Cultural Competence Now: 56 Exercises to Help Educators Understand and Challenge Bias, Racism, and Privilege

Chapter 1. The Case for Cultural Competency

There are few things more frustrating than being misunderstood. Imagine having your intentions questioned every time you walk into a room, make a purchase, or drive down the street; your humanity questioned and assessed like a relentless pop quiz; your successes met with disbelief, anger, or denial. Imagine having every behavior, emotion, nuance, and physicality scrutinized, labeled, criticized, demonized, criminalized, or mocked—at times with clear intention and other times with complicit indifference. Imagine having your aspirations mocked, your progress chastised, your self-worth ridiculed, your identity deprived, your accomplishments minimalized, your culture bastardized, your talents narrowly defined, and your intellect derided. Without a word, you are deemed a menace as peers shrink away in fear or stare with indignance.

Such are the experiences of many people of color who live their lives being misunderstood. How did things get this way?

Students of Color in Public Schools (This Isn't Pretty)

The American social, economic, and educational system was intentionally designed to have a ruling elite class and a subservient class destined to serve them (Apple, 2009; Watkins, 2001). To educate everyone equally would have been counterproductive to a socioeconomic structure in which power, wealth, and status were granted on the basis of your ability to assimilate within a dominant class. The dominant class, whose domination was established by brutal force and the crafting of clever narratives to deflect from that force, established schooling for their children while initially denying schooling for all others. Like so many policies that guided the establishment of America, keeping the perceived underclass in ignorance was legislatively established and legally enforced (Abul, 2008). Teaching a person of color to read or write could result in severe fines or imprisonment if the perpetrator was white. Whippings or worse punishments were rendered if the perpetrator was Black (Blackmon, 2009; King, 2005).

During the period of slavery in America, educated African Americans were a novelty. The educated few, however, were powerful and compelling rebuttals to the narrative of white supremacy. Their voices resounded with bitter clarity the evils of institutional racism, and many were active in the abolitionist movement (Lerone, 1975).

After emancipation, African Americans did not fare better in terms of educational opportunity. Many whites still opposed the education of ex-slaves (Hart, 2002). Schools that did so were burned and their teachers threatened, and any person of color who demonstrated agency, resolve, dignity, or intellect was often summarily murdered or lynched (Watson, 2012). These kinds of intimidating practices imparted fear, distrust, and a legacy of generational trauma among African Americans that is still evidenced in modern-day behaviors.

There were few exceptions, but most notable were the Rosenwald Schools, the brainchild of Tuskegee Institute's Booker T. Washington and Julius Rosenwald, an American businessman and philanthropist. Nearly 5,000 schools were built in the U.S. rural South to educate poor Black children. The schools were built with modern architectural features and admitted generous natural light, but they lacked updated textbooks, materials, and resources, which exacerbated an already growing gap between academic quality measures in Black and white schools (Carruthers & Wanamaker, 2013). The teachers, however, promoted a rigorous curriculum and encouraged the students to achieve at high levels. Some of the distinguished alumni include Maya Angelou and Representative John Lewis of Georgia.

In 1896, Plessy v. Ferguson ruled that public facilities, such as schools, that were separated by race were legal if they were equal. Alleged separate but equal educational institutions were established for minorities. These schools were often controlled with the hegemonic values and beliefs of white superiority. The dominant class largely wrote the curriculum in which the ingenuity, intellect, tenacity, and accomplishments of people of color were deliberately omitted. The curriculum, resources, and facilities for people of color were conveniently inferior to those available to the dominant class (Cross, 2007). The culture, values, and identity of people of color were denigrated and negatively dictated. Cultural repression was leveraged within the education system to make the oppressed ashamed of themselves, their values, and their history (Lerone, 1975).

Meanwhile, white scientists conducted studies theorizing that people of color were biologically and cognitively inferior to whites. This kind of rationalization of Black intellectual inferiority provided a framework for the denial of social privileges during the 20th century and rationalized the colonial plundering of their assets, economic domination, and denial of equitable educational opportunities (Watkins, 2001).

Postsecondary institutions for Black people also differed vastly from their white counterparts (Condron, 2009; Lerone, 1975). First, they were structured to be highly regimented. Students were expected to adhere to a strict course of discipline. (If that sounds eerily familiar to you, you might want to reexamine the discipline policy in your school.) Black people were taught how to cook, clean, perform physically challenging work, and do mentally menial tasks (Watkins, 2001). Schools that chose to deviate from the established curriculum by offering courses in the hard sciences were denied funding from their wealthy white benefactors (Anderson, 1980). The goal for Black education was to create an obedient and stable semiskilled workforce (Hart, 2002). According to Darder (2002), education was thus used as an "institutionalized politicizing process for conditioning students to subscribe to the dominant ideological norms and political assumptions of the prevailing social order" (p. 156).

During the Jim Crow years, institutions such as Harvard or Columbia admitted and graduated limited numbers of Black students, but those students were typically barred from teaching in these institutions. And although some Black students attended classes along with white students, they were usually prevented from using the campus libraries and laboratories or attending scholarly association meetings.

After World War II, the G.I. bill provided all veterans with eligibility for low-cost mortgages, low-cost loans to start a business, and tuition and living expenses to attend college. The bill also entitled veterans to receive one year of unemployment compensation. Although responsible for creating an American middle class, the bill also created the largest divide in economic status between whites and people of color. G.I. bill grants were distributed to states and local agencies, including those that practiced Jim Crow laws (laws that supported American apartheid). Thus, many soldiers of color were denied access to the funds. Even though they had served their country in the same way as all other soldiers, they were unable to advance economically, as the white soldiers did. People of color were denied well-paying jobs, retirement pensions, competitive educational degrees, and business capital—all of which resulted in their inability to gain middle-class status as easily as their white counterparts.

Soldiers of color who were granted access to G.I. funding pursued education but were limited in their choices. Not all colleges and universities accepted people of color, and those that did limited the number of slots available. Historically Black colleges and universities accepted students, but they were not as numerous as white institutions.

Veterans of color who were granted G.I. funds for housing were limited in where they could purchase a home. Certain neighborhoods prevented the sale of homes to people of color. The mortgage industry redlined areas where people of color lived and made it difficult for them to get reasonable mortgage rates or lines of credit. Schools in the redlined neighborhoods were crippled with inferior levels of funding and quality of education. As Watkins (2001) stated, "Black education experienced a separate tradition in funding, administration, teacher training, and curriculum" (p. 180). The inability to advance economically through home ownership or quality education prevented many people of color from pursuing postsecondary education.

By the end of the 1940s, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) began a class action suit for the integration of schools, which ended with a 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision (Brown v. Board of Education) to abolish segregated schools with "deliberate speed" (King, 2005, p. 157). This legislation, however, did little to sway public opinion about integrating schools, and many districts simply ignored the mandate (Atkinson, 1993). In 1957, President Dwight Eisenhower was forced to send federal troops to ensure the personal security of nine students determined to integrate Central High School in Arkansas. Additional support for desegregating schools would arrive in the form of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which provided financial assistance to schools and districts attempting to desegregate.

President Lyndon Johnson's declaration in 1964 of an unconditional war on poverty in America was followed by one of the most influential pieces of educational legislation in American history—the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965 (Haycock, 2006). This bill would more than triple the amount of federal dollars allocated to support poor citizens in public school systems, many of whom were people of color. Supported by mandated busing, people of color began integrating into educational institutions at an increasing rate (Atkinson, 1993).

When President Johnson signed an executive order for affirmative action, many white colleges and universities began actively recruiting minorities and offering financial assistance. Consequently, enrollment of minorities increased in colleges and universities across the United States.

However, by the mid-1960s and early 1970s, disturbing trends and patterns emerged. White families began to flee districts that were forced to integrate schools. National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests in reading and math confirmed that minority children were not performing as well academically as their white counterparts in both lower-income and middle-class schools (Raffel, 1980). If that wasn't alarming enough, in 1972, the National Education Association reported that Black children were being pushed out of school, suspended, harassed, and arrested. African American students in desegregated schools were systematically excluded from extracurricular activities, tracked into vocational classes, and confronted with condescension or hostility (Atkinson, 1993). Twenty-five years after Brown v. Board of Education, school desegregation was briefly achieved. However, equity and the underlying beliefs enabling it had not withstood the trial (Atkinson, 1993).

Incentivized Achievement

The unfunded No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) legislated schools and districts to examine the achievement of minority subgroups in schools (Haycock, 2006). However, this legislation simplified the complexity of factors that brought education to this vortex (Bae, Holloway, Li, & Bempechat, 2008). Few questioned the deeply ingrained belief systems of teachers and staff who were now teaching diverse student populations (Berliner, 2010).

During fiscal year 2009–2010, the Obama administration allocated an unprecedented amount of stimulus dollars for school reform (McGuinn, 2012). For the first time in U.S. history, schools would be given both the ideals of equity and excellence in schools and the financial support to achieve them. Over $7 billion was allocated for turning around chronically low-performing schools and supporting innovation through a program titled Race to the Top, which incentivized educational innovation.

Grant recipients crafted school improvement plans designed to address academic achievement gaps, yet few schools used the monies to help teachers understand minority students and the families with whom they had little interaction in their social or private lives. Thus, many educators were endeavoring to close achievement gaps that they could neither define nor explain (Andrews, 2007). Schools with high minority student populations worked tirelessly to address teacher shortages and high staff turnover, but few used the grant monies to address the influence of their students' culture in the environment—a phenomenon that greatly influenced teacher retention, as teachers were often baffled by the seemingly odd behaviors of their minority students (Allen, 2008; Ford & Moore, 2013).

Teachers and faculty largely ignored race, privilege, and inequity while seeking to improve schools through strict and regimented systems that privileged some, disciplined most, and disenfranchised others (Hart, 2002; Howley, Woodrum, Burgess, & Rhodes, 2009). School staff claimed color blindness while simultaneously instituting policies and programs that perpetuated the inequitable suspension and expulsion of minority children. Staff convened around improving schools and student learning while largely ignoring the effect of culture, poverty, generational trauma, violence, poor nutrition, and an absence of regular health care on the students they were serving (Day-Vines & Day-Hairston, 2005; Epstein, Galindo, & Sheldon, 2011; Gay, 2002; Ware, 2006; Weinstein, Curran, & Tomlinson-Clarke, 2003).

Dismantling Inequity for Improved Outcomes

Creating equitable educational opportunities for all has been an espoused goal of American educational policy since 1954 (Blackmore, 2009). But history has demonstrated that the ability to achieve it will take more than legislation (Orfield & Eaton, 1996). We tried desegregation. We tried busing. We tried testing. We tried financial support. What we have not tried with reasonable effort, intention, and consistency is confronting the values and beliefs that established inequity as a way of life in America.

What we're afraid to talk about is how race has been used to establish economic and educational advantage for a ruling class while perpetuating economic and educational subservience for others. What don't we want to talk about? How we, as educators, treat children and their parents who look, act, and behave differently than we do. What are we avoiding in school improvement planning? The examination of practices and policies that perpetuate privilege and benefits for some while disadvantaging others. Too often when the history of educational racism in this country is presented to many educators, they plug their fingers in their ears, close their eyes, and endeavor to drown out the hum of pain from the oppressed.

Some educators blame the victims and point to the current circumstances of the victims as somehow being their own fault, rather than examine the mare's nest of deliberate havoc that created those circumstances. More than ever, we need an army of educators with the political, moral, and professional will to dismantle systems of oppression that have historically crippled opportunity and access for students of color. We need champions of children who are willing to be temporarily uncomfortable so that all children might be enduringly celebrated and educated equitably. We need advocates for educational advancement who are willing to examine themselves, their behaviors, and their values as part of school improvement efforts. We need culturally competent educators. We need you.

Cultural competency, as I define it, is the ability to use critical-thinking skills to interpret how cultural values and beliefs influence conscious and unconscious behavior; the understanding of how inequity can be and has been perpetuated through socialized behaviors; and the knowledge and determined disposition to disrupt inequitable practices to achieve greater personal and professional success for yourself and others (Clark, Zygmunt, & Howard, 2016; Gay, 2010; Howard, 2010).

To examine this definition more closely, culture, as defined by Howard (2010), is "a complex constellation of values, mores, norms, customs, ways of being, ways of knowing, and traditions that provide a general design for living, is passed from generation to generation, and serves as a pattern for interpreting reality" (p. 51). Culture, therefore, influences how people think, the decisions they make, how they learn, what they believe is important to learn, how they speak, how they dress—in a nutshell, the values, beliefs, and behaviors on which they operate daily. We learn cultural values, mores, norms, and ways of being through people around us, media messages, common events, celebrations, and observances. We are immersed in a culture, sometimes several at once, from the time we are born until the time we die. Some of the behaviors, values, and beliefs we hold are conscious to us and espoused with regularity. Sometimes they are unconscious to us; they have become such a part of our belief system that we operate on them without critically examining why.

I prefer the term cultural competence to antiracist education because it embodies the comprehensive nature of culture, which is inclusive of the multiple identities one assumes or nurtures. The culture of an individual is complex in terms of what people learn or reject within their environment, including factors such as implicit bias, racism, privilege, and identity. The term competence suggests that you are endeavoring to become fluent in a set of practices or skills that advance your professionality. We are all competent in something. We can be competent in understanding cultural influences and challenging ones that are socially unjust.

Understanding how we are socialized through culture and subcultures is a distinctive knowledge set. Knowing how to examine those cultural values and beliefs as they manifest in school settings and dismantle the practices that perpetuate inequity is a level of competency that all educators need in order for students to succeed. It is possible to learn how to do this. And that is what this book is about.

As a young mother, I was eating an ice cream cone with my sons when I bit down to the bottom of the cone and threw it away. "Why did you do that?" J.R. asked me. "Do what?" I retorted. "Throw the bottom of your cone away, Mom. Why do you do that?" I paused for a moment and had to think about it. As a child, my aunt had worked at an ice cream cone factory in the 1950s and would never eat the bottom of the cone. She swore it to be unsanitary. We were never allowed to do so either. Twenty years later, my lips had never touched the bottom of a cone, and I was operating on autopilot.

Don't laugh too hard. There are things you have done without thinking about them, too. There are beliefs you hold that influence the decisions you have made—some of them made on autopilot as well. If you can understand how the messages you receive, both verbal and nonverbal, influence the things you do, you can comprehend the importance of culture in both teaching and learning. Cultural competency, therefore, prompts you to examine the cultural values that are influencing people's behavior. You must understand your own values and beliefs, but it is important for you to also understand the cultural values and beliefs of your students. When the messages people have received result in behaviors that perpetuate inequity within our society (and many of them do), a culturally competent educator moves into action, disrupting practices that advantage some and disadvantage others.

Cultural competency is the calling of every reasonably competent educator who believes in the value of education to elevate everyone and who desires the critical skills to do so. Culturally competent educators are a positive, disruptive force; they construct the future through their actions and words. With an idealized vision of the future, they wield their knowledge and influence to challenge the normalization of oppression and examine their role in the system. They are willing to break down barriers to opportunities for historically underserved learners and create a generation of educated advocates.

What Knowledge, Skills, and Dispositions Do We Need?

Awakening the deeply embedded values and beliefs on which we are operating and assessing where we are, personally, in terms of cultural competency is the first step in becoming culturally competent. The second step is understanding the cultural, social, economic, and legislative environments that create and perpetuate a system of inequitable treatment, opportunities, and outcomes for groups of people with common physical characteristics and applying and acting on that knowledge to examine false narratives perpetuated within our cultural context. The third step is analyzing policies and practices for inequitable outcomes, elevating the humanity of everyone, alleviating the daily indignities suffered by oppressed populations, and aligning new policies and practices with resources. The final step is advocating and leading, as well as mentoring and sharing power with others, and collaboratively working with others to dismantle inequitable systems.

Don't get so caught up in the semantics of the term cultural competency that you minimalize the scope of this work. It is justly grounded in culture because that is the context in which we learn and unlearn ideology and practices, but the outcome is educational justice, antiracist advocacy, and leadership for dismantling inequitable systems and practices. Culturally competent educators manifest discreet knowledge, skills, and dispositions as outlined in the Cultural Competency Continuum shown in Figure 1.1.

Figure 1.1. The Cultural Competency Continuum: Knowledge, Behaviors, and Dispositions for Educators

Culturally competent professionals acknowledge and continually examine the influence of culture, race, power, and privilege and how that influence manifests itself in their personal and professional decisions.

Step 1. Awaken and Assess

_____I can recognize how past historical actions are affecting current social and economic circumstances.
_____I am aware of my own values, beliefs, stereotypes, and biases.
_____I can recognize how my cultural beliefs and biases may be affecting my decision making, behavior, and perceptions of others.
_____I have unpacked my feelings about language acquisition, language barriers, and language bias and support linguistic diversity.
_____I can recognize privilege in society and organizations.
_____I understand how white privilege and racism affect me and others.
_____I can identify and discuss several strengths of diverse culture, ethnicity, language, and identity.
_____I understand the varied cultural values of my colleagues and students.
_____I recognize the various kinds of racism.
_____I understand the changing racial and ethnic demographics and am prepared to be culturally responsive to all of my students and colleagues.
_____I understand the role of power in organizations and in the construction of race.
_____I affirm and respect cultures other than my own.
_____I value culture as an integral part of a person's identity and maintain cultural curiosity rather than fear or avoidance.
_____I regularly and experientially explore the histories, accomplishments, interests, perceptions, and lived experiences of people of different cultural and racial identities.
_____I actively seek to foster meaningful relationships with people of different cultural and racial identities.

Culturally competent professionals recognize the relevance of culture and adapt professional practices to meet the needs of students from all backgrounds.

Step 2. Apply and Act

_____I regularly examine student data relative to gender, race, ethnicity, and language to monitor and manage equitable access and support services.
_____I am intentional about incorporating relevant cultural knowledge into instruction, curriculum, resources, learning environment, outreach, and assessment.
_____I use communication skills to facilitate, manage, and participate in discussions on race, culture, and difference.
_____I help make all cultural groups feel welcomed and valued.
_____I acknowledge, recognize, and seek diverse strengths among staff and students.
_____I exercise strategies that create an inclusive, caring, and equitable environment.
_____I identify, manage, and respond to cross-cultural conflict proactively and effectively.
_____I regularly assess if my students feel respected and valued in class by asking them for feedback.
_____I encourage students to raise my awareness by questioning biased assumptions or behaviors when observed in our school environment. Then I take action to positively address those assumptions or behaviors.

Culturally competent professionals analyze policies, procedures, and programs that inhibit access and opportunity for historically marginalized students and staff and align resources to eradicate inequity in the school community.

Step 3. Analyze and Align

_____I know the legal issues surrounding racism, bullying, and fostering a hostile environment, and I examine policies and procedures to ensure my practices are fair and legally defensible.
_____I work with my colleagues to institutionalize our learning and implement agreed-on goals and vision.
_____I volunteer to work with colleagues in the selection of future personnel whose values align with the school's goals and vision—inclusive of increasing equity and access for students of color.
_____I volunteer to work with colleagues in aligning budgetary allocations with school goals and vision—inclusive of increasing equity and access for students of color.
_____I understand that my destiny is intertwined with the success or failure of all my students, and I work tirelessly to ensure that they are all successful.
_____I can effectively challenge racism, inequity, or discriminatory practices in a professional and proactive manner.
_____I own the responsibility for building an authentically inclusive and just classroom and school environment.
_____I empower parents to engage and lead.
_____I have critiqued various schoolwide policies and practices and worked to reduce or eliminate any that may perpetuate inequitable outcomes.

Culturally competent professionals have participatory, collaborative partnerships with stakeholders and are fervent advocates for equitable access and opportunities for all.

Step 4. Advocate and Lead

_____I reach out to parents and the community regularly and engage diverse stakeholders in the decision-making process for anything that affects them or the students.
_____I empower all stakeholders and encourage open dialogue and dissent.
_____I identify barriers that prevent certain populations from full access to services and have taught colleagues ways to remove them.
_____I confront racism when I see it.
_____I advocate for cultural competency and social justice effectively and professionally.
_____I reject any privileges that come with white racial identity and actively work to ensure everyone has equal access and opportunities.
_____I am a brave equity warrior. (And I've got the scars to prove it.)

Do Racially/Ethnically Homogenous Schools Need Culturally Competent Teachers?

Yes, enthusiastically yes! And here's why: You can teach in a school with little or no racial or ethnic diversity and still have a culturally diverse student body. Race, after all, is merely a fluid, socially constructed way to identify which people will be granted power, influence, resources, and privileges and which ones will likely not. It has no biological basis, but there are vividly disparate social and economic outcomes for people with higher levels of melanin. Those outcomes and the systems, structures, institutions, or individuals who use their power to disproportionately and unfairly distribute opportunity, access, or resources to another based on their racial category are racist. Cultural competency can help one identify when racism is occurring because the design and infrastructure of social systems and institutions sustain or perpetuate it.

You need culturally competent educators because your school may have teachers and students who identify within identical racial categories and may seldom, if ever, face the emotional crush of racism, but the teachers may still grapple to understand the culture of the students and families at the school.

How does that happen? Culture—the shared values, beliefs, patterns, and communication styles of a group of people—has little to do with the amount of melanin in your skin. For example, a white person who grew up with a single parent in a small apartment in Aachen, Germany; a white person raised in a middle-class family in suburban Cabimas, Venezuela; and a white oil billionaire from Anchorage, Alaska, will likely have different values, beliefs, patterns, and communication styles. In fact, you are just as likely to find people who identify in the same racial background with dissimilar cultural values and beliefs as you are to find people who identify in the same racial categories with common cultural values and beliefs. The cultural values and beliefs you adopt are related to the messages you hear and learn about the world—what is important and what is not, who is important and who is not, things you should do and know and things you should not do or know, what is discussed and what is not, and so on. These messages are transmitted through your environment from parents, relatives, friends, media, school, and neighbors, to name a few. Sometimes they are communicated verbally, and other messages are observable through nonverbal behaviors.

Even then, culture is not static; it is an ever-evolving set of knowledge and beliefs evidenced through learned behavior and responses. You may move to a different community and adopt many of the practices, beliefs, values, or even communication styles of your new community that may conflict with previous beliefs. You may have life experiences that shift values and beliefs that you once held strongly.

There is also the issue of subcultures—cultural values that lie within very specific communities of larger cultural values. For example, if you live in the United States, there are common cultural values familiar to most residents. If you live in the southern part of the United States, there are cultural values that are unique to that part of the country. And if you belong to a religious sect within that southern community, there are still other unique theological beliefs and values specific to the culture of that organization that guide you.

Organizations with minimal racial diversity still need culturally competent staff who can demonstrate their understanding of the historical context, nuances, and dynamics of various cultural values and who can demonstrate skills that create an optimal learning environment for students from all types of cultures. Racial identity is important, but it's not the only influence in understanding the cultures of people. If your school does not have a great amount of racial diversity, it can still benefit from staff who are culturally competent in understanding the cultures of their students and who know how to use that knowledge to craft better learning experiences for them.

Cultural competency is not the work of an elite band of educators who happen to work with populations that have a significant number of minority students and families. Teaching is not a spectator sport where we can afford to have educators stand at the sidelines observing a game that clearly favors some and disadvantages others, but who fail to get involved because it is not their team. All the students on the field are playing for their future and yours. They are the future voters and community members who will determine what resources are provided for your retirement, which people immigrate to your community, how crime and order will be managed, and how educators will be compensated. In short, they will make fundamental decisions about your quality of life. To underestimate or mismanage your responsibility as an educator is shortsighted at best and foolhardy at worst.

There is nothing passive or dispassionate about being a culturally competent educator. It has nothing to do with your race, ethnicity, culture, class, position, school location, or student population. Culturally competent educators recognize the power of their influence to change the course of history for the better, and they work collaboratively with colleagues to strategically critique where we failed in the past and where we'll endeavor to navigate in the future.

There is a long history of racial, gender, social, and cultural hierarchy of human value in our society (Alexander, 2010; Anyon, 1997). There are people who perpetuate the myth of racial superiority and actively work to preserve its legacy and economic privilege—some of whom may teach at your school.

As educators, we may have had no choice in how our society or school systems were constructed, but by our daily actions, we choose to perpetuate the existing system or redesign a better one. You can extend your influence beyond the boundaries of your classroom, school, or district. Exercising your talents through the lens of cultural competency is a vital tool in this effort.

Information is the currency of power, and schools are one of the social depositories that distributes or denies access to the currency. The more information one has, the more independent and autonomous a person becomes. Cultural competency is about distributing that currency equitably. Now, let's get to work!

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