Cultural Proficiency
I am not going to try to cover the entire concept of cultural proficiency here (aren't you glad?). If you would like to read more, click the link above or check this precis [Doc] which provides a short but thorough overview. I just want to share a couple of things.
The authors define cultural proficiency as
a way of being that allows individuals and organizations to interact effectively with people who differ from them.
What caught my attention were two things--the continuum the authors offered and the barriers they identified.
The Continuum
There are six points along the cultural proficiency continuum that indicate unique ways of seeing and responding to difference:
• Cultural destructiveness: See the difference, stomp it out
The elimination of other people's cultures
• Cultural incapacity: See the difference, make it wrong
Belief in the superiority of one's culture and behavior that disempowers another's culture
• Cultural blindness: See the difference, act like you don't
Acting as if the cultural differences you see do not matter or not recognizing that there are differences among and between cultures
• Cultural pre-competence: See the difference, respond inadequately
Awareness of the limitations of one's skills or an organization's practices when interacting with other cultural groups
• Cultural competence: See the difference, understand the difference that difference makes
Interacting with other cultural groups using the five essential elements2 of cultural proficiency as the standard for individual behavior and organizational practices
• Cultural proficiency: See the differences and respond effectively in a variety of environments
Esteeming culture; knowing how to learn about individual and organizational culture; interacting effectively in a variety of cultural environments
2 The Essential Elements
The essential elements of cultural proficiency provide the standards for individual behavior and organizational practices.
• Name the differences: Assess Culture
• Claim the differences: Value Diversity
• Reframe the differences: Manage the Dynamics of Difference
• Train about differences: Adapt to Diversity
• Change for differences: Institutionalize Cultural Knowledge
I found this fascinating. I thought about where I fall on this continuum, where my school falls, and where we fall as a nation. When we consider the latter, there are obviously segments of society that fall at each point along the scale, but I wonder where the collective national consciousness is. Optimistically, I suspect we are somewhere in the middle between cultural blindness and cultural pre-competence. The Republican Party has obviously not advanced past cultural incapacity, with large segments of it still wallowing in cultural destructiveness.
I also wonder where DK falls on that continuum. I suspect we are at cultural competence as a whole with ambitions to achieve cultural proficiency. Maybe I'm too generous.
I was also struck by the barriers to cultural proficiency.
The Barriers
• The presumption of entitlement
Believing that all of the personal achievements and societal benefits that you have were accrued solely on your merit and the quality of your character.
• Systems of Oppression
Throughout most organizations are systems of institutionalized racism, sexism, hetero-sexism, ageism, and ableism. Moreover, these systems are often supported and sustained without the permission of and at times without the knowledge of the people whom they benefit. These systems perpetuate domination and victimization of individuals and groups.
• Unawareness of the need to adapt
Not recognizing the need to make personal and organizational changes in response to the diversity of the people with whom you and your organization interact. Believing instead, that only the others need to change and adapt to you.
(Italics added)
These three really grabbed me. As my friend Glen The Plumber would say, "Exactly. n/t". I don't think most people intend to enable intolerance; I think most of them are blissfully unaware of where intolerance really lurks (i.e., in their own brain). Most people think that once the laws were changed back in the 1960's, that there were somehow no longer any barriers to achievement, regardless of one's culture. This view is unrealistic at best and dangerous at worst.
One thing I try to get my students to do is, as we learned in To Kill a Mockingbird, get inside another person's skin and walk around in it. One of the most effective statistics I show them is this one:
Chart courtesy Economic Policy Institute
 That chart is a real eye-opener. I also have them read the article on how names determine employment call backs. Those things usually cause them to start considering the realities.
I hope someday that everyone will achieve cultural proficiency and that we as a nation can claim to be the first to do it. But it is a long fight, one that has been going on since the beginning of human history and one which will continue long after I'm gone.
It would be nice if we could at least agree that cultural proficiency should be our goal. At present, however, the Republican Party wants to prevent us from coming to that agreement because they would rather embrace cultural destructiveness in order to divide the working class and retain power. For this reason, among many, many others, the Republican Party is destroying America, and they must be fought and defeated until they come to their senses.
What are your thoughts on the continuum and the barriers?
Book image courtesy amazon.com
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