Constructing a White Nation: Social Work in the Americanization Movement – Yoosun Park, MSW, PhD

Episode 63 Guest: Yoosun Park, MSW, PhD Host: Shimon Cohen, LCSW

Dr. Yoosun Park, Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, discusses her co-authored article on social work's role in the Americanization movement from 1880 to 1930—a national project rooted in whiteness and white supremacy. She explains how the profession helped define who was deemed American and how this process excluded Indigenous, Black, Asian, and Mexican communities. The conversation reveals how these racist ideologies shaped early social work and continue to influence the field today. Dr. Park's groundbreaking research is being expanded into a book that critically examines this legacy.

In this episode:

• Social work's central role in the Americanization movement from 1880 to 1930
• How whiteness defined who was considered Americanizable—and who was not
• The exclusion of Indigenous, Black, Asian, and Mexican communities from American citizenship
• How these white supremacist beliefs, policies, and practices persist in social work today
• Dr. Park's forthcoming book expanding on this research

UPenn Faculty Profile Google Scholar Profile ResearchGate To "Elevate, Humanize, Christianize, Americanize": Social Work, White Supremacy, and the Americanization Movement, 1880–1930

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Music credit "District Four" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/