Lessons Learned From the CSWE Task Force to Advance Anti-Racism in the Social Work Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards: Praxis in a Racially Volatile Society

On May 25, 2020, Mr. George Floyd, a Black man, was brutally murdered by Derek Chauvin, a White police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The COVID-19 pandemic which immobilized the world ended up hitting Asian, Black, Latino, and Indigenous Peoples the hardest. In response to such events, the Council of Social Work Education (CSWE) established the CSWE Task Force to Advance Anti-Racism. The work of the group centers on advancing anti-racist social work education by identifying anti-racism pedagogies and anti-racist learning environments. The Task Force members met to develop, discuss, and refine recommendations for CSWE on Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (EPAS). As a small subset of the Task Force, we engaged in a thematic analysis of the EPAS document to provide a systemic response and framing for intellectual engagement and curriculum development. This proved useful for a beginning discussion into how future EPAS documents should be formulated. The authors identified major themes that emanated from the work of the Task Force, including how racism and White supremacy underscores social work as an applied social science that maintains racist information structures, paradigms, theories, and practices. The praxis recommendations of the Task Force include adapting theoretical frameworks for anti-racist social work education; incorporating anti-racism and theories such as Critical Race Theory; updating social work competencies; promoting equitable approaches to hiring and retaining faculty of all racialized groups in different positions; and creating a new anti-racism commission to prioritize and continue anti-racism work.