‘Not knowing that I donot know and not wanting to know’: Reflections of a white Australian social worker

Reflecting on white privilege and social work

. . . as a white Australian, I can only become part of the solution when I recognize the degree to which I am part of the problem, not because I am white but because of my investment in white privilege. (Anne Barton, 2010, the great-granddaughter of Australia’s first Prime Minister Sir Edmund Barton)

This article examines how unearned power and privilege is systematically attributed to me as a member of the dominant cultural group and social worker in Australia (McIntosh, 1992). I am a middle-aged, middle-class, white woman, a first generation Australian of Swiss background. As a white social worker and academic, white race privilege and professional ‘expert’ power positions me as a ‘situated knower’ within a racist society (Moreton-Robinson, 2009). As a white person, there is much that I do not know about and will never know or experience of racism in a racist Western society (Tuana, 2006). My experiences of white privilege are geographically and culturally located in the local Australian context but white privilege is a global phenomenon.

Privilege relates to how membership of a particular dominant group can systematically present individuals with access to resources and institutional power beyond the advantages of citizens who do not belong to these groups (Pease, 2010). The social dynamics of privilege incorporate a number of dimensions, including how race, gender, class, sexuality, ethnicity, religion, age and able-bodiedness intersect. Privilege is invisible, the privileged groups have the power to determine social norms, privilege is naturalized and there is a sense of entitlement that accompanies privilege (Pease, 2010). As Pease (2010: 109) argues, ‘people’s perceptions of the world are influenced by their personal biographies and social location’. Thus, I can experience and resist oppression at the personal, cultural and structural levels but I am positioned and socially located within particular cultural norms that privilege dominant groups (Collins, 1991). The privileges related to being white, Western, middle-class, heterosexual and able-bodied, which are personal, emotional and embodied experiences.

I offer a critique of dominant Western assumptions of and practices in social work and examine social policies that set the context for my reflections and experiences of the power and privileges of being a white social worker and a white migrant in Australia. My personal experience of migration to Australia informs my practice reflections and I present a case study of my professional experience as an Australian social worker working in child protection. I use auto-ethnography as a research method, to reflect on personal data that highlights how white privilege functions to benefit me as a white person in Australia. Auto-ethnography is a methodology that draws on specific experiences of the researcher, to understand how personal and professional experiences are connected to historical and cultural contexts that privilege whiteness (Ellis and Bochner, 2000).

Social work as a racist profession?

Internationally and nationally, social works’ professional bodies promote universal notions of social justice and human rights as key values and ethics to guide the profession (AASW, 2010; Razack and Badwell, 2006). They advocate for social workers to develop self-reflexivity and culturally competent social work practice (AASW, 2010). Reflexivity is concerned with how knowledge is constructed and presented (Grbich, 2004), which encourages social workers to think about how social and cultural locations influences practice with clients (Razack and Badwell, 2006). That is, in the social work profession we often do not know or do not care to know how unearned power and privilege is systematically attributed to us as members of the dominant cultural group. We therefore need to be conscious of how our intervention strategies may be interpreted by members of other cultural groups and communities. The notion of social work itself and statutory child protection principles such as ‘the best interests of the child’ are socially constructed phenomenon, which are attributed considerable power and hold different meanings for different groups in society.

Critical social work literature advocates for challenging domination and oppression within social structures and responding positively to difference and diversity, including differences across cultures, races and languages (Quinn, 2003). A central aim of social work is to influence social change and redress inequalities (Allan et al., 2003), which includes reflecting on and challenging white-centric social work practices. However, whilst I argue that examining white privilege and racial oppression is central to reflecting on human rights and social justice as key values and ethics of social work, the assumptions that inform social work Codes of Ethics (AASW, 2010; NASW, 2008) can also function as a form of Western and academic imperialism (Holtzhausen, 2011).

Social work has been criticized for being dominated by white, Western and middle-class discourses (Leonard, 1997; Pease, 2010). Locally and globally, ‘we cannot dissociate social work from its historical role in imperialism’ (Razack, 2009: 11). The contemporary Western-based curricula in social work education continues to raise questions about whose values, traditions, practices and knowledges are being privileged (Holtzhausen, 2011). That is, notions of social justice and human rights are grounded in the discourses of the dominant and oppressive groups and located within a white, Western and male standpoint (Holtzhausen, 2011; Leonard, 1997). Social work literature, theories, policy and practices are frequently questioned for being ethnocentric because social work is a culturally and historically embedded activity that exists within white institutions, unequal social relations and taken-for-granted dimensions of power (Briskman, 2003; Pease, 2010; Quinn, 2003). Social work in Australia has also been criticized for being involved in ‘racist, patronizing and unjust practices’ (Green and Baldry, 2008: 389). It has been noted that ‘social work guided by Indigenous Australian participation and experience’, and human rights and social justice, is in ‘its infancy’ (Green and Baldry, 2008: 389). Social workers have resisted engaging with Indigenous knowledges and ‘theorizing’ and have been slow in acknowledging white race privilege (Briskman, 2003).

Frankenberg (1993) discusses how being aware of white race privilege (rather than conceptualizing oneself as neutral) is more challenging than recognizing the ‘oppression’ of others. Knowledge about diverse cultures and culturally-based theories and practices requires recognizing the power and privilege of the dominant cultural and racial group and the power of being white (Quinn, 2003). The privilege and power of whiteness and ‘being white’ is often invisible in social work education and left unexamined, in preference for ‘cultural diversity training’ on ways of working with ‘cultural Others’ (Pease, 2010: 111).

This process of ‘othering’ is frequently commented on as contributing to a racist society by academics from communities who experience this ‘othering’ (see Moreton-Robinson, 2009). For example, Mapedzahama and Kwansah-Aidoo (2010) reflect on their experiences of constantly being asked ‘Where are you from?’ as visibly black African migrants in Australia. Using a self-reflexive autobiographical approach, they note that this question is racially biased and defines ‘others’ in terms of ‘difference not sameness’ and as ‘perpetual outsiders’ (Mapedzahama and Kwansah-Aidoo, 2010: 5). As an Indigenous woman, Fredericks (2009: 3) also states:

I get surprised and angry when it is other academics who espouse notions of justice and equity with whom we experience tension and conflict in asserting our rights and cultural values.

Furthermore, Ang’s (2001: 36) autobiographical account of ‘not speaking Chinese’ and her construction of identity politics as being provisional, partial and constantly re-invented and re-negotiated reinforces the complexities of the lived experiences of ‘otherness’.

When reflecting on my own experience, I was born in Sierra Leone, West Africa. However, as a white person I do not experience the same level of surveillance about my hyphenated identity (a Swiss-Australian born in Africa) and my sense of place and belonging in Australia is not questioned. Furthermore, as a white Western social worker and academic I am positioned as having considerable ‘expert’ power, which reflects the multiple layers of my privilege (Pease, 2010).

Australian social policies constructed out of white privilege

White privilege can be recognized by examining how historically whiteness has gained legitimacy (Levine-Rasky, 2002). White privilege is socially constructed, practised, modified and reinforced by other social divisions such as gender and class, but this article particularly focuses on unequal race relations. Racist ideologies of white superiority and supremacy have shaped historical policies in Australia that demarcated whites as biologically and culturally superior (Leonardo, 2004).

Most obviously, the ‘White Australia’ immigration policy can be traced back to the 1850s when Australia favoured British applicants. The Immigration Restriction Act 1901 provided the legal means to restrict immigration and remove ‘prohibited migrants’, which continued until 1973, when the policy was phased out by the Whitlam Labor Government (Commonwealth of Australia, 2009). This policy was eventually replaced by the 1975 Racial Discrimination Act, which made racially-based selection criteria illegal.

Furthermore, Aboriginal protectionist and assimilation legislation and policies were enacted in state jurisdictions, commencing with the Victorian Aboriginal Protection Act 1869. These policies resulted in the systematic removal of up to 100,000 Aboriginal children from their families into public institutions and missions across Australia, up until the 1970s, creating what is now referred to as the Stolen Generations (HREOC, 1997; Hunter, 2008). Community self-determination policies were introduced by the Whitlam Labor Government in 1972, but the legacy of colonization continues to influence Australia’s policies and politics (Briskman, 2003).

In 2007, in response to Ampe Akelyernemane Meke Mekarle (‘Little Children are Sacred’) – the report of the Northern Territory Board of Inquiry into the Protection of Aboriginal Children from Sexual Abuse (Northern Territory Government, 2007) – the Australian Howard Coalition Government initiated the Northern Territory Emergency Response. This is commonly referred to as the Northern Territory Intervention and included amending the Northern Territory Land Rights legislation and the government taking control of Aboriginal community leases (Hunter, 2008). Whilst views on this initiative are contested, this ‘intervention’ enacted ‘special measures’ such as the compulsory quarantining of welfare payments for particular Aboriginal groups, which breached the Racial Discrimination Act (1975). This response has been criticized for being an example of how current ‘child protection’ policies and legislation are biased in favour of white people who have the invisible power and privilege to create policy and legislation that is not always culturally relevant for Aboriginal communities (Walter et al., 2011).

Social workers have directly participated in social interventions such as the removal of children, resulting in the Stolen Generations and the Northern Territory Emergency Response. The Northern Territory Emergency Response aims to reduce child abuse in remote communities because Aboriginal children are six times more likely to experience child maltreatment (primarily neglect, physical abuse and emotional abuse) than non-Indigenous children (Hunter, 2008). However, people living in remote communities still experience high levels of poverty and family violence, are more likely to be unemployed, have lower educational achievements, are subject to higher levels of incarceration, and experience poor health and housing compared with non-Indigenous people (Cheers et al., 2006; Hunter, 2008). These structural and racial inequalities are factors that contribute to the overrepresentation of Aboriginal children in the child protection system (Hunter, 2008).

The historical oppression of Aboriginal communities in Australia has resulted in a mistrust of white government policies and interventions (Hunter, 2008; Leonardo, 2004). As Lea (2008: 201) notes, the notion of ‘intervention’ itself presupposes a position of ‘otherness’. Furthermore, ‘interventions’ in Aboriginal communities constructed by members of the dominant cultural group have been criticized for lacking extensive community consultation and showing limited understanding of Aboriginal self-determination (Hunter, 2008). Lea (2008) examined the discourses and practices of the ‘helping whites’ within the culture of the bureaucracy of government health institutions, describing a long history of failure to address inequalities experienced by Aboriginal people. Social workers have also been criticized for being complicit in practices that aim to ‘help’ but fail to do so (Margolin, 1997). My own actions and experiences offer painful insights into this.

The next section analyses and interprets my past memories from my present perspective in more depth. Using personal data, I explore areas of reflection that have been significant in my understanding of the influence of white privilege in my personal and professional life experiences (Chang, 2008). I explore my experiences in the context of the colonization of Australia and social work practice in the field of child protection. First, I discuss the method of auto-ethnography, drawing on relevant literature that has assisted me in my reflections.

Auto-ethnography

Auto-ethnography draws on various ethnographic methods, such as self-observation, self-reflection, memory work, personal documents, journals and reflective notations, to examine ‘the self’ within the social context (Ang, 2001; Chang, 2008). I use autobiographical material and reflective writing as primary data, to interpret my behaviours, thoughts and experiences in relationship to others in society as well as to examine how I am positioned within racialized and unequal cultural and historical spaces that privileges whiteness (Boyd, 2008; Chang, 2008; Grbich, 2004). Examining the inner and outer frameworks for exploring self-awareness has assisted me in my self-reflections. The outer framework relates to the society in which the social worker, the social work profession and service user population groups function, whilst inner self-awareness is personal and relates to individual values, professional aspirations and personal experiences that an individual brings to professional social work practice (Rothman, 1999).

Chang (2008: 51) notes that auto-ethnography is a useful tool for researchers and practitioners working in multicultural contexts because it is a ‘friendly’ research method, it enhances cultural understanding and has the potential to transform the researcher and readers towards ‘cross cultural coalition building’. In a similar attempt at ‘building cross cultural coalitions’, Boyd (2008: 212) examines white privilege and his reactions and actions when he was referred to as a ‘know-it-all who acts like Hitler’ in an interracial dialogue group, and uses this reflection as a transformative learning experience.

I reflect on my positioning as a white social worker and white migrant to Australia because self-awareness and self-reflection are lifelong pursuits for social workers in light of our ethical commitments. However, as Ang (2001: 23) also was, I am concerned that I may come across as ‘self indulgent or narcissistic’ for using personal experiences as the ‘privileged source of authority’. As Moreton-Robinson (2009) argues, middle-class white academics who advocate an anti-racist position do so by consciously and unconsciously exercising their own race privilege. The researcher and practitioner ‘positions’ him or herself and are positioned within discourses and practices that are historically constructed and culturally located (Grbich, 2004). In the attempt to notice the function of whiteness in my personal and professional memories, I also re-centre and reinforce whiteness, which is a process and outcome that I benefit from. These are complex dilemmas that are difficult to reconcile.

In order to examine the invisibility of white privilege, the epistemologies of ignorance literature is also useful because it identifies different forms of ignorance, how these forms are maintained and produced, and what role they play in knowledge practices (Sullivan and Tuana, 2007). Tuana’s (2006) taxonomy of ignorance includes: knowing that we do not know but not caring to know, not knowing that we do not know, systematically encouraging the ignorance of certain groups and wilful ignorance. This framework is helpful in identifying how ignorance is maintained and left unquestioned in situations of white privilege (Sullivan and Tuana, 2007). In opposing white privilege I become more aware of how I have not known or have not wanted to know the power ascribed to me because of my whiteness.

I draw on individual personal and professional memories and historical literature, to reflect on my subjective understanding of how white privilege influenced my childhood experiences and is embedded within social work practice. However, I acknowledge that these reflections do not ‘reflect’ the ‘truth’ or ‘reality’ of these experiences (Boyd, 2008: 216). These reflections can only be subjective and partial experiences of my privileges as a white person and social worker in Australia, emerging from particular historical and cultural contexts.

Reflecting on my migration to Australia

At the tail-end of the White Australia policy, in the 1960s my family migrated to the Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory, Australia from Sierra Leone, West Africa. My mother recalls how our family was called into the ‘immigration office’ because the ‘officials’ wanted to ‘have a look at us’. She said that because we were coming from Africa they thought we were black, but when we attended the ‘interview’ and saw we were white, they just looked at us and ‘signed the papers’. We migrated to Australia because of my father’s employment at a mine owned by multinationals being built in the Arnhem Land. We were the first white family to move to and live in Gove (or Nhulunbuy). My early memory of schooling was being the only ‘white kid’ at Yirrkala Mission School.

This region was the land and country of the Yolngu people and they did not want the mining development to go ahead. In 1963 Yolngu elders sent a bark petition to the Australian Government, protesting against the mining company. The bark petition protest was the first native title land rights case in Australia (Isaacs, 1995). In the words of Wandjuk Marika, an elder of the Yolngu people: ‘The Balanda [white people] don’t know . . . they don’t care about their land, nothing’ (Isaacs, 1995: 101). Thus, Marika argues that white people do not care to know and are wilfully ignorant of the effects of mining on the land (Tuana, 2006).

The bark petition taken to the Australian House of Representatives to protest the arrival of the mining company (Nabalco) did not sway politicians. So, the Yolngu people took their protest to the courts in 1971. The Yolngu lost the case because Australian courts were bound by the concept of ‘terra nullius’ (an ‘empty land’), which did not recognize the rights of Indigenous people to the land. At the 1971 hearing of the Gove Land Rights Case, Justice Blackburn upheld the doctrine of ‘terra nullius’, but acknowledged the complex social system of the Yolngu people:

The evidence shows a subtle and elaborate system highly adapted to the country in which the people led their lives, which provided a stable order of society and was remarkably free from the vagaries of personal whim or influence. If ever a system could be called ‘a government of laws, and not of men’ it is that shown in the evidence before me. (Milirrpum v. Nabalco (1971) 17 FLR 141: 267)

Eventually, after considerable protest by Aboriginal peoples, the 1976 Northern Territory Land Rights Legislation was devised. In 1992 the High Court of Australia questioned the notion of ‘terra nullius’ by agreeing that there exists a native title in common law related to traditional people’s connection with the land (Mabo and others v. QLD (No. 2) (1992) 175 CLR 1 F.C. 92/014).

I was around seven years old when the first land rights court case was being heard. However, as a young child I was not aware of this protest occurring from the Yolngu people and its momentous significance in the history of land rights struggles in Australia. At this stage, I did not know what I did not know about Australia’s colonial history (Tuana, 2006). This ignorance is directly related to my position of power and privilege as a white person in Australia. I do not know but suspect that a young Yolngu person living in the area was much more aware of the impact of the monstrous mining development being built on what was previously virgin bush land, on which his or her family had possibly lived and hunted. Many years later, as a social work student, I began to learn about the effects of institutional discrimination and racism on Aboriginal Australians and to reflect on how institutional power benefited me, as a white person and soon to become ‘professional social worker’. My first social work job was in a rural, remote, statutory, child welfare service. My practice occurred in the context of policies and legislation created by white people who do not know or do not want to know the effects of historical and contemporary policies and legislation on Aboriginal communities. I use this professional practice case study as a means of illustrating the power of the profession of social work in implementing these policies deemed to ‘protect’ Aboriginal children (Young, 2008).

Reflecting on my professional social work practice

So, how does white power constitute experiences of social work practice in the context of child welfare and protection? In my first social work job I worked in a small and isolated office in a remote Australian desert community and many of my ‘clients’ were Aboriginal Australians from remote ‘traditional’ communities. This work included financially assisting families by supplying food vouchers, representing ‘young offenders’ in court and supervising their court orders, as well as assessing the well-being and protection of children. I obtained this job partly because of my previous ‘knowledge’ of Aboriginal cultures and rituals.

One of my main social work roles was assessing and intervening in situations of child abuse and neglect. I was the only ‘trained’ social worker in the office and thus child protection work was my responsibility. The legislative power accrued to me as a professional white social worker being required to make these decisions cannot be ignored. As Aboriginal children continue to be removed from their families at much higher rates than white children, I too was involved in the removal of Aboriginal children from their families. To set the context, I offer a child protection case study from my experience as a child protection worker working with Aboriginal people and communities.

The story starts with a young Aboriginal couple having a baby. The mother and father come from the same ‘traditional’ community, where they were involved in sniffing petrol for a number of years. However, the community is a dry zone, so in more recent times they have come ‘into town’ to drink alcohol and camp on the fringes of a local mining township with a group of relatives. The baby is five months old and two reports have been made to the local child protection service about the couple being drunk, being involved in violent arguments, neglecting the baby and forgetting it on the footpath. As the local social worker working in child protection, this seems to be a clear-cut case of concern, so a court order was applied for to remove the child from the care of the couple. This order was uncontested by the couple. Only the young mother attended the court hearing; she had her head bandaged up after being assaulted by the father of the baby and was breastfeeding the baby. After the court decision was made, she had to hand the baby over to me, the new white social worker in the local ‘welfare service’, for ‘safekeeping’. I left the court with the baby, who was to be temporarily placed in a foster home 400 kilometres away from his homeland whilst arrangements were to be made to meet with the extended family, who lived in an isolated, remote community. I cried about the levels of disadvantage experienced by this young mother, as I left the court room holding her baby. The mother looked confused, wondering what happened and when she would see her child again. Within a number of weeks we made arrangements to drive to the community to hold a family meeting, which had a successful outcome in that the grandparents would take responsibility for the care of the baby. However, my direct involvement in removing Aboriginal children, as symbolized in this case, took a considerable toll on my courage to be a statutory social worker and this experience has strongly reverberated for many years in my memories as I reflect on the effects of historical policies on contemporary social work practices.

I do not wish to make any comments on whether this decision was right or wrong, but to examine how the practices of professional power constitute social work practices and professional identities (Taylor and White, 2000). What I am commenting on is that I was in a position of considerable power as a white social worker within a statutory organization and in contemporary and historical contexts that continue to contribute to the oppression of Aboriginal communities. These practices of power did not go unnoticed by some community members and caused considerable resentment and anger. I was frequently verbally abused by angry individuals such as being called ‘a fucking white cunt’ as an expression of this outrage. Over time I began to believe that this was true.

I acknowledge that Aboriginal social workers, especially when working in the area of child protection, can also be held under suspicion by community members. As one Aboriginal social worker notes:

Once you’re in the system, people get very frightened of you because now you have this white education and you are a social worker and you are a potential threat to the removal of people’s children from them. (Sue, in Bennett and Zubrzycki, 2003: 65)

As a white social worker, reflecting on the power of whiteness is political, personal as well as professional, relating to how professional social work identity is dominated by Western discourses that are experienced as disempowering by some members of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities (Bennett and Zubrzycki, 2003).

When reflecting on my white education, cultural background and being directly involved in the colonization of the Arnhem Land and the removal of Aboriginal children, this causes me considerable ‘white guilt’. Debates exist in anti-racist literature about the emotion of ‘guilt’. Guilt can function as a negative and positive transformative emotion. That is, guilt and shame can mobilize action and make visible complicity in white privilege (Ryde, 2009), but it can also attract defensive responses. For example, when white students are learning about the effects of colonization, some react by saying ‘I didn’t do it, so it is not my responsibility’. This defensive reaction implies that it is the responsibility of the ‘colonized’ or ‘victims’ to address their own ‘oppression’. This defensive position functions to maintain the power of white privilege in a racist society (Moreton-Robinson, 2009). Similarly, as a social work educator I have often taught colonial histories and concepts to students without acknowledging or reflecting on my own white privilege, personal family history, and ‘complicity’ with the destruction of Aboriginal land and culture. This is a painful insight because by ignoring the effects of white power and privilege, including in social work ‘interventions’, I have continued to be complicit in maintaining the power of white privilege (Moreton-Robinson, 2009).

When reflecting on the history of colonial Australia and the policies that advocated the systematic removal of children from their Aboriginal families, this child protection work caused me considerable dilemmas, creating interpersonal and intrapersonal tensions. Scott (2005) provides a framework for analyzing the potential conflicts in collaborative child protection work at different levels: between organizations such as between child focused and adult focused services; within organizations (such as who is allocated the child protection work); between professional disciplines (such as between nurses and social workers) as well as at interpersonal and intrapersonal levels. At an interpersonal level, my obvious professional power and privilege interrelated with white power and privilege to anger some Aboriginal people affected by these decisions. Intrapersonal tensions led me to reflect on the role of whiteness, power and privilege in statutory child protection practice with Aboriginal communities, and how these tensions can result in practitioner ‘burnout’ and high levels of staff turnover, which has been an ongoing concern raised by service users and service providers in child protection services (Arney et al., 2010).

Conclusion

In the context of reconciliation between white Australians and Aboriginal Australians, it is important to reflect on and acknowledge the power of white privilege. As a white person it is too easy to deny how white privilege is maintained (Pease, 2010). This is a beginning attempt to reflect on my own white power and privilege in my role as a professional social worker in a statutory context that intervenes in the protection of children, which included removing children from their families as a result of abuse or neglect. It draws upon my memories as a young child and a white social worker working with Aboriginal communities and the intrapersonal tensions this creates for me. This reflective process does not reduce the white power and privilege accrued to me. It does, however, function to make visible the privileges accrued to ‘professional social workers’ and to broaden our knowledge of the effects of white power and privilege in social work interventions with disadvantaged communities.

Taking this argument further, an awareness of the negative effects of professional power can enable social workers to challenge systemic racism, to promote a social justice and human rights perspective and to respectfully consult with individuals and communities affected by this power. Social workers can develop relationships characterized by reciprocity, respect and trust, which integrate Aboriginal and Western worldviews, by using skills such as deep listening, ‘stillness’ and considerable self-reflection (Bennett et al., 2011). Personal self-awareness and political lobbying to address social inequalities are lifelong and developmental ventures and can come from a position of attempting to redress white power and privilege, not unquestioningly imposing white values on people represented as ‘the other’ (Rothman, 1999). However, as a white Western social worker and academic, I cannot stand completely outside of the discourses that construct me. There is much that I do not know or have not experienced about racism and power (Tuana, 2006) and this needs acknowledging.