While cultural sensitivity certainly has its place as an important element in a more developed approach to educational equity, when cultural initiatives are used to try and remedy inequity and injustice is where we run into issues. Learning about culture should not replace serious efforts to eradicate forms of discrimination, and an obsession with it can actually impede progress towards educational equity.
We have to avoid essentializing culture when it comes to the framework of cultural competence. Presuming cultural homogeneity within hugely diverse groups is dangerous, because when we focus equity attention on the culture/identity of someone, we will almost always stereotype them. In terms of this course and minor, we cannot rely on a predictable assumption to inform our behavior when interacting with different people. Essentialist conceptions of who someone is based on their assigned culture fails to prepare us to be responsive to who they actually are. Gorski also contends that when it comes to justice, culture can be used as a “code language” for race, economic status, and other equity concerns to “make the conversation more bearable for people who are racially, economically, and otherwise privileged” (224). Although this is masked as sensitivity, it conceals forms of oppression and undermines the purpose of these important conversations. Hiding behind the concept of “cultural competence” when talking about difficulties that targeted groups of discrimination have faced accomplishes nothing. With this course, we should be unafraid to call out inequity, or “tell it like it is.”
I’ve seen “culture” addressed in my primary school through cultural celebration days. During Lunar New Year, I remember learning Chinese characters and doing crafts with red construction paper. I remember celebrating Dia de Los Muertos with decorations, traditional food and songs in fifth grade. In eighth, we had a menorah in the classroom during Hanukkah. In retrospect, I suppose I regarded it as completely positive where faculty encouraged students to engage in cultural appreciation. But when I think back on these events, I realize that they’ve contributed to almost a categorization of different cultures that occurs in my head, or what I think they should look like. And that makes things so much more complicated.
