Letter: Justice, not political correctness, is the issue
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Sir: Racism, anti-Semitism and sectarianism across much of Western Europe are currently expressed by the physical assault and murder of asylum seekers, refugees and black people, by the petrol bombing of synagogues and mosques and by the desecration of Jewish graveyards, including the exhumation of bodies. Britain is not an exception. And though such activities can be dismissed as the work of a relatively small number of extremists, it takes place alongside other less obvious but not less real forms of discrimination which act to disadvantage people of minority group status.
Within this context, it is disturbing and alarming to find the incoming chair of the Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work (CCETSW) apparently dismissing the incontrovertible research evidence on racial discrimination as at best 'silly' and at worst 'sinister' ('Social workers to shed 'politically correct' image', 23 August).
As the person responsible for standards in social work education, Jeffrey Greenwood, the incoming chair of CCETSW, must be aware that fair and sensitive social work delivery requires analysis of the highly complex links between personal prejudice and the institutional discrimination. It is not, perhaps, surprising that in the attempt to equip students for competent practice, certain social work educators have tended towards over-
simplification of the issues involved.
The basic issue is less one of 'political correctness' than of social justice. Where people are excluded, marginalised and even murdered because of the colour of their skin or because of their faith, we are faced with fundamental questions about the need for change.
If the academic enterprise is to have any validity, it must engage with the potentially painful issue of change, rather than the uncritical transmission of established values which often represent vested interests.
Yours sincerely,
MARIE MACEY
Lecturer in Sociology
EILEEN MOXON
Senior Lecturer in Social Work
University of Bradford
Bradford,
West Yorkshire
23 August
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments