Racial Attitudes Characterizing Social Work Students at a Southern University

Social work students and professionals need to develop the ability to gauge potential links between race and resource deprivation and limited access to social services. Using data from a university-wide student survey, we tested two hypotheses: (a) that social work students exhibit greater racial tolerance than students not studying social work and (b) that entering and graduating MSW students alike exhibit greater racial tolerance than BSW students. Our results clearly suggest social work students were more tolerant than other students. However, with a few exceptions, progress through social work study was not significantly associated with increase in tolerance.