how are they informed by race and White privilege’’?
An intellectual successor to these earlier theories is antioppressive theory. Defined
by British social work scholar, Dominelli (2002), as ‘‘a form of social work practice
which addresses social divisions and structural inequalities in the work that is done
with clients (users) or workers’’ (p. 36). The theory’s starting point is an acknowledgement that the allocative and authoritative resources of social workers create an
imbalance in their client interactions that, if left unaddressed, can result in direct and
indirect oppression of their clients (Healy, 2005). Antioppressive theory requires,
inter alia, a deprivileging of workers’ expert knowledge, a high level of self-reflection,
and a constant attention to ensuring practice is client-centred and egalitarian
(Dominelli, 2002, p. 36). The major critique (Briskman, 2007; Healy, 2005;
McDonald, 2006) is the authoritative positioning in determining what knowledge
counts and what practices constitute antioppressive practice. More critically, this
position has largely been developed apart from the users of social work services and
has involved the appropriation of users’ knowledge and experiences into ‘‘expert’’
social work frames of reference (Wilson & Beresford, 2000).
Antioppressive theory is also critiqued for a focus on multiple forms of oppression,
which dilutes and dissipates the significance of race in everyday and institutional
interactions (Briskman, 2007). Young (2004) also argued that focusing on the
allocative and authoritative resources of the worker, without locating their
racialised associations, is problematic and elides the issue of Whiteness. It also
12 M. Walter et al.
does little to address the dominant discourse of Whiteness as forming ‘‘the unseen
standard against which all others are judged’’ (Young, 2004, p. 116). Leading
American Whiteness scholar, Roediger (Sandronsky, 2005) argued, in a similar vein,
the limits of antiracism. Aiming to eliminate racism (against the Other) with a
practice focus on undoing the negative racial formulations of the past allows the
privileges of race, especially the race of the practitioner, to remain off the agenda. At
its most flawed, the moral virtue of identifying oneself as antiracist, or antioppressive,
allows individuals to exclude themselves and the practices they engage in from
examining how they participate in the cultural, material, and symbolic advantages
generated by their privileged position.
Similar arguments are presented by Sinclair (2004), an Indigenous social work
academic from Canada. She pointed out that perspectives such as antioppressive and
cross-cultural theory are situated within a Western epistemology, which neither
acknowledges nor understands Aboriginal epistemologies and, more critically, does
not require anything beyond a theoretical grasping of issues. Neither the personal
involvement nor the commitment of the social work student or practitioner is
requested or required (p. 52). She also perceptively observed the problematic
situation of Indigenous social work students being required to take a ‘‘dominant
subject stance . . . and never requested to examine their work with ‘White’ individuals
as cross-cultural’’ (2004, p. 52). In Australia, Gair et al. (2005) grappled with similar
issues in their project to reconcile Indigenous perspectives and knowledge within
their social work process teaching. A field education forum highlighted the benefits
and difficulties for Indigenous graduates of their ‘‘experiences within the hegemonic
social work educational context’’ (p. 184). We conclude these emancipatory
frameworks are united in White cultural assumptions that reinforce the hierarchical
nature of dominant race relations. This imbalance is evident in the unproblematic
way Indigenous people are frequently requested to talk to social work students on
‘‘their people’s’’ disadvantage, often opening up distressing personal and family
stories to scrutiny. Few educators would think to ask a White person to stand in front
of a class and describe ‘‘their people’s’’ personal and family privilege. In disturbing
the neat binary of racist/antiracist (Haggis, 2004, p. 50) Whiteness theory demands
that we extend Gray and Fook’s (2004) seminal question ‘‘What is Western social
work’’ to ask specifically, ‘‘How is Western social work informed by race?’’ (p. 627).
Whiteness and Social Work Curriculum
Social work education and curriculum in Australia is currently located in a dynamic
context (Lonne & Healy, 2009; McDonald, 2006). As well as grappling with
marketisation in higher education and social welfare provision, workforce shortages,
and risk management imperatives (Healy, 2005), social work continues to critically
examine its responsiveness, relevance, and efficacy as a profession within the
Australian contemporary landscape. Within the consequent reality of constant
scrutiny, review, and development, opportunity exists for a critical consideration of
Australian Social Work 13
Whiteness theory and its potential contribution to social work education and
Indigenous practice.
The epistemological frameworks that underpin current Australian social work
standards and curriculum1 are Western in origin. Derived predominantly from
European, British, and Euro-American theories, cultures, and practices their
centrality within Australian educational and practice frameworks reflects the
profession’s struggle for identity, legitimacy, and status (Crawford & Leitmann,
2001; Mendes, 2005). The language of what McDonald (2006) referred to as the
‘‘professional project of social work’’ (p. 13) retains dominant concepts relating to
‘‘clients’’, ‘‘assessment’’, and ‘‘intervention’’ within contemporary social work education and practice. As Dumbrill and Green (2008) observed, ‘‘social work education
continues to be taught from a Eurocentric perspective in a manner that perpetuates
the colonization of Indigenous peoples’’ (p. 489).
The genesis of Australian social work practice and curriculum is reflected in the
notable dearth of the profession’s literature relating to Indigenous issues, research,
and practice (McMahon, 2002). A Scopus search for the terms ‘‘Whiteness’’, ‘‘social
work’’, and ‘‘Australia’’ for the period 2000
2010 produced only three articles, none of
which were in core social work or social policy journals. A search on the term
‘‘racism’’ within Australian Social Work for the period 2000
2010 also produced only
three, with two relating to areas other than Australia (Europe and Wales).
The curriculum frameworks and standards also largely position Indigenous
people and peoples as a unified social category of Other, characterised in terms of
their disadvantage, extreme need or implied deficits (Briskman, 2007; Green &
Baldry, 2008; McMahon, 2002). This is consistent with broader Australian culture
where, as Moreton-Robinson (2004, p. 79) asserted, the era of White Australia was
characterised, not by the criterion of what it meant to be White, but rather, what it
meant not to be White. A focus upon issues of race regarding non White Others
continues to generate palpable sensitivity within contemporary Australian society,
against an unacknowledged backdrop of majority Whiteness.
While Whiteness theory per se is not yet overtly evident in Australian social work
education or curriculum, references to Whiteness and the postcolonial context are
beginning to appear. Knowledge requirements for the standards of cross-cultural
practice, for example, include ‘‘theories of ethnicity, race and Whiteness, diversity,
racism and power’’ and ‘‘Australia’s history of cultural diversity and racism’’(Australian Association of Social Workers [AASW], 2010, p. 68). Similarly, an awareness
of one’s own racial identity is an important component of culturally sensitive practice
and of the ethical responsibility of social workers for ‘‘recognising the impact their
own racial and cultural identities, views and biases can have on their practice and on
culturally different clients’’ (AASW, 1999, p. 14). Recently released educational
1 Key documents are Australian Social Work Education and Accreditation Standards (Australian Association of
Social Workers [AASW], 2010), the Practice Standards for Social Workers: Achieving Outcomes (AASW, 2003),
and the Code of Ethics (AASW, 1999).
14 M. Walter et al.
resources that support curriculum development in cross-cultural practice also relate
to antioppressive and antiracist practice and include theory relating to colonial
discourse, postcolonial and postcolonial feminist theory, decolonisation and White
identities, and race, identity, and human rights (AASW, 2010).
In addition to cross-cultural practice, standards are also being developed regarding
child safety and wellbeing as well as practice with Indigenous people (AASW, 2010).
It is acknowledged that the development of new education and practice standards, the
revision of existing ones, and a proactive consideration of ‘‘best practice’’ with
Indigenous people and peoples are currently being undertaken by, and within, the
profession through wide-ranging dialogue, engagement, and research (AASW, 2009a;
AASW, 2009b).
These are positive developments in that they begin to explicitly acknowledge issues
relating to race and Whiteness in social work and reaffirm the central place of critical
reflexivity in social work education and practice. However, from a Whiteness
perspective, critiques of empowerment, cross-cultural, and antioppressive theories
have been noted earlier in this paper. Further, rather than maintaining a fixed
outward gaze upon Indigenous people and people, a Whiteness imperative is to
explore and interrogate the raced assumptions that underpin all the frameworks of
professional knowledge, teaching, learning, and practice. By ‘‘Othering’’ itself, social
work shifts the frame and repositions in relation to indigeneity: a necessary precursor
for valid practice with Indigenous people and peoples.
Where to From Here? Threats and Opportunities of Acknowledging Whiteness
This review of how social work education currently addresses issues of Whiteness is
made with an understanding of both the threats and opportunities such an approach
offers. An important question is the problem of essentialism. Whiteness theory
attempts to escape this by understanding the Black/White binary as a social
construction used as a means to exert power. For example, Moreton-Robinson
(2000) in her critique of Australian feminism, undertook discourse and deconstruction analysis to demonstrate the Whiteness of Australian feminism. At the same time,
acknowledgement of the embodied nature of Whiteness and concepts such as White
habitus (and in this paper the concept of a White social work habitus) bring it closer
to structural theories. The strength of this is the capacity of these ideas to
acknowledge the solidity of race and its sociocultural origins, the risk is of
stereotyping and essentialism. As remediation of this risk, Haggis (2004) provided
a helpful theoretical analysis of how Whiteness theory can acknowledge the fractured
and fragmented nature of contemporary subjectivities.
A point of more immediate relevance is the absence of a broad engagement with
ideas about race in general, and Whiteness in particular within Australian social
work. While a direct theoretical engagement with the issues of race and racism, and
their practice implications can be seen in recent British, American, and Canadian
social work (Dominelli, 1997; Gray, Coates & Yellow Bird, 2008; Sinclair, 2004; Sue,
Australian Social Work 15
2003) this is not yet the case for Australian social work. Rather, Australian social work
appears to remain located within the broader cultural context of avoidance and
discomfort regarding race issues.
Indigenous social work is also emerging as an influential strand within the
profession in many overseas nations (Gray et al., 2008). In Canada, concerns about
the capacity of mainstream social work education programs to meet the needs of First
Nation peoples has led to a specifically Indigenous social work education program
(Bruyere, 2008; Sinclair, 2004). The program and curriculum is accountable to the
Indigenous community and Indigenous Elders have a physical presence on the
campus. Ceremony has been incorporated into the program, which is rooted in
Indigenous epistemologies while also working within the constraints of the Canadian
Association of Schools of Social Work (Bruyere, 2008).
Such programs represent one way of responding to racialised cultural difference,
but do not alleviate our need to turn our gaze. By asking us to shift our gaze from the
‘‘Other’’ to ourselves, Whiteness theory may help us to move beyond Rothwell’s
(2008) excoriating critique of the ‘‘strange dance’’ now taking place between Black
and White Australia, which, he argued, has left ‘‘few purely Aboriginal spaces left’’.
His description of remote Australia filling with an ‘‘enabling army, delivering services,
building capacity, looking on through engaged, compassionate, post-colonial eyes’’ is
likely to be painfully resonant for any White person working in the field of
Indigenous issues. Issues such as White guilt and the difficulty White people have in
engaging with Black individuals and communities require systematic exploration
within social work practice and education. An exploration of Whiteness seems
relevant to such an endeavour.
Turning the Lens on the Australia Context
‘‘The material and discursive dimensions of Whiteness are always, in practice,
interconnected’’ (Frankenberg, 1993, p. 2). We argue that the meaning of the term
‘‘practice’’ in this quote might be extended to include social work practice. What
might turning the lens on Whiteness within Australian social work involve? We do
not have a prescriptive recommendation. The complexities, nuances, and even
contradictions of the concept and its empirical and theoretical manifestations ensure
that this is a task that will require constant review. The acknowledgement of the
importance of Whiteness, emerging in social work standards and curricula, also
indicates that the task has begun. Centrally, the work requires us to incorporate
Pease’s (2002) suggestion that social workers need to ‘‘challenge the status of their
own professional knowledge’’ (p. 142) and consider the extent to which their
narratives retain traces of dominant discourses. In the context of Whiteness this
necessitates a specific focus on how we, as social workers, operating within the
domain of Whiteness, are formed by its assumptions. It requires us to review what a
White habitus and identity means for how we interact with our clients and
institutional environments. The incorporation of Whiteness is occurring in other
disciplines in Australia. For example, psychologists Green, Sonn, and Matsebula
16 M. Walter et al.
(2007) made the case that investigating Whiteness has positive implications for both
pedagogy and applied research. Nelson (2007) offered an insightful examination of
health-based practice and research using critical race theory.
Turning the lens has to be undertaken within an Australian context and this means
foregrounding the work of Australian scholars, such as Moreton-Robinson (2000)
and Haggis (2004), who worked specifically with the concept, as well as others, such
as Briskman (2007), Pease (2002), Gray et al. (2007), and Gray et al. (2008), who
worked in closely overlapping areas. This is not to negate the value of theoretical and
empirical contributions of other countries. Indeed, we would argue that due to the
cultural and background similarity of the dominant White groupings in Western
societies to Australian society, many of the insights gleaned are broadly generalisable.
But it is also essential to acknowledge that the differences in history, economy,
demography, politics, and culture mean that the theories, practices, and curriculum
developed elsewhere are not directly translatable to Australian social work. Relationships (personal, professional, institutional, and structural) are at the core of social
work practice; and the terrain of relationship, and its history, between the dominant
White majority and the marginalised Other, Indigenous people and peoples in
Australia, is very different from that found in the United States or the United
Kingdom. Engaging with an Australian turning of the lens is inseparable from
strengthening the capacity of Australian social work’s constructive engagement with
Indigenous people and communities.
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