Intersectional and Relational Frameworks:Confronting Anti-Blackness, Settler Colonialism, and Neoliberalism in U.S. Social Work

ABSTRACT Positivist epistemologies have been argued to advance learning and interventions to improve the health of multiply marginalized and colonized people; however, these long-standing approaches have not served social and health equity. An intersectionality health equity lens understands differences in health to be impacted by the social position of multiply marginalized and colonized people embedded in systems of oppression. Bringing forward the sociohistorical contexts of whiteness and respectability in US social work provides necessary insight into how white supremacy can produce and replicate itself through policy and practice. Whiteness and respectability politics reinforce settler colonialism in the US and provide a foundation for neoliberal, sociopolitical economic policy that monitors, controls, and shapes the lives of multiply marginalized and colonized communities. Critical knowledge development engaging intersectionality is needed for US social workers to participate in structural change without perpetuating inequity and dispossession. Eradicating the violence of capitalism for future generations necessitates a radical relational praxis to deepen the sociopolitical economic analysis of economies of health inequity.