Social Justice and Civil Rights: A Call to Action for Social Work

Abstract

This special issue of Social Work, in many ways, offers an opportunity to reflect on the role of the profession in addressing issues of social justice and civil and human rights. It catapults from Social Work’s 1982 Special Issue on Oppression Based on Color, edited by Dr. June Gary, in which matters of social injustice, systemic discrimination, and the language of oppression were applied to “minorities” and examined by a diverse group of scholars (Hopps, 1982). This topic was reexamined by Schiele and Hopps (2009) in Social Work’s Special Issue on Racial Minorities Then and Now: The Continuing Significance of Race. In this current special issue of Social Work, the authors build on the work of Hopps (1982) and Schiele and Hopps (2009) and argue that the current scholarship is guided by the notion that “the profession, since its inception, seems to be challenged by a ‘push-pull’ or ambivalence vis-a-vis power and powerlessness, wealth and inequality, and social control and benevolence” (Bowles & Hopps, 2014, p. 4). Therefore, this 2016 special issue of Social Work explores the continued need for social work's presence in clarifying and advancing the intersectionality of social justice and civil and human rights.

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