On cultural competency, the peoples' history, & humility

This week’s readings left me with both an expanded positivity concerning the profession of social work as well as with deeper questions concerning the theories and methods.

Abrams and Moio’s (2008) Critical Race Theory made some good points, but all in all left me feeling dissatisfied. I definitely agree that our society needs to acknowledge that racism exists, but does a theory that tells me I need to acknowledge racism deal with the problem of racism? One can become aware of all of the injustices in the world, but as far as helping others, how is this knowledge beneficial? Are the oppressed populations that we are helping supposed to wait for all of the factors in the systems that surround us—the government, education, and economic opportunity—to line up and operate equally and justly before they are able to function well? How do theories help clients help themselves under these oppressive systems? How do theories teach self-esteem? These questions are not so much a criticism of the article, as they are questions that arose in response to the article. I think it’s healthy to realize that that the profession of social work offers no complete answer and that social workers are no more heroes than the people they are offering assistance to.

Ironically, one important aspect of being culturally competent is realizing that we’ll never be fully competent in ourselves as Lum (2011) describes, “maintaining an awareness of one’s lack of competence” (p. 17). This speaks of the importance of humility and perhaps this is a quality that is just as important as any other kind of competence. The professor in my Human Behavior in the Social Environment class, while discussing different types of intelligence, commented that many acknowledge emotional intelligence to be just as if not more important than IQ.

In this society, humility is not looked at as a positive thing but more a sign of weakness and subordination. For me though, it is a strengthening quality and one that gives me courage to learn about the world rather than be intimidated or disregard it. It certainly is not something that a strictly capitalist worldview is going to think about and we can see that from the history of our country. As shown in Zinn’s (2003) People’s History of the United States, the Populists, while rebelling against the capitalist system, were still largely motivated economically since they were operating in reaction to the economic injustice. “The people’s party has sprung into existence not to make the black man free, but to emancipate all men… to gain for all industrial freedom…” (Zinn, 2003, p. 294) Unfortunately, had it only been the black man who wasn’t free then the economic justice would probably not have been pursued so enthusiastically. Strictly economic motives leave no room for humility and as a result, I believe no room for compassion. If one has no room for a appreciating something or someone that they are unfamiliar with under favorable conditions (economically, politically, etc.), they will have no room for fighting for justice for someone different from them under unfavorable times. Theory can teach us to be aware, but can it teach us humility?

"The job of humility is not to make us feel small, but to expand our capacity for appreciation, awe, delight; to stand silent before all that we do not know - and then to get on with the work of finding out." [Dunn, 1978]

Also, here is a link to an article about humility and self-esteem in looking at Native American education. It shows how their value of humility differs from our society’s value, as well as how a sense of humility has been shown to be very beneficial in general.

http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/AIE/IEThumility.html

References

Abrams, L. S., & Moio, J. (2009). Critical race theory and the cultural competence dilemma in social work education. Journal of Social Work Education, 45(2), 245-261.

Dunn (1978) Look at Your World . Salt Lake City: Bookcraft

Lum, D., (2011). Culturally Competent Practice: A Framework for Understanding , 4th Edition. Belmont: Brooks/Cole

Zinn, H. (2003). A People’s History of the United States. New York: HarperCollins