Where Is Race and Ethnicity in Social Work? A Content Analysis

People of color continue to experience inequities according to recent government reports and academic publications. Although the social work profession maintains the integral role of contributing to the advancement of social justice by conducting research on racial issues, the extent of this contribution remains unclear. By means of a content analysis, authors reviewed articles published between 2006 and 2015 in three major social work journals, Social Work, Social Work Research, and Social Service Review, to assess the prominence of race and ethnicity (R/E) in mainstream social work scholarship. Authors examined the level of treatment of R/E in each article and whether R/E were defined therein. For the articles that considered R/E as primary focuses, more details were gathered, including topic area and the composition of sample characteristics. The final sample comprised 634 articles. Although R/E were referenced in a substantial number of empirical journal articles, they were more frequently treated as control variables rather than as core constructs. Similarly, in the case of non-empirical articles, only a few studies treated R/E seriously among those who referenced it. The article concludes with a discussion of implications and recommendations for social work's concentration on R/E.