Police killings of unarmed Black people: Centering race and racism in human behavior and the social environment content

The academic frames of diversity and, to a lesser extent, intersectionality mute the roles played by race and racism in the recent police killings of unarmed Black people in the United States. Most scholars agree that racism today is systemic, and the authors of this article assert that diversity content fails to prepare social workers to situate client issues in a social work practice that incorporates an understanding of the impact of racialization on Black people seeking social work services. Race and racism in the United States are creations of White supremacy and were initially crafted to justify the enslavement of Africans. The ideologies are a part of the founding principles of the U.S. democracy, and they are the genesis of White advantage in the United States achieved through law and social policy and still enacted daily in human interaction. In this article, the authors place police killings of unarmed Black people in a context that takes into consideration historical and contemporary evidence of the denigration of Black people in the United States. Then we specifically challenge the utility of diversity as a frame to prepare social work practitioners for practice with Blacks whose ancestral lineage traces back to people of African descent and whose lived experiences in the United States occurred during slavery and/or legally sanctioned apartheid (Jim Crow).