Cross-cultural Helping
Purpose: To become sensitive to the significance of cultural differences in the helping process.
Discussion: The US has been, and continues to be, a nation of diverse and blended cultures. Inevitably, social workers will interact with many individuals who have cultural, ethnic, religious and socioeconomic backrounds and are significantly different from their own. Thus, it is critical that SW understand that culture affects many aspects of clients lives, including how families raise their children, how man and woman perceive gender roles, what beliefs and values drives’s people behaviors, use of language, forms of religious expression, and so on. Intervention strategies that are relevant to and compatible with the client’s culture are far more likely to succeed than those that ignore this important factor in human functioning.
What is culture? The term culture refers to the learned patterns of thought and behaviors that are passed from generation to generation in families, communities, and even nations. Basically, a culture consists of interrelated beliefs, values, patterns of behavior, and practices that strongly influence how group of people meet their basic needs, cope with the ordinary problems of life, make sense out of their experiences, and negotiate power relationships, both within and outside their own group. One cultures’s is, to a large degree, the source of what one’ expects of self and others, as well as his or her ideas about the way things are or should be. Culture, then, is like a lens of screen through which people view life. One’s particular lens typically becomes so internalized and such a central part of his or her way of interpreting experiences that he or she may not even recognize its existence and it power in shaping his or her thoughts, behaviors, and judgements about self and others.
Because SW involves making judgements about clients when determining how practice will be performed, sensitivity to each client’s culture backround becomes fundamental skill. In addition, the SW must be sensitive to his or her own culture and how that affects the manner; in which he or she perceives clients and provided services.
Closely related to the idea of culture is the concept of ethnicity. The ethnic group is a segment of larger population that identifies itself as being a distinct group who share a common language, religion, ancestry, physical appearance, of some combination of such characteristics. Ethnicity is mostly related to people’s perception of social boundaries and how perceived difference among people are defined, explained, proclaimed or denied. If people, that believe that they belong to a distinct group and are somehow different from other people, that will have a significant effect on their behavior and on their relationships with others—including how they interact with their social workers.
A particular ethnic group may or may not be a minority group. A minority group one whose members have significant less power, resources, and control over their own lives when compared to those who are members of the dominant group in society. Typically, the members of a minority group have some physical or cultural characteristics that distinguish them from members of the dominant group, and they frequently experience prejudice and discrimination.
Whereas, culture and ethnicity have to do with people’s belief and behaviors, the term race refers to the grouping and classification of people on the basis of certain readily observable physical characteristics, such as skin colour, hair texture, and body, size and structure. It is important to recognize that the concept of race is a social construction in the minor physical variation have taken a social significance that is far beyond their biologicial significance. Within the field of genetics and the biological sciences, race is not a meaningful characteristics for classifying human beings. For example, among the estimated 30,000 genes that shape the biological characteristics of an individual, one gene determines the melanin content of skin and thus the person’s skin color. This means it is possible for a darked-skinned man to have in common—genetically and— biologically within a particular light-skinned man than with another dark-skinned man.
From a social perspective, however, race is indeed important factor in one’s life. One skin’s colour influences how others view him or her and, to some extent, how the person views himself or herself. When society develops a pattern of judging and evaluating people on the basis or racial characteristics, especially skin color, this pattern is referred as racism. Racist attitudes and patterns of thinking lead to social and economic inequality, discrimination, and the oppression of certain groups. People who experience racism and other forms of discrimination, and the oppression of certain groups. People who experience racism and other forms of discrimination—including discrimination based on class, gender, ethnicity, disability, age and sexual orientation—are typically more vulnerable to social and economic problems and therefore more to become clients of social workers. American society remains far short of Martin Luther King, Jr’s dream of society in which people “would not be judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
An additional related to concept is that of social and economic class. Within every society and cultural or racial group, there are sub-groups whose life situations and conditions are closely tied in factors of income, level of education, and type of occupation. One’s income and access to financial resources (e.g., credit, business contacts, job information have a far-reaching effect on his or her social functioning, self-image, and attitudes. For example, people who have few financial resources often feel vulnerable and are afraid to say or do anything that put their jobs or incomes at risk. People who have wealth, however, come to understand and use its power—often at the expense of those who have lower socioeconomic status.
Belief systems such as racism, classism, ageism and sexism usually arise from personal and societal prejudice and often lead to discrimination particular groups. It is important to distinguish between prejudice and discrimination. Prejudice refers to beliefs that negatively prejudge others on the basis of their group identity. Although prejudice refers to beliefs that negatively prejudge others on the basis of group discrimination, it is fundamentally a belief about others that has little effect until is acted upon. Thus, prejudice might not always might not always lead to discrimination, and discrimination can live apart from prejudice. For example, one can discriminate out of ignorance or carry out insensitive and discriminatory organizational policies without being prejudice.
Acts of discrimination may be blatant as deliberately causing physical injury to a member of a particular group of refusing to hire a person because of his or her race; these are acts of personal discrimination. Institutional discrimination, on the other hand, can be difficult to detect because it is built in the fabric of our society through laws, longstanding patterns of assigned wages to particular jobs, other systemic patterns that have the effect of placing specific groups at a social and economic disadvantage. This well-known “glass ceiling” for woman in management positions and the substantially higher poverty rates for other races; in the evidence of institutionalized discrimination.
Most people, whatever their backround, possess some level of prejudice against groups other than their own—and sometimes even toward their own ethnic, cultural and gender group. Social Workers must be alert of the existence of prejudice (including their own) and constantly assess, modify, and suspend their prejudices so that these beliefs so not lead to discrimination or in any way cause them to harm their clients. SW must be alert to the existence of institutional discrimination and be prepared to address and combat it, lest it affect their clients negatively.
twcctoronto 