Cultural competence is the capability of understanding, communicating, and interacting effectively with people of different cultures. In an ever-changing, diverse world, cultural competence must be an essential part of our existence. Despite the world continuing to make breakthroughs in most sectors, certain aspects of human beings at a personal level have been difficult to change. The presence of stereotypes and personal biases now feels like part of what defines us as human beings. This paper allows an introspective look at my background information plus early and current experiences to connect with my identity on broader cultural competence subjects such as privilege, inequality, and being an ally.
Background
Currently, a young woman aged thirty-six years old, I was born in Attleboro, Massachusetts, which naturally makes me an American. My sexual orientation is heterosexual, and my racial identity is white. Nevertheless, I stand by the English, Greek, Russian, and German nationalities. My mother was Jewish and opted never to impose her religious beliefs on me, allowing me the freedom to settle on paganism and polytheism. Additionally, I belong to the lower class of our society’s social and economic status. All these social locations are unimportant to me, and I hardly ever think about them when it comes to how I associate with others.
Early Experiences
When I was a child, my family’s teachings were to respect everyone and treat them as I would prefer to get treated. Nevertheless, my mother’s side of the family showed slight prejudice towards people of a different race from us. Meanwhile, my father’s side was prejudiced against specific religions and ethnicities. Still, they made it clear that I had an obligation to be better as they never instilled their biases upon me and to have the utmost respect for my elders. As the only Jewish family in town, I faced a lot of bullying. The town had little diversity, but that was the early nineties. When I joined the middle school, I found three Hispanics, two Asians, and two Blacks in the whole school. Furthermore, a Jehovah’s Witness family was in town, and their daughter attended the school. Soon, there were more Hispanics and Blacks. In high school, there was more diversity with people from all races and some classmates coming out as gay or bisexual. It was the early 2000s, and by the time graduation happened, we had a transgender boy whom we loved and accepted.
When it came to making friends, my composition was diverse. Almost all my friends were boys, not because of the stereotype that girls do not get along but because the neighborhood was home to most boys from school. The boys were all Catholics, of Portuguese descent, and identified as heterosexual. While I knew one family in our block with three daughters, I was significantly younger than them. As I got older, I was allowed to see more of the town which allowed me to forge more friendships with people with whom we shared interests in the same things regardless of their gender, class, sexual orientation, religion, or race.
Those who identified as my parents’ friends were mostly my friends’ parents or their workmates. My mother initially befriended my friends’ mothers, and they formed a “Coffee Club” to spend time together after dropping us off at school. They would have coffee at a restaurant around the corner, go shopping, and partake in other activities together. My father worked six days a week from dawn to dusk, and the spare time he had, he would spend with my friends’ fathers or friends from work who were of mixed races, ages, and ethnicities. When my mother developed an addiction problem, she would not spend time with my friends’ mothers and opted for the company of the fishermen’s wives and girlfriends who had the same problem. The friendships she forged before and after the addiction were diverse, and her only regard was which group of friends could get the drugs.
This introspection offered me a chance to reflect on my childhood. It never occurred to me then, but all of my elementary and high school teachers were white and mostly women. Meanwhile, the principal and other superiors were men. The doctors were variable since I visited different specialists throughout my life. Nevertheless, my dentist has been the same Hindu lady since I was five.
Current Experiences
The current family setup is a mixture of diverse people across the board; the same goes for the neighborhood and my friends. I have a transgender cousin who identifies as a lesbian and a married gay brother-in-law. While there is one stand-out wealthy cousin, another one of the uncles is poor and barely manages to pay the bills. The diverse social-economic classes have had little impact on the family’s unity. Some cousins are in prison, while others are homeless drug addicts. My friends are also different, but the main thing is we share the same interests and get along. Black and Hispanic families make up the lion’s share of the neighborhood, and only three white families remain.
Discussions about culture, inclusion, equity, and diversity are not commonplace. My brother-in-law got betrothed to his husband a few years ago, and some family members refused to attend the wedding. We had a necessary discussion about equality then because I remember being angry and sad at the idea that people would discriminate against others due to their sexual orientation. One of my favorite sayings is “Be a nice human being,” which implies the need to be kind to others regardless of their different background. It is a lesson I have instilled in my kids, who have different friends and are okay with it. The way they were raised is not to judge others based on how they look but to be a nice human.
Connecting My Identity to Broader Social Factors
As aforementioned, I had a relatively tough childhood, which contributed to my being a better person. Despite our family seldom practicing, I got teased because of my Jewish roots. However, they lacked or had little information about the religion. Most of the thoughts that lingered for my sister and me were about our nationality. It led me to ask questions about what I never understood about other people to seek more information or attempt to understand their perspectives and relate with them.
Initially, I identified privilege as an unfair entitlement that negatively impacted the chances of diversity. Diversity was having a mixture of different people, while cultural competency had an appreciation for these differences. Oppression was a prejudiced view of these differences. Now, I think privilege is something that some people believe they deserve, but it is something they have to earn. Diversity is the coming together of anyone and everyone despite their differences. Being against this merging because of one’s individual opinion is oppression, while cultural competence is the understanding of different people without judging them.
The dominant story lies in the commonality of stereotypes based on race, ethnicity, and culture, among other factors. They impact our outlook because, knowingly or unknowingly, they lead to the development of opinions due to how often we hear the stereotypes. With the ability to affect bias, stereotypes also affect how people interact with others which can inadvertently cause inequality in treatment and oppression of the vulnerable. Manifestation of oppression includes commonplace trends such as racism, sexism, homophobia, and even heterosexism (David & Derthick, 2017). Stereotypes also affect how we view others and may lead us to assume we are privileged while others are less than us, which is grounds for inequality.
The introspection throughout this assignment and this semester have taught me a few things about myself. I have learned I am an open person willing to learn and accommodate others while respecting their values, beliefs, and other differences. Growing up in a household blind to such attributes has made me the person I am today, and I aim to raise others just as well or even better. On the face of it, the biggest social location that affected our views about people was 9/11, which led to discrimination and oppression of people with Muslim ties. One of my aunts got married to an Egyptian man and later converted. It helped me understand that I had developed a negative bias towards Muslims as a threat to my safety, and I worked through it by learning more about their religion. Eventually, I understood that it was not as bad as I envisioned when it came to people hailing from the Middle East.
As a future social worker, the NASW Standards for Cultural Componence provide an effective cultural competence measure. The measures provided encompass technology applications, indicators of competence, best practice standards, school settings, older adults’ caregiving settings, continuing education, and palliative care, among others (National Association of Social Workers, 2022). Given my mother’s history and her drug problem, I feel my cultural competence would better apply to the standards available to social workers to handle clients with substance use disorders. The NASW standards herein feature guiding principles, the standards’ goals, and highlights into individual measures. An example is a guiding principle for social workers to remain appraised on legislation and regulations to help them attend to the needs of patients with substance use disorders.
The subject of being an ally can be testy when raised in some circles. It refers to the acknowledgment that as a white person, there are systemic advantages, resources, and opportunities accorded but marginalizing the minority groups in society. As a legitimate ally, one must go beyond acknowledging this act and seek an action plan. It is possible to enforce various concrete actions, including:
- Serving in a management position and giving credit to specific individuals that are minorities. It builds professional credibility and allows others to acknowledge the colleague’s standing.
- Another plan is to champion the rights of underrepresented individuals. As an ally, it requires courage to speak up when you see unfair treatment.
- Thirdly, it is possible to be an ally and use one’s elevated position to amplify the message of a minority employee. That ensures that the marginalized voice gets heard and respected based on their contributions (Suyemoto et al., 2020). Repeating an idea made by the employee and giving them credit is one good instance of amplifying them as an ally.
- Fourth, being an ally means advocating for the rights of vulnerable employees. It refers to using one’s white privilege to identify omissions and attempt to influence the result that otherwise discriminated against the underrepresented staff member.
- Lastly, an ally can resolve that they have to learn more about the prejudices of marginalized groups by listening, researching, and learning. It requires remaining mum about the subject until research conducted enriches one with the information to comprehend the challenges faced by vulnerable demographics. It is the challenge I have gotten after reading the Latinx Identity article provided in the instructions paper, which highlights white Latinxs and Afro-Latinxs get treated differently due to physical appearances (Phillips & Vazquez, 2018). This action is one I plan on implementing in a bid to continue being culturally competent in addition to interacting with diverse groups.
References
David, E. J., & Derthick, A. O. (2017). Chapter 1: Oppression 101: An overview. In The psychology of oppression. Springer Publishing Company.
National Association of Social Workers. (2022). NASW Practice Standards & Guidelines. Web.
Phillips, C., & Vazquez, N. (2018). Op-ed: Think pieces about being a white Latino continue to miss an essential point. Remezcla. Web.
Suyemoto, K. L., Hochman, A. L., Donovan, R. A., & Roemer, L. (2020). Becoming and fostering allies and accomplices through authentic relationships: Choosing justice over comfort. Research in Human Development, 18(1-2), 1-28.