Smith ScholarWorks Theses, Dissertations, and Projects 2016 We were treated like machines : professionalism and anti- Blackness in social work agency culture Mark D. Davis Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.smith.edu/theses Part of the Social Work Commons Recommended Citation Davis, Mark D., "We were treated like machines : professionalism and anti-Blackness in social work agency culture" (2016). Masters Thesis, Smith College, Northampton, MA. https://scholarworks.smith.edu/theses/1708 This Masters Thesis has been accepted for inclusion in Theses, Dissertations, and Projects by an authorized administrator of Smith ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Mark Drummond Davis We Were Treated Like Machines: Professionalism and Anti-Blackness in Social Work Agency Culture ABSTRACT This exploratory study sought to answer two overarching research questions: (1) To what extent is there color-blind anti-Black bias in the way that professionalism is defined and enforced in social work agency culture? (2) What are exacerbating and ameliorating factors for this anti- Black bias? I developed a mixed-methods online questionnaire and recruited 246 participants via e-mail and Facebook. Participants were mostly White female social workers 18-39 years old, though the sample was disproportionately African American as compared with the general social worker population. When participants were asked if they perceived anti-Black bias in professionalism at their agencies, 42.7% answered yes while 57.3% answered no. A t-test demonstrated a significant difference in agencies’ percentage of African American staff members by reported bias (t(113) = 3.24, p = .002, two-tailed). Participants who answered yes to bias had a lower mean percentage of African American staff in their agencies (M = 2.70, SD = 1.17) than those who answered no (M = 3.49, SD = 1.37).