Complicity in Social Work: Resisting Carcerality & Affirming Black Women’s Bodily Autonomy

Overview: Historically social work and its practitioners have been informed by punitive, harmful practices and the interests of racist and oppressive institutions. This presentation uncovers the ways that social workers commonly collaborate with inequitable systems to regulate Black women’s sexuality and reproduction.Proposal text: While the Code of Ethics for the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) urges social work practitioners to “pursue social change” and “challenge social injustice” (NASW, 2021), the field has framed these values in punitive forms, which include mandatory reporting and identification of “noncompliance”. Relying on Foucault's (1978) concept of biopower as a means to control, manipulate, and regulate the lives of Black women, it can be argued that social work ethics participates in the limitation of bodily agency rather than confronting the landscapes that allow such bodily agency to abound. Through Foucault’s notion of biopower, the presentation explores the following questions: how do social workers transform the sensibilities around Black women’s sexuality by challenging social work theories, knowledges, and practices that have oppressed the very people practitioners attempt to “help”? When is it plausible for help to be considered punishment? And, who has the power to make such decisions?

Reproductive rights are a salient political topic of mainstream society. However, identifying the societal interferences in reproduction discourse is often covert and continues to plague the field of social work. It may seem odd that when examined closely, the messages Black women receive about birth and pregnancy (terminated or not) are conflicting. Yet, this should come as no surprise considering such contradictions prove the state’s singular motive to control Black women’s bodies. Situated in decolonial discourse, we explore the U.S.’s evolution from chattel slavery to scientific racism (Byfield, 2019) to forced sterilization (Helms & Tomlinson, 2012). More specifically, we draw connections between social workers’ complicity in racist sexual and reproductive events that align with the state’s obsession to limit the bodily autonomy and control of Black women. Mainstream social work’s support of the medicalization of birth under the guise of paternalistic notions of safety has further pathologized reproductive events (e.g. physiological birth, miscarriage, and abortion), and natural human variation (Begun, Kattari, McKay, Ramseyer Winter, & O’Neill, 2017). Denial of reproductive justice is a denial of self-determination and dignity. For many people who find themselves at the intersections of identities that give the state special interests in their reproduction (or lack thereof), a variety of outcomes can serve as justifications for punity. As social workers are often in compliance with the state, we participate in the control of reproduction resulting in criminalization of bodily autonomy when it does not align with the goals prescribed by the state for the subject’s identity(ies).

Participants of the presentation will navigate simulations of potential events that require interactions with social workers in a crisis center, hospital, or correction facility, as they relate to Black women’s bodily autonomy. As a counteraction to these institutions, we will examine support from mutual aid (Spade, 2020) and social justice organizations that resist threats to bodily autonomy. Discussion questions that emphasize the self determination of Black women in spite of barriers within social work will also be explored.