This is certainly representative of the textbooks and other resources I’ve had in my counseling classes including my “Counseling Multicultural Populations” class.

But how are social workers of color supposed to see themselves reflected in the profession at all, if all our textbooks and courses operate from a traditional “diversity” model in which White people are the professionals and people of color are only reflected in the client population, pathologized as those who need interventions and the great White savior to “empower” us? Despite the hand-wringing over the difficulty recruiting and retaining social workers of color to our college and university BSW and MSW programs, what is our profession doing about changing the frame that the social work profession is for White folks? Our textbooks and syllabi reflect the status quo in which our field sees White practitioners as the norm and clients of color as the norm.

from JaeRan Kim, “The racialized classroom”