Intersecting Identities Case Study

T​‌‍‍‍‌‍‍‌‌‍‌‍‍‌‌‌‍‍‍‍​his assignment is designed to help you apply the concepts of intersecting identities and cultural pluralism to both assessment of the client, self-awareness, and understanding of how diversity affects the client relationship. Identify an individual client for whom intersecting identities presents a significant aspect of their psychosocial challenges. Describe the client’s demographics, using their own identifying language. Describe the presenting problems and the role of the social worker. Offer a conceptualization of how intersecting identities present challenges and opportunities for the client. Share your plan of how you have addressed or hope to address these challenges and opportunities. Examine how your own intersecting identities may have an impact on the client relationship, and how these should be or have been managed. Cultural Humility The better we understand how identities and power work together from one context to another, the less likely our movements for change are to fracture. -Kimberle Williams Crenshaw Cultural humility is the “ability to maintain an interpersonal stance that is other-oriented (or open to the other) in relation to aspects of cultural identity that are most important to the [person].” (Hook et al., 2013, pg. 354). In the assigned video, the presenters describe cultural humility as having three components: 1. Lifelong learning and critical self-reflection This component stands in contrast to a measure of cultural competence that would assume that culture can be understood in a static way. Imagine that a friend said to you, “I get you now! I know everything I need to know about you because I know you identify as x ethnicity or race, and you are from y place and time, and you believe z ideas about what’s important and how the world works.” How would you feel toward a friend who said that to you? Or a teacher, or a supervisor, or a colleague, or a judge? Cultural humility means knowing we will never fully understand another human being. Cultural humility also means that even when we think we know what we know about another person, or family, or community, we continue to question ourselves. Let’s say you and your partner are going to see a social worker to get help with parenting a child with autism. The social worker says, “I know you are thinking that because your child is diagnosed with autism, she is not ever going to form meaningful human connections. But I’m here to tell you that, based in the latest research, she can make big strides if you commit to intensive behavioral training. You need to stop thinking of your child as disabled and start thinking of her as differently abled.” All of that might sound empirically supported and politically correct, but is it culturally humble? Is it open to the other? Here, the social worker is pushing existing beliefs and not finding out where you, as a couple, are at with your daughter. Even though this example is exaggerated, in smaller ways we are all capable of shifting from being open to pushing our competence. As student-learners, you may feel extra pressure to show your knowledge. Humility is not ignorance; it is the ability to learn. Recognizing and challenging power imbalances for respectful partnerships Being culturally humble means that we avoid participating unwittingly in oppression. We are open to recognizing when we, and others around us, silence others’ voices. What if your field supervisor, a male, asks you, a female, to get him a cup of coffee while you are getting client files? How would you feel? Can you respectfully seek respect? What would you say? Take a moment to think about what you would say, and how you would say it. Or what if staff at your practicum site gossip about a certain dreaded client? “He always comes in here with a chip on his shoulder. He should stop playing the victim and start taking responsibility. He expects to get his kids back without doing any of the work, and he’s continually playing the race card, acting like that’s why he lost custody.” How do you feel reading these words? Do you want to rush to the client’s defense? Do you feel there might be some truth in these words, and feel guilty for thinking so? Being culturally humble means seeking a respectful partnership with your colleagues as well as your clients. Imagine, again, what you might say. Can you acknowledge everyone’s reality at the same time? To embody cultural humility is not merely a micro or mezzo affair. We are not only trying to be open to the other as an individual, or to speak up when interactions between micro systems (like staff and clients) are biased or oppressive. We are also noticing when policies themselves are not loving or kind. Humility is grounded in recognizing the intrinsic value of each human being and each family, and when that value is not upheld, we feel the violation. The following example from the author’s experience illustrates a breakdown in institutional empathy that may more powerfully affect people who because of their cultural disadvantages, have come to expect neglect from the organizations in their lives. Cultural humility here means being attuned to the differential impacts of organizational policies and asking questions that shine light on those impacts. We often think of different types of institutions as having missions that are either supportive of human rights and diversity, or harmful. The reality is that all organizations, including those that are tasked with protecting, educating, and healing, are part of a society in which inequality is endemic. Think about your practicum site as if it were a person. If it is practicing cultural humility, then it too is engaged in lifelong learning and critical self-reflection, so that it too can recognize and challenge power imbalances to create respectful partnerships. Intersectionality Crenshaw (1991), a feminist lawyer and researcher, sought to understand why women of color experienced forms of oppression, especially intimate partner violence and sexual assault, beyond either gender discrimination or racial discrimination. She coined the term intersectionality to name the ways in which both types of discrimination c​‌‍‍‍‌‍‍‌‌‍‌‍‍‌‌‌‍‍‍‍​ombined to disadvantage women of color. She identified three ways that this happened: structural intersectionality, political intersectionality, and representational intersectionality. Structural intersectionality involves ways that society limits access to economic and social resources especially for women of color, such that their ability to escape abusive situations is much more limited than either men of color or white women. Immigration law further keeps women of color who have uncertain status from being able to leave abusive partnerships. Political intersectionality denotes the ways that anti-racist and anti-sexist political agendas often invalidate each other and fail to account for the specific experiences and needs for legal and policy protections of women of color. Crenshaw calls on progressive movements to become more aware of the voices of women of color and understand how their experiences get lost when the sole focus of an advocacy organization is on race or gender. Representational intersectionality means the ways that mainstream culture erases aspects of the experiences of women of color by reducing them down to either gendered or racial experiences alone. When all three types of intersectionality are combined, it is easy to see how oppression of women of color continues unrecognized in its unique dimensions. Today, the concept of intersectionality has expanded to include other identities beyond gender and race. Further, a constructivist view of identity leads us to consider not only the relationships between social systems and people oppressed along multiple dimensions, but also the ways that those intersecting identities can complicate all relationships, including that of social worker and client. Since identity is socially constructed, the ways in which we think about ourselves, others, and the groups to which we belong are all co-determined by our multiple memberships, our roles in those groups, how we are perceived by other group members, and how we may merge with or differentiate ourselves from those ascribed roles. Identity is not only socially constructed: it is socially maintained. Through countless verbal and nonverbal interactions, we reinforce each other’s multiple identities. Think of your identity as a student-learning at your practicum site. You bring certain expectations to that role, and so does your field instructor and your colleagues there. Members of the organization may greet you in ways that seek to demonstrate that you are welcome, but also that you do not have expertise. Without being disrespectful, they are conveying the meta-message that you will be accepted so long as you know your place.Let’s say we add another identity, that of being transgender. If staff members are aware of your trans identity, they may be confused about what meta-messages to convey. You are very likely to be more of an expert on trans issues than anyone else in the organization, unless serving the LGBTQ community is part of its mission. So now, you are both expert and novice. What’s more, the staff are now trying to make you feel welcome in two ways: as a practicum student, and as a trans individual. However, different staff members may feel differently. Some may not like having a student around, because they feel the organization has enough work on its hands. Others may harbor conscious or unconscious negative attitudes toward trans people. Some will feel welcoming of one aspect of your identity but not of others. How do you decode these messages? How do you respond? As you think about these different identities, picture an actual intersection. The vehicles are your own multiple identities and those of anyone with whom you come in contact. Traffic may be heavy or light, well-regulated by signals or in a free-for-all. Some drivers will be more skilled, some less. Traffic cops are on hand and they may look the other way with certain violations by certain individuals or may profile certain drivers they have been taught to suspect. When drivers are skillful, signals are clear, police are impartial, and everyone follows the rules, does everyone get where they need to go? Not really – in our society, some vehicles (identities) have more “right of way” than others. As you enter an intersection, a space in which your identities will interact with the identities of others, is your goal simply to avoid a crash, avoid getting pulled over, or to renegotiate the traffic rules? Now, let’s shift to thinking about clients. Can you bring the same sensitivity to these nuances of social construction that you are learning to bring to your own experiences? Which identities are obvious to you, and which may be hidden from view? Are there inner conflicts among identities that need to be resolved, or is the best focus more on conflict between client identities and those of