‘Everything is White’ : Exposing and Deconstructing Whiteness as Risk in the Helping Professions

This chapter will explore the dominance of Whiteness within helping professions and deconstruct the Whiteness of care. Helping professional practice can hide under the guise of care which positions the assumedly White practice as neutral or good. This practice is framed as the safe practice and as not posing risk. The positioning of risk in this practice is externalized and frequently frames the service user, individual, family, or community as being the risk or at risk. This chapter offers a reconstruction of White discourse that repositions Whiteness as the risk in professional helping practice. Whiteness, especially White feminist approaches to care, are protected and positioned as the norm. White feminist approaches to care in helping professions play the role of rescuer and saviour, which in turn further perpetuates violence and harm. This superior positioning gives power to White feminist approaches to care and shields the feminist carer from critique and questioning while exerting White power using dominant practice tools. These tools become an expression of Whiteness and this Whiteness continues to exert dominance covertly in practice. The tools of Whiteness, while framed as care, are language and constructions that perpetuate White dominance and White power over service users, individuals, families, and communities. Through examples of New South Wales Juvenile Justice Youth Level of Service/Case Management Inventory – Australian Adaptation (2.0 Risk Assessment Tool), Positive Behavior Support Plans, and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child Placement Principle, this chapter deconstructs the dominance of Whiteness and exposes risk of Whiteness in helping professional practice.

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