Naturalising Whiteness: Cultural competency and the perpetuation of White supremacy
Abstract
Non-profit organisations engage with us from birth to grave. In Canada, there are over 170,000 of them. Non-profits account for more ‘value add’ than motor vehicle manufacturing, mining, oil and gas extraction combined. Yet, in an increasingly diverse society where right-wing populism has, arguably, seemed to re-assert, re-root and reposition itself to reframe systems with which we engage on a daily basis, we still insist on using an individualistic approach to working with people who have been and continue to be harmed by those systems. A central problem is cultural competency and the ways in which it supports the positioning of race. In the Canadian context, despite historical and contemporary evidence to the contrary, Whiteness is positioned as the ideal and the normal. The concept of cultural competency helps to position Whiteness as the ideal against which race in organisations must be measured by allowing organisations to focus only on individuals and their inability to engage effectively with organisations and organisational systems, not on the systems. My argument is that the concept of cultural competency aids in the perpetuation and naturalisation of Whiteness as normative, thereby aiding in the maintenance of systemic oppression.
References
Alvesson, M and Deetz, S. (1999). Critical Theory and Postmodernism: Approaches to organizational studies. In S. R. Clegg and C. Hardy (Eds). Studying organization: Theory and method. London: Sage Publications.
Anderson, C (2016). White rage: the unspoken truth of our racial divide. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing.
Badwall, H. (2016). Racialized Discourses: Writing against an essentialized story about racism. Intersectionalities: A Global Journal Of Social Work Analysis, Research, Polity, And Practice, 5(1), 8–19. Retrieved from https://journals.library.mun.ca/ojs/index.php/IJ/article/view/1260
Beach, M. C., Price, E. G., Gary, T. L., Robinson, K. A., Gozu, A., Palacio, A., … Cooper, L. A. (2005). Cultural competence: a systematic review of health care provider educational interventions. Medical Care, 43(4), 356–373. doi:10.1097/01.mlr.0000156861.58905.96.
Bernal, D. D. (2002). Critical Race Theory, Latino Critical Theory, and critical raced – gendered epistemologies: recognizing students of colour as holders and creators of Knowledge. In Qualitative Inquiry, 8(1), pp. 105 – 126.
Carpenter-Song, E.A., Schwallie, M.N. and Longhofer, J. (2007). Cultural competence reexamined: Critique and directions for the future. Psychiatric Services 58: 1362–1365.
Chapman, C., & Withers, A. J. (2019). A violent history of benevolence: interlocking oppression in the moral economies of social working. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Clair, M and Denis, J. F. (2015) Sociology of racism. International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, volume 19, pp. 857 – 863.
Delgado, R. and Stefancic, J. (1995). Minority men, misery, and the marketplace of ideas. In M Berger et al (Eds.) Constructing masculinity. New York: Routledge.
Fanon, F. (1952). Black skin, white masks (R. Philcox, trans 2008). New York: Grove Press.
Ferber, A.L. (2007). The construction of black masculinity: white supremacy now and then. Journal of Sport & Social Issues. Vol. 31, Num. 1, pp 11 - 24. doi: 10.1177/0193723506296829.
Goitom, M. (2019). ‘Legitimate knowledge’: an auto-ethnographical account of an African writing past the white gaze in academia. Social Epistemology. DOI: 10.1080/02691728.2019.1599461.
Gouldner, A. (1962). The myth of a value-free sociology. Social Problems, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Winter, 1962), pp. 199-213.
Government of Canada. (2019). Canadian Charities Directorate. Retrieved May 7, 2019 from https://apps.cra-arc.gc.ca/ebci/haip/srch/charity-eng.action?bn=119306736RR0001&m=1.
Gross, G. D. (2000). Gatekeeping for cultural competence: Ready or not? Some post and modernist doubts. Journal of Baccalaureate Social Work, 5(2), 47–66.
Hayden Jr., W. (2002). In search of justice: white privilege in Appalachia. Journal of Appalachian Studies, Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 120-131.
Henry, F. and Tator, C. (2005). Racial profiling in Toronto: discourses of domination, mediation and opposition. Ottawa, Ontario: Canadian Race Relations Foundation.
Henry, F. and Tator, C. (2006) Racial profiling in Canada: challenging the myth of "a few bad apples". Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
hooks, b. (2004). We real cool. New York: Routledge.
Hunter, M. (2002). Rethinking epistemology, methodology, and racism: or, is White sociology really dead? In Race and Society, 5(2), pp. 119 – 138.
Hutchinson, E. O. (1996). The assassination of the black male image. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Johnson, B. (2012). Racial inequality in the workplace: How critical management studies can inform current approaches. In M Godwyn and J H Gittell (Eds.) Sociology of organisations: structures and relationships (pp. 448 – 456). Los Angeles: SAGE/ Pine Forge.
Kimbrell, A. (1995). The masculine mystique: the politics of masculinity. New York: Ballantine Books.
Kleinman A, and Benson P. (2006) Anthropology in the Clinic: The Problem of Cultural Competency and How to Fix It. PLOS Medicine 3(10): e294. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.0030294.
Knight, J.L., Hebl, M.R., Foster, J.B., and Mannix, L.M. (2003) Out of role? Out of luck: The influence of race and leadership status on performance appraisals. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies; Winter 2003; 9, 3; 85 – 93.
Livingston, R.W. (2002). The role of perceived negativity in the moderation of African; Americans’ implicit and explicit racial attitudes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 38, 405–413.
Lumby, J. (2006). Conceptualizing diversity and leadership: evidence from 10 cases. Educational Management and Administration & Leadership. DOI: 10.1177/1741143206062487
Marquis, G. (2014). A War within a war: Canadian reactions to D. W. Griffith’s the birth of a nation. Histoire sociale / Social History, vol. XLVII, no 94, 421 – 442.
Maynard, R. (2017). Policing Black lives: state violence in Canada from slavery to the present. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing.
Mills, A.J., Simmons, T., and Mills, J.H. (2010). Reading Organization Theory: a critical approach to the study of organizational behaviour and structure 3rd ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Nkomo, S. M. (2012). The emperor has no clothes: rewriting “race in organisations”. In G. Godwyn & J.H. Gittell (Eds.), Sociology of organisations: structures and relationships (pp. 527 – 545).
Ospina, S., and Foldy, E. (2009). A critical review of race and ethnicity in the leadership literature: Surfacing context, power and the collective dimensions of leadership. The Leadership Quarterly. DOI: 10.1016/j.leaqua.2009.09.005.
Pettigrew, T. F. and Martin, J. (1987). Shaping the organizational context for Black American inclusion. Journal of Social Issues. Vol. 43, No. 1, pp. 41-78.
Pon, G. (2009). Cultural competency as new racism: an ontology of forgetting. Journal of progressive human services, 20:1, 59 – 71 doi: 10.1080/10428230902871173.
Quarter, J., Mook, J., and Armstrong, A. (2009). Understanding the Social Economy: A Canadian Perspective. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Reed, M. (1999). Organizational theorizing: a historically contested terrain. In S. Clegg and C. Hardy (Eds.) Studying organization: theory and method pp 25 – 50. London: SAGE Publications.
Reynolds, G. and Robson, W. (2016). Viola Desmond’s Canada: a history of Blacks and racial segregation in the Promised Land. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing.
Russell-Brown, K. (2017). Making implicit bias explicit. In Angela J. Davis (Ed). Policing the Black man. New York: Pantheon Books.
Shapcott, M (2010, December 17). Canada’s Non-profit Sector Tops $100 Billion in Economic Activity: Big and Growing Even Bigger. Toronto, Ontario: The Wellesley Institute. Retrieved from http://www.wellesleyinstitute.com.
Sue, S., Zane, N., Nagayama Hall, G. C., & Berger, L. K. (2009). The case for cultural competency in psychotherapeutic interventions. Annual review of psychology, 60, 525–548. doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.60.110707.163651.
Sinclair, R. (2004). Aboriginal Social Work Education in Canada: Decolonizing Pedagogy for the Seventh Generation. First Peoples Child and Family Review. V1 N1. pp 49 – 61.
Smith, L.T. (1999). Decolonising Methodologies: Research and indigenous Peoples. London: Zed Books.
Steckley, J. (2017). Elements of sociology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Young, I.M (2011). Justice and the politics of difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Yan, M.C and Wong, Y. (2005). Rethinking self-awareness in cultural competence: toward a dialogic self in cross-cultural social work. Families in society: the journal of contemporary human services. Doi: 10.1606/1044-3894.2453.
