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SOCIAL WORK THEORY
CHAPTER 7: DIVERSITY AND SOCIAL WORK
DIVERSITY AND DIFFERENCE
Variations among human beings are limitless. Genetics and biological diversity only begin
to explain these human differences. Individual differences among people also develop
based on their multiple memberships in various groups that shape personal identity.
Consider the many distinct cultural, ethnic, and religious communities that exist, and it's no
surprise that humans demonstrate widely varying values, beliefs, and perspectives. The
term human diversity encompasses all of those differences that together account for
individual uniqueness.
Cultural Diversity
Race and ethnicity are key features of one's cultural identity. Race is a socially constructed
classification that emphasizes physiological differences, particularly skin colour and facial
features. Ethnicity refers to population groups distinguished by cultural ethos the values,
expectations, and symbols of the particular group
Privilege and Dominance
The phrase people of colour distinguishes those who must deal with oppression and
vulnerability based on racial discrimination. Colour bias creates barriers to African
Americans, Latino/ Latina Americans, Asian Americans, and Native Americans in ways not
experienced by ethnic groups who are able to blend into the White-dominated society.
People of colour are especially vulnerable to economic, political, and social conditions that
reflect the climate of racism and discrimination. For many years, professionals used the
terms minority group and ethnic group interchangeably. However, according to sociology's
conflict perspective, minority status reflects absence of access to power, affecting
socioeconomic well-being as well as cultural and social acceptance. In this way, the term
minority refers not only to ethnic groups but to numerous other disenfranchised groups
that lack sociocultural privilege, including women, older adults, people with disabilities, and
gays and lesbians.
Responses to Dominance
Assimilation
Assimilation occurs when minority group members blend into the dominant group, a
fusion such that people cannot distinguish one group from another by their cultural
, lOM oAR cPSD| 98 171 20
characteristics. Successful assimilation requires a two-way process, "an active effort by
the minority-group individual to shed all distinguishing actions and beliefs and the total,
unqualified acceptance of that individual by the dominant society"
Acculturation
Through acculturation, minority group members submit to the dominant culture by
adopting its attitudes, values, and norms. Acculturated individuals behave in
normative ways and show the social patterns of dominant groups, possibly forsaking
their own cultural heritage. Acculturation is a process, not simply a shedding of a
minority cultural identity all at once.
Accommodation
Accommodation results in a stable coexistence, with each cultural group accepting
the status quo. Minority groups maintain key features of their own cultural
behaviours while accepting the rationalizations for the existing dominant-minority
patterns. For example, the side-by-side existence of Amish communities and more
mainstream American culture shows such a mutual accommodation. Even when
minority group members strive to emulate the larger group, they likely experience
marginality and remain peripheral.
Cultural Pluralism
The ideology of cultural pluralism supports the social work profession's value base of
respect and promotes a practice orientation toward strengths. Social workers understand
that all cultural strengths, for example, customs, values, meanings, and relationship
patterns have potential to foster resilience, promote competence, and contribute to
adaptive social functioning.
Cultural Identity and lntersectionality
Cultural identity arises from membership in racial or ethnic groups, age cohort, social and
economic class, ability, gender identity, sexual orientation, immigration status, political
ideology, religion, regional affiliation, national origin, and personal background. Any
individual simultaneously holds many of these group affiliations. These multiple identities
result in a dynamic intersectionality of the cultural categories that define an individual's
place in society.
, lOM oAR cPSD| 98 171 20
MULTICULTURAL SOCIAL WORK PRACTICE
Competent multicultural social work requires practitioners to honour the cultural
identities, capabilities, and strengths of diverse clients throughout all phases of the social
work process including engagement, assessment, intervention, and evaluation. To become
multiculturally competent, social workers draw on essential cultural knowledge, humanistic
values, and culturally mindful skills. These social workers understand, respect, and relate to
all clients regardless of cultural differences, life experiences, and expectations
Cultural Competence is "the process by which individuals and systems respond respectfully
and effectively to people of all cultures, languages, classes, races, ethnic backgrounds,
religions, spiritual traditions, immigration status, and other diversity factors in a manner
that recognizes, affirms, and values the worth of individuals, families, and communities and
protects and preserves the dignity of each"
ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE FOR MULTICULTURAL PRACTICE
Three core theories inform multicultural social work practice. These theories illuminate the
effects of people's cultural identities on their life experiences, and they also serve as
frameworks to understand issues related to social justice and human rights.
Critical Theory
Critical Race Theory
Standpoint Theory
Critical Consciousness
Critical theory
Critical theory emphasizes the contextual forces that shape human behaviour, circumscribe
interpersonal relationships, and affect the development of emergent social structures and
institutions.
Four Basic Assumptions:
1. Critical theorists view the relationship between human actions and social structures
as recursive. Both human actions and social structures are continuous products of
each other.
2. Second, although these recurring patterns can ensure stable structural
arrangements, changes in patterns of human interaction can trigger beneficial shifts
in social structures.
, lOM oAR cPSD| 98 171 20
3. Human interactions are stabilizing sources of cultural patterns and power.
Depending on the power differentials evident in the interchanges, beliefs of those
with power are objectified as truth whereas beliefs of those with less power are
silenced or invalidated. Only actions to defy the norm can accomplish change.
4. one's social location either grants privilege, power, and access to abundant
opportunities or results in marginalization, oppression, and resource deprivation.
Critical Theory and Empowerment
Critically examining assumptions about human interaction, tracking stability and change
in social structures, correlating cultural identity with power, and recognizing the
connection between social location and privilege constitutes a critical perspective.
This perspective directs empowerment-based generalist social workers to pursue
social justice and promote human rights for those who lack power. Critically astute
practitioners ask questions about socio-political and economic arrangements to
discern hierarchies of power and privilege evidenced in the marginalization of groups
based on socioeconomic status, class, gender, age, race, and ethnicity
Critical Race Theory
Critical race theory challenges the fallacy of objectivity in matters of race, and its
strengthens social work practitioners' understanding of the impact of racism on power,
privilege, and oppression.
Standpoint Theory
According to standpoint theory, the standpoint of the observer filters perception
and affects how one interprets the values, attributes, and behaviours of self and others
A person's standpoint defines social rules for how to interact with persons from
different cultural locations. No one is culturally neutral. We all experience the
world from our own unique viewpoints.
Developing a Critical Consciousness
A critical consciousness requires an in-depth understanding of how people's cultural
group memberships impact their experiences of power and privilege.
SOCIAL WORK THEORY
CHAPTER 7: DIVERSITY AND SOCIAL WORK
DIVERSITY AND DIFFERENCE
Variations among human beings are limitless. Genetics and biological diversity only begin
to explain these human differences. Individual differences among people also develop
based on their multiple memberships in various groups that shape personal identity.
Consider the many distinct cultural, ethnic, and religious communities that exist, and it's no
surprise that humans demonstrate widely varying values, beliefs, and perspectives. The
term human diversity encompasses all of those differences that together account for
individual uniqueness.
Cultural Diversity
Race and ethnicity are key features of one's cultural identity. Race is a socially constructed
classification that emphasizes physiological differences, particularly skin colour and facial
features. Ethnicity refers to population groups distinguished by cultural ethos the values,
expectations, and symbols of the particular group
Privilege and Dominance
The phrase people of colour distinguishes those who must deal with oppression and
vulnerability based on racial discrimination. Colour bias creates barriers to African
Americans, Latino/ Latina Americans, Asian Americans, and Native Americans in ways not
experienced by ethnic groups who are able to blend into the White-dominated society.
People of colour are especially vulnerable to economic, political, and social conditions that
reflect the climate of racism and discrimination. For many years, professionals used the
terms minority group and ethnic group interchangeably. However, according to sociology's
conflict perspective, minority status reflects absence of access to power, affecting
socioeconomic well-being as well as cultural and social acceptance. In this way, the term
minority refers not only to ethnic groups but to numerous other disenfranchised groups
that lack sociocultural privilege, including women, older adults, people with disabilities, and
gays and lesbians.
Responses to Dominance
Assimilation
Assimilation occurs when minority group members blend into the dominant group, a
fusion such that people cannot distinguish one group from another by their cultural
, lOM oAR cPSD| 98 171 20
characteristics. Successful assimilation requires a two-way process, "an active effort by
the minority-group individual to shed all distinguishing actions and beliefs and the total,
unqualified acceptance of that individual by the dominant society"
Acculturation
Through acculturation, minority group members submit to the dominant culture by
adopting its attitudes, values, and norms. Acculturated individuals behave in
normative ways and show the social patterns of dominant groups, possibly forsaking
their own cultural heritage. Acculturation is a process, not simply a shedding of a
minority cultural identity all at once.
Accommodation
Accommodation results in a stable coexistence, with each cultural group accepting
the status quo. Minority groups maintain key features of their own cultural
behaviours while accepting the rationalizations for the existing dominant-minority
patterns. For example, the side-by-side existence of Amish communities and more
mainstream American culture shows such a mutual accommodation. Even when
minority group members strive to emulate the larger group, they likely experience
marginality and remain peripheral.
Cultural Pluralism
The ideology of cultural pluralism supports the social work profession's value base of
respect and promotes a practice orientation toward strengths. Social workers understand
that all cultural strengths, for example, customs, values, meanings, and relationship
patterns have potential to foster resilience, promote competence, and contribute to
adaptive social functioning.
Cultural Identity and lntersectionality
Cultural identity arises from membership in racial or ethnic groups, age cohort, social and
economic class, ability, gender identity, sexual orientation, immigration status, political
ideology, religion, regional affiliation, national origin, and personal background. Any
individual simultaneously holds many of these group affiliations. These multiple identities
result in a dynamic intersectionality of the cultural categories that define an individual's
place in society.
, lOM oAR cPSD| 98 171 20
MULTICULTURAL SOCIAL WORK PRACTICE
Competent multicultural social work requires practitioners to honour the cultural
identities, capabilities, and strengths of diverse clients throughout all phases of the social
work process including engagement, assessment, intervention, and evaluation. To become
multiculturally competent, social workers draw on essential cultural knowledge, humanistic
values, and culturally mindful skills. These social workers understand, respect, and relate to
all clients regardless of cultural differences, life experiences, and expectations
Cultural Competence is "the process by which individuals and systems respond respectfully
and effectively to people of all cultures, languages, classes, races, ethnic backgrounds,
religions, spiritual traditions, immigration status, and other diversity factors in a manner
that recognizes, affirms, and values the worth of individuals, families, and communities and
protects and preserves the dignity of each"
ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE FOR MULTICULTURAL PRACTICE
Three core theories inform multicultural social work practice. These theories illuminate the
effects of people's cultural identities on their life experiences, and they also serve as
frameworks to understand issues related to social justice and human rights.
Critical Theory
Critical Race Theory
Standpoint Theory
Critical Consciousness
Critical theory
Critical theory emphasizes the contextual forces that shape human behaviour, circumscribe
interpersonal relationships, and affect the development of emergent social structures and
institutions.
Four Basic Assumptions:
1. Critical theorists view the relationship between human actions and social structures
as recursive. Both human actions and social structures are continuous products of
each other.
2. Second, although these recurring patterns can ensure stable structural
arrangements, changes in patterns of human interaction can trigger beneficial shifts
in social structures.
, lOM oAR cPSD| 98 171 20
3. Human interactions are stabilizing sources of cultural patterns and power.
Depending on the power differentials evident in the interchanges, beliefs of those
with power are objectified as truth whereas beliefs of those with less power are
silenced or invalidated. Only actions to defy the norm can accomplish change.
4. one's social location either grants privilege, power, and access to abundant
opportunities or results in marginalization, oppression, and resource deprivation.
Critical Theory and Empowerment
Critically examining assumptions about human interaction, tracking stability and change
in social structures, correlating cultural identity with power, and recognizing the
connection between social location and privilege constitutes a critical perspective.
This perspective directs empowerment-based generalist social workers to pursue
social justice and promote human rights for those who lack power. Critically astute
practitioners ask questions about socio-political and economic arrangements to
discern hierarchies of power and privilege evidenced in the marginalization of groups
based on socioeconomic status, class, gender, age, race, and ethnicity
Critical Race Theory
Critical race theory challenges the fallacy of objectivity in matters of race, and its
strengthens social work practitioners' understanding of the impact of racism on power,
privilege, and oppression.
Standpoint Theory
According to standpoint theory, the standpoint of the observer filters perception
and affects how one interprets the values, attributes, and behaviours of self and others
A person's standpoint defines social rules for how to interact with persons from
different cultural locations. No one is culturally neutral. We all experience the
world from our own unique viewpoints.
Developing a Critical Consciousness
A critical consciousness requires an in-depth understanding of how people's cultural
group memberships impact their experiences of power and privilege.
