A model of cultural competency in social work as seen through the lens of self-awareness

Providing effective cultural competency training to social work students is a social work education struggle. This qualitative study, conducted in the United States, addresses this challenge by examining social work educators’ teaching methods for cultural competency by focusing on the self as a part of culture and racism as a part of dominant culture. The findings reveal that the social work educators emphasize the role of self-awareness and cultural awareness in teaching cultural competency. However, they prefer to use multiculturalism, a 1960s ideology, to teach cultural competency and do not invest in teaching anti-racism. These findings shed light on teaching cultural competency and have practical implications in social work education.     

Using an Anti-racist Framework for Assessment and Intervention in Clinical Practice with Families from Diverse Ethno-racial backgrounds

Cultural competency and cultural sensitivity are now widely considered to be essential for clinical social work practice with individuals and families from diverse cultural, racial, and ethnic backgrounds. Failing to incorporate these concepts into clinical services can be harmful to clients, can fail to meet the needs of members of diverse ethnoracial communities, and can result in inappropriate services. Yet a sole focus on culture can obliterate our understanding of the consequences of race and racism on individuals and families. The use of a discursive anti-racist framework for assessment and intervention in practice with members of diverse ethnoracial communities is suggested and explained through the use of a case example.     

The French in Algeria, Algerians in France: Bourdieu, colonialism, and migration

Bourdieu's early fieldwork which included field observation, statistical analysis, and the use of photography to capture, represent, and analyse Algerian society in its complexity, took place within the unusual context of the Algerian War of Independence (1954–62). A number of his photographs of Algerian life depict the physical dislocation of Algerian peasantry into shanty towns largely as the result of rapid socio-economic and cultural change introduced by French colonisation and war. Although this fieldwork was to fundamentally shape his subsequent oeuvre, substantive issues which arose out of this research including colonialism, racism, and migration, tended to disappear in his later writings. This paper will argue that Bourdieu's discussion of colonialism in his early work, together with arguments developed by his student and co-author, Abdelmalek Sayad, provide a basis for understanding contemporary processes of ethno-racial domination and migration.     

Recommendations for Improving Cultural Competency When Working with Ethnic Minority Families in Child Protection Systems in Australia

Australia’s research and knowledge base on cultural competency has been slow to develop. To help address this gap, the New South Wales (NSW) Department of Family and Community Services (FaCS) funded a large scale study in this area, which included a detailed literature review. The paper reports on key findings from that review including that collectivist values are at odds with ‘child-centred’ philosophies of child protection; there is an inherent tension between the right to equal protection from harm and the right for respect in cultural differences in parenting and family functioning (‘cultural absolutism’ versus ‘cultural relativism’); there are factors that uniquely characterise ‘the migrant context’ (especially lack of awareness of child protection laws and systems, economic disadvantage, and fear of authority); and that cultural competency is separable from cultural awareness and cultural sensitivity, and also different from addressing language barriers. However, in reviewing the literature it became apparent that the specific roles and responsibilities of workers, agencies, and systems were not clearly delineated. Thus this paper also aimed to address this unmet need. Identifying their unique roles and responsibilities can help ensure that the delivery of child protection services are efficiently and effectively mobilised from both the ‘top’ and ‘bottom’ to benefit all ethnic minority families. Moreover, any implementation of cultural competency needs to move beyond the emphasis on culture and acknowledge the dimensions of inferiority and oppression to truly promote value for diversity and protect ethnic minority children from the dangers of systematic disadvantage that institutional racism represents.     

Locating the Wild Man: Rain Forest Enchantments and Settler Colonial Fantasies Amid the Ruins of the Anthropocene

The figure of the Wild Man resides at the hinge where nature meets culture. In the Pacific Northwest, the Wild Man is known locally by different names and is interpreted through a variety of cultural and historical lenses. Settler colonialism in the region, for example, situated the Wild Man within wilderness and anachronistic spaces, aligning him with a bygone and romanticized indigeneity. Conversely, Coast Salish people invigorate new stories of the Wild Man as critique of the ruins of late capitalism. The Wild Man provides them with strength to assert their autonomy and authority in leading the restoration of the natural environment. This article explores monstrous entanglements between settler colonialism, indigeneity and the Wild Man on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State.     

Soil, blood and identity

Modern nations are products of nationalism, and can be defined only as such, rather than by their own distinctive traits - which anyway vary over an extremely wide range. Nationalism was, sociologically, an attempt made by the modern elites to recapture the allegiance (in the form of cultural hegemony) of the ‘masses’ produced by the early modern transformations and particularly by the cultural rupture between the elites and the rest of the population by the ‘civilizing process’, whose substance was the self-constitution and the self-separation of new elites legitimizing their status by reference to superior culture and knowledge. In the same way in which the modern state needed nationalism for the ‘primitive accumulation’ of authority, nationalism needed coercive powers of the state to promote the postulated dissolution of communal identities in the uniform identity of the nation. In the practice of both, there was an unallayed tension between the ‘inclusivist’ and ‘exclusivists’ prongs of the nation-state project; hence the never fully effaced link between nationalism and racism, nationalism being the racism of the intellectuals, and racism - the nationalism of the masses. Currently our part of the world undergoes the process of the separation between state and nation, effected by lesser reliance of state power on culturalist legitimation and a degree of de-territorialization of communal affiliations, which fills the efforts of nation-building, invention of heritage, tribal integration etc. with a new urgency and may lead to the sharpening of either of the two prongs of the nationalist project.     

Theorizing race and settler colonialism within U.S. sociology

Settler colonialism expands race and racism beyond ideological perspectives and reveals the links between historical and contemporary racialized social relations and practices–the racial structure–of American society. In this article, we define settler colonialism, highlight sociological scholarship that uses settler colonial theoretical frameworks, and explore ways in which this work enriches, intersects with, complicates, and contradicts key assumptions within the sociology of race.     

Black Immigrants in the United States and the "Cultural Narratives" of Ethnicity

This article argues that social science representations of post-1965 Black immigrants in the United States employ the concept of "ethnicity" in ways that reinforce the racialist myth of Black (American) cultural inferiority. Specifically, the discursive use of Black immigrant "ethnic" and "cultural distinctiveness," while admittedly reflecting an important recognition of the heterogeneity of the United States Black populations, is in fact predicated upon a repackaged "culture of poverty" discourse that serves to reaffirm the overarching racial order. In a discussion of the theoretical and historical development of the concept, I show how the current discourse of "ethnic distinctiveness" perpetuates a form of racism under a theory that denies the relevance of race while it continuously recodes the biological notions of race as "culture." Thus, Black immigrant distinctiveness, when presented through the prism of the cultural narratives of ethnicity, allows for the perpetuation of a "cultural racism" that adversely affects all Blacks in this country. I therefore call for a rejection of ethnicity theory as it is currently conceptualized and suggest the need to ground theories of Black distinctiveness within analyses of power relations and ongoing practices of racial subjugation.     

Racism and Xenophobia

Racism is perhaps the most serious basic problem affecting the welfare of people referred to as migrants or black people in Europe today. Racism is not just about personal racial prejudice but also about institutional processes, ways of thinking and ways of doing things that are deeply ingrained in European culture, including health care—especially mental health care. The prevention of racism in a health service requires a clear statement of intent in a race equality policy that generates monitoring systems, action plans and forward planning. Combating racism must go hand‐in‐hand with the promotion of cultural sensitivity in health care; equal opportunities in access to a service must be balanced by strict control of institutional racism in the quality of the service and employment practices.     

Critique on the notion of model minority: an alternative racism to Asian American?

This research note attempts to probe how contemporary racism has evolved to replace physical characteristics with cultural traits by examining the notion of model minority in America. The analysis begins by positing that this notion manifests a problematic deployment of cultural differences. A short historical review justifies that model minority is generated and maintained by a stereotyped understanding of Asian tradition, especially Confucianism. Racial antagonism and class consciousness are then invoked by fostering essentialist ideas of cultural traditions. While America advocates its democratic system of inclusion, the logic of ‘model minority’ suggests an ‘internal exclusion’. The implications of model minority are thus that: (1) ‘race’ is replaced by ‘cultural difference’ – when cultural racism replaces biological racism, race is subsumed into a pure realm of cultural difference and race as a sociohistorical category becomes obscured; (2) the deployment of cultural differences creates an illusion that US society has already reached ‘color-blind’, and therefore neglects the social oppression and inequality along racial lines; (3) in the transforming process from a biologistic conception of race to a culturalist one, cultural differences are deployed to differentiate Asia(n) from American(n). Cultural differences are by all means essentialized, and race is furthermore reduced to essentialized cultural differences.     

From Mastery to Accountability: Cultural Humility as an Alternative to Cultural Competence

Cultural competency has been a long held ideal for social work educators and practitioners. However, definitions and approaches to cultural competency vary widely depending on worldview, discipline, and practice context. Within social work and beyond, cultural competency has been challenged for its failure to account for the structural forces that shape individuals' experiences and opportunities. In contrast, the concept ofcultural humility takes into account the fluidity of culture and challenges both individuals and institutions to address inequalities. This article takes a critical look at cultural competence as a concept, examining its explicit and implicit assumptions, and the impact these assumptions have on practitioners. It suggests that cultural humility may offer social work an alternative framework as it acknowledges power differentials between provider and client and challenges institutional-level barriers. The authors advocate a move from a focus on mastery in understanding ‘others’ to a framework that requires personal accountability in challenging institutional barriers that impact marginalized communities. Cultural humility, while a promising concept, has not been fully explored in social work. Therefore, the authors present a conceptual model of cultural competency along with strategic questions for providers and organizations to integrate into social work practice and education.     

Tocqueville,Beaumont and the Silences in Histories of the United States: An Interdisciplinary Endeavour across Literature and Sociology

Taking the example of the intermittent presence and absence of narratives of slavery, colonialism, and race within standard accounts of the US, we examine how Tocqueville's sociological account of the emergence of democracy in America is transformed when read together with the novel, Marie, written by his friend and travel companion, Beaumont, which addresses issues of American slavery and racism. Our interdisciplinary project proceeds by considering the possible contributions to historical sociology of analysis of literary narratives, and by exploring the translation of social realities into fiction. These interdisciplinary translations, we argue, highlight the specific issue of silences within mainstream narratives about American democracy and enable us to reassess the significance of silences within historiographies of modernity. In particular, the neglect of Beaumont's contribution has given rise to an appropriation of Tocqueville to a largely celebratory account of American democracy and has elided his concern with the lasting consequences of slavery and racism.     

Multi-ethnic school environment from the school leader’s perspective: challenges and approaches to improve multi-cultural competency among teachers in Malaysia

This study aims to identify the challenges and approaches to improve a multicultural competency among teachers in multi-ethnic schools environment based on school leaders’ perspective. Data collection method used in this study is qualitative method. A total of nine school leaders from the states of Kedah, Penang, and Perak were included in the interview session. The results of this study show that the challenges faced by teachers in practicing the multicultural competency are lack of experience toward cultural diversity. A late exposure to cultural diversity makes it difficult for teachers to accept and adapt in a multi-ethnic school environment. The approaches suggested by school leaders to improve the multicultural competency are as follows: (1) Courses on cultural diversity should be organized to enhance the knowledge about cultural diversity; (2) the development of more open and better policy for education system in Malaysia in order to prepare teachers with a higher multicultural competency for teaching students from diverse ethnic and cultural groups; (3) an early exposure to cultural diversity in order to increase the multicultural competency, especially during teaching practicum.     

A skillset and a stance: Program planning for cultural competence and cultural humility in home visitation

Cultural competence has long been valued in home visitation, with a special focus on adapting home visiting programs to maximize their effects on specific cultures and populations. Critics advocate that traditional cultural competence training focusing on individual, professional skills-building should be replaced by cultural humility approaches that focus on humble engagement of participants. Little is known about how home visiting programs serving broadly diverse populations experience cultural competence and/or cultural humility efforts and initiatives on the ground. Interviews approximately 90−120 min in length were conducted with 34 home visiting program administrators in a large Midwestern state. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, coded thematically, and subjected to content analysis. Two themes were identified from interviews. Respondents emphasized that: 1) cultural competency training was required by home visiting program models, so cultural competency questions were always addressed in home visitation, especially in training for new home visitors; and 2) cultural competence also included many aspects of cultural humility, commitment to continuous self-evaluation and self-reflection on cultural encounters that identified cultural knowledge gaps and sought more information. Respondents did not see cultural competency and cultural humility as oppositional and saw both concepts as important for engaging participants in home visitation.     

Talking About Culture With Internationally Adoptive Parents: An Anthropological Perspective

Parents who adopt internationally are commonly implored to expose their children to their “birth cultures.” While this celebration of origins is praiseworthy, the approach to “culture” that it typically involves is arguably problematic. This article discusses what anthropologists mean by culture and how this differs from the way culture is treated in international adoption. It then considers what medical anthropologists have learned through decades of evolving discussions about how to teach “cultural competency” to health care providers and suggests that the insights from these debates can be applied to encourage a more nuanced approach to “cultural competency” among adoptive parents.     

Disability Through the Lens of Culture

ABSTRACT

Effective social work requires cultural sensitivity and competency. Until recently, there was little discussion of culture outside of the contexts of race or ethnicity. This article is an exploration of the key components of culture with application to the community of people with disabilities. The language, history, stigmatization, economic concerns, common behaviors, and practices of people with disabilities are highlighted. A literature review of sensitivity and competency in cross-cultural practice is provided. The article furnishes insights into the lived experience of disability. Suggestions to help practitioners reduce the risks of harm and improve service to this population are presented. Content on disability culture is proposed for social work educators to infuse into core curriculum or add to diversity electives.     

Challenging a culture of racial equivalence

We live at a time when our understandings and conceptualizations of ‘racism’ are often highly imprecise, broad, and used to describe a wide range of racialized phenomena. In this article, I raise some important questions about how the term racism is used and understood in contemporary British society by drawing on some recent cases of alleged racism in football and politics, many of which have been played out via new media technologies. A broader understanding of racism, through the use of the term ‘racialization’, has been helpful in articulating a more nuanced and complex understanding of racial incidents, especially of people's (often ambivalent) beliefs and behaviours. However, the growing emphasis upon ‘racialization’ has led to a conceptualization of racism which increasingly involves multiple perpetrators, victims, and practices without enough consideration of how and why particular interactions and practices constitute racism as such. The trend toward a growing culture of racial equivalence is worrying, as it denudes the idea of racism of its historical basis, severity and power. These frequent and commonplace assertions of racism in the public sphere paradoxically end up trivializing and homogenizing quite different forms of racialized interactions. I conclude that we need to retain the term ‘racism’, but we need to differentiate more clearly between ‘racism’ (as an historical and structured system of domination) from the broader notion of ‘racialization’.     

Young Black women's resistance to the Canadian settler colonial state apparatus: Negotiating the complexities of “being part of the system that oppresses”

Young Black peoples encounter racism and discriminatory practices and policies through formal education and in the larger society (Creese, 2013; Dei & James, 1998; Kelly, 1998). As the experiences of the research participants—young Black women between the ages of 18 and 30—highlight, a formal education system that is structured to benefit and perpetuate the settler colonial state apparatus marginalizes Black youth, including those who are deemed “successful” through their acceptance into higher education as formal education and the labour market are structured according to the logic of settler colonialism. As such, these systems operate by imposing Euro-Western systems of knowledge, justice, and community on racialized peoples, and in particular, Black peoples. Yet, the research also shows that while injustice is the reality for young Black people, so too is resistance through a small yet powerful contingent who are refusing to remain complicit in perpetuating settler colonialism.