Abstract
This editorial has been stimulated by an excellent article in RSWP in which Drake and Hodge (2022) portray social work as being at or near a critical inflection point between scientific (empirical) knowledge versus the “postmodern/critical off-ramp” (P/CT) perspective. Drake and Hodge claim that their article intends not to favor the empirical approach, and—despite their apparent preference for it—they seem to bend over backward in trying to give the P/CT perspective more credit than it deserves. Readers familiar with my career will not be surprised to see that I will not bend over backward in this editorial. Instead, I will pose some questions that suggest that instead of being an off-ramp the P/CT perspective is off the rails. Of course, my questions will be based on logical thinking, so they might have no chance of being taken seriously by P/CT adherents who eschew logic.
Drake and Hodge trace the P/CT perspective to its roots in Marxism, which reduces personal problems to being a member of an oppressed class. Accordingly, some adherents of the P/CT perspective have dismissed all of the strong scientific evidence showing that biological factors are an important part of the etiology and effective treatment of some psychotic disorders (Kandel, 2018; Maziade & Raymond, 1995; Torrey, 1994). They argue that such evidence is merely a colonial concept that supports the ruling class and harms members of oppressed groups in their struggle against unjust sources of stress (Albee, 2007; Morgaine & Capous-Desyllas, 2015). What then does such a perspective, if taken seriously and implemented, mean for individuals with a psychotic disorder? Should we disregard the evidence that has emerged from years of empirical research—evidence showing what treatment approaches help or harm people with psychotic disorders? Other P/CT adherents have portrayed capitalism as a cause of addiction and have recommended that clinical practitioners tell clients that their addiction has been impacted by capitalism (Belkin-Martinez & Fleck Henderson, 2014). Does telling them that help them or does it conflict with the need for people with an addiction to take responsibility for their behavior and to stop blaming external forces? Moreover, does such a recommendation border on a violation of the ethic of not interjecting ones’ political worldview when treating clients?
Drake and Hodge note that the P/CT perspective is gaining popularity in academia as an approach to social work. Western thought—with its emphasis on logic, objectivity, and empirical evidence—is seen as oppressive and linked to racism and white supremacy. Thus, taking a P/CT perspective led Cleaver (2020) to ask whether statistics are racist. Cleaver posed that question and answered it by asserting that statistics have a right-wing bias. Cleaver supported that argument by citing the use of statistics by some racists and eugenicists from long ago. Extrapolating from Cleaver’s argument, if some use a tool like statistics to support an unjust argument, then the tool itself is inherently unjust. Such thinking would imply that if some use writing to make a racist argument, then writing per se must be racist. In another essay linking scientific empiricism to white supremacy, Okun (2021) asserted that logical thinking is often based in fear of losing power and that antidotes to objectivity are needed. Lest you dismiss the comments by Cleaver and by Okun as cherry-picked bizarre examples that are unrepresentative of more reasonable P/CT adherents, let me note that they were part of a set of online readings that a dean of a social work education program endorsed and asked their faculty to read and take seriously in preparation for a meeting on overcoming white supremacy in their curriculum.
Draping the P/CT perspective in the cloak of antiracism and the empirical scientific perspective in the cloak of white supremacy is an ad hominem tactic that can stifle debate by insinuating that defenders of scientific empiricism are defending white supremacy. Sokal and Bricmont (1997) portrayed such postmodern reasoning as fashionable nonsense and pointed out that the argument that objective reality—truth—is unknowable ultimately leads to totalitarianism because there is no basis for speaking truth to power. Thus, if a white supremacist politician stereotypes Mexicans as rapists and welfare recipients as lazy drug addicts, and the politician’s followers agree, should we just shrug it off as merely their subjective take on an unknowable objective reality? Or should we use objective evidence, including statistics, to try to educate the followers? Should statistics about racial disparities in criminal justice not be used as part of Black Lives Matter arguments? If objective reality is unknowable and is merely a concept favored by oppressors, how do we respond to Holocaust deniers or to Putin’s claims that Ukrainian leaders are Nazis?
In his book, Woke Racism, John McWhorter (2021), a Black professor of linguistics at Columbia University, argues that the emergence of a woke form of antiracism, despite being well-meaning, is rooted in illogical postmodernism and is harming Black Americans. McWhorter lists dogmatic tenets of this new “religion” of antiracism that he deems to be a “catechism of contradictions” that make no sense (p.9–11). For example, white people should strive eternally to understand the experiences of Black people, but they can never understand what it is to be Black, and if they think they do they are racists. Also, when Black people say you insulted them, apologize sincerely and with guilt, but don’t put them in a position where they are expected to forgive you. Likewise, “‘Black culture’ is code for ‘pathological, primitive ghetto people’, but “don’t expect black people to assimilate to ‘white’ social norms, because black people have a culture of their own.” McWhorter ponders whether postmodern antiracists know that they are agreeing with such racists as “George Wallace, Bull Connor, and David Duke” when they portray objectivity as a “white” thing (p. 6).
Recognizing that everyone has their own subjective perception of social reality, empirical social scientists have long known that assessing reality objectively is a precarious endeavor. But that difficulty need not obviate the existence of an objective reality. Thus, social research methods—such as blind raters and unobtrusive observation—are used to alleviate difficulties associated with various biases. In the context of practice, does the difficulty in obtaining a perfect, foolproof assessment of social reality imply that we should not bother to try to reach an objective conclusion when alleged perpetrators and victims of domestic violence incidents disagree about the incident and who was culpable? According to Drake and Hodge, the P/CT perspective asserts that “oppressed people see things more clearly and their narrative constitutes the most valid evidence available” (p. 4). How then would that perspective work when the disagreeing narratives are both expressed by members of an oppressed group, such as in a domestic violence dispute when one of the two individuals involved is a white female and the other is a Black person?
If objective reality is unknowable, then how does anyone really know that it is unknowable? Therefore, is the P/CT argument logically incoherent when it asserts that objective reality is unknowable? Imagine a P/CT adherent disagreeing with a logical empiricist by asserting, “Objective reality is unknowable, and my view of it is better than yours!”
What are social workers saying about their profession when they advocate that the profession take the P/CT off-ramp perspective that devalues science and objectivity? Imagine where human well-being would be today if other helping professions had done so. Science is not perfect. It can sometimes be misused by unethical people and pseudoscientists. But the professions that value it deserve the esteem they have earned. What would happen to social work’s esteem and its ability to advocate effectively for social justice if it were to become dominated by the perspective of the P/CT adherents? We all should try to end racism, white supremacy and other forms of unjust oppression, but how much credibility would our efforts have were we to be seen as offering only our self-righteous moral outrage while rejecting notions of logic and objective evidence?
Nevertheless, I suppose that the P/CT perspective can be useful to those social work educators and students who do not like—or perhaps fear—doing or utilizing studies based on logical empiricism. Likewise, administrators concerned about increasing applications and enrollments might be better served by appealing to potential applicants who are more likely to be attracted to schools that brand themselves with woke missions that promise to pursue social justice than to schools that highlight their commitment to evidence-based practice rooted in the scientific method. The preferences of some in social work to reject logical empiricism are as old as social work, a profession that has always been at best ambivalent about empirical research (Kirk & Reid, 2002). But I suspect that most of my P/CT colleagues would evince more appreciation of empirical evidence if they had to choose a treatment for themselves or a loved one.
