Ethnicity & Race Practice Tools

NASW is developing a task force for the revision of the 2013 Guidelines for Social Work Safety in the Workplace. The guidelines were created to establish safety measures and protocols for social workers within the workplace. Social workers utilize these guidelines as a resource to help create, develop, and assist communities, private and public agencies, local, state, and federal policymakers to create a safe working environment in areas where social workers are employed.

NASW acknowledges that our profession has not always lived up to its mission of pursuing social justice for all. We apologize for supporting policies and activities that harm people of color and we will strengthen our efforts to end racism in the social work profession and in society.

The impact of colonisation on Indigenous peoples has been similar in a number of countries, including Australia, Canada, America and New Zealand. In her book "Trauma Trails: Recreating Songlines," Professor Judy Atkinson describes how the control of Indigenous peoples by the coloniser was facilitated by three main types of power abuse or violence – overt physical violence, covert structural violence, and psychosocial domination.

This brief hits the highlights for racial change. It tells what a Racial Equity Impact Assessment is, why it’s important, and how decision makers can use this new tool to help reduce, eliminate and prevent racial inequities and discrimination.

The concept of historic trauma was developed in the 1980s by First Nations and Aboriginal peoples in Canada to explain the seeming unending cycle of trauma and despair in their communities. The devastating trauma of genocide, loss of culture, and forcible removal from family and communities are all unresolved and become a sort of "psychological baggage... continuously being acted out and recreated in contemporary Aboriginal culture."

Recent decisions on affirmative action have had a negative effect on minority student matriculation at public universities throughout the United States. This effect can be seen most clearly in Texas and California, where affirmative action in higher education is being dismantled (Stolley, 1997). Public universities in these states have witnessed sharp declines in black and Latino enrollment, creating fears that the universities could become overwhelmingly white.