In perhaps the most bizarre outcome of the Second World War, the removal of the German-led Axis Powers as a common enemy paved the way for the emergence of the capitalist and the communist ideologies that created the Western and Eastern bloc respectively. The unity witnessed between the Soviet Union and the United States as part of the Allied Powers ended with World War II as the former claimed a lead in advocating communism while the latter supported capitalism in the name of democracy (Foner, 2014, p.709). The different stands plunged the two nations and their allies into the Cold War that remained so because they never engaged in direct combat. In other words, the Cold War did not mark actual combat but instead had the consistent standoffs between the two powers as they threatened each other with atomic bombs (Foner, 2014, p.713). Now, in an attempt to highlight the benefits of capitalism while associating the ideology with democracy, the economic, social, and economic spheres of the United States changed. Apparently, if the federal government was to convince its citizens that there was a need to hold the Soviet Union at bay, it had to meet its claims to protect democracy, in the States. To that end, the societal changes during the Cold War Era went on to affect social workers whose profession relied on the nature of the communities with which they worked.
According to Eric Foner (2014), despite using different approaches, the Soviets and the Americans insisted that they were “promoting freedom and social justice” (p.711). As a result, the United States faced pressure, as they had to deliver on their promise of democracy under capitalist ideas. One outcome was in the formation of the National Association of Social Workers [NASW] that sought to uphold social justice by guiding the roles of social workers from the household to the national level (History of the NASW Code of Ethics). Consequently, a read of the revisions made to the “NASW Code of Ethics” correlates with the societal changes that influenced the United States from the Cold War Era to the twenty-first century.
The social turbulence of between the 1960s and the 1970s had a significant impact on social workers as the profession changed to accommodate matters of civil rights and social reform. Naturally, with the looming possibility of war with the Soviets and the rising awareness of racism that the Civil Rights Movement encouraged, Americans were keen to uphold values of human rights, equality, and welfare rights (Foner, 2014, p.808). On that note, there was the civil rights-based formation of the National Organization for Women [NOW] accused mass media stations of spreading a “false image of women” and proceeded to demand “equal opportunity” (Foner, 2014, p.795-796). Evidently, the talks of democracy that permeated the Cold War Era encouraged oppressed populaces to demand action from the government. NASW revised its code of ethics in 1967 and again in 1979 to “address non-discrimination” and highlight the “ethical responsibility” of social workers respectively (History of the NASW Code of Ethics).
At this point, it is apparent that any advancement in ethics-related information affected social work as a profession. That is why by the 1990s social workers in the United States worked with an entirely different set of principles. With a particular interest in the introduction of computers and the internet, social work had to conform to the new channels of interaction that eliminated the need for personal contact. For instance, in 1996, the NASW Delegate Assembly created values that that were more inclusive than the preceding ones; part of the new codes dictated on the provision of services through electronic media including radio, computers, and the telephone (History of the NASW Code of Ethics). At the same time, the competence of social workers became necessary in the fields of social and cultural diversity; Foner (2014) suggests that the given phenomenon was courtesy of globalization, “the concept of the 1990s” (p.841). The presented claims make sense when one considers the changing attitudes towards immigrants in the United States. Whereas white supremacy dominated the regions for the better part of both the nineteenth and the twentieth century, the civil rights movements changed the situation by setting the foundations on which anti-discriminatory laws became a reality in the States.
Conclusively, when one learns that social workers face more restrictions in the present times than they did before, it is impossible to overlook the correlations between the effects that changes in the United States had on the same. As the country embraced new ethical conduct, so did social workers. Hence, social work in the United States had to change alongside the views of the communities and those of the government. After all, the people had new ideas of freedom, and the government did not hesitate to enact laws to meet their demands.
References
Foner, E. (2014). Give Me Liberty!: An American History (4th ed., Vol. II). New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
National Association of Social Workers. (n.d.). History of the NASW Code of Ethics . Retrieved from National Association of Social Workers: http://www.socialworkers.org/nasw/ethics/ethicshistory.asp
