Challenging racism in social work through Multiracial Attunement

Gina Miranda Samuels and Kelly Faye Jackson are two social work academics who are also black multiracial. They discuss their book, Multiracial Cultural Attunement, and the enduring challenges of publishing scholarship about mixed race persons and families within social work, where “race” is often treated as an uncontested, fixed, and singular status or identity. Samuels (UChicago Crown Family School) and Jackson (ASU-SW) will introduce and define monoracism and moncentricity and explore social constructions of race and mixed race rooted in white supremacy. Listeners will hear about their own life experiences, how mixed-race people and families are “erased” or pathologized both in society and academic research, and how data on mixed race people is gathered, displayed, and used – or not used. Finally, they pose a challenge to the social work profession:  that preparing the next generation of social workers to dismantle systems of racism requires disrupting the monoracism within our field’s engagement of race in research, theory, and practice. Motown the dog makes a cameo appearance. Music by Augusta Read Thomas, UChicago University Professor of Composition in the Department of Music and the College. Visit the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice at https://crownschool.uchicago.edu/