2012-11-28 下面是一篇我自己的专业课论文写作作业之一，关于美国弱势群体和种族性向歧视的，教授给了我95分。
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Diversity And Minority Status With Regard To Social Work Practice
With regard to social work practice, diversity and minority status includes a wide spectrum of social elements, such as race, ethnicity, religion, culture and sexuality. Among these elements, race is a particular one which focuses on biological and physiological differences. As mentioned in chapter seven of the text, In the United States, white people dominates the majority of society. In general, the term of “racial minorities” refers to other races coexisting with white society, including African- Americans, Native Americans, Asian-Americans and Hispanic-Americans. Moreover, from a social worker's perspective, the term “minority” and “diversity” also refer to some groups including senior citizens, people with disabilities, gays and lesbians, immigrants, refugees, which all have to face different challenges created by the majorities who dominate the value and social resources of the community.
It is not easy to live as a member of minority group, because many people belonging to those groups are vulnerable, have to endure stress or oppression, to face prejudice, hostility, racism and discrimination from the mainstream values, cultures, or religious systems.
Usually, there are five different ways for individuals of minority groups to react to mainstream's oppression and marginalization: acculturation, assimilation, accommodation, rejection and marginality. For these people, it is quite difficult to integrate or get involved into the dominating society while maintaining their own ethnic, religious, cultural or sex-orientational identities. That's why the ideology of cultural pluralism is a crucial concept social workers must come to understand, to promote and advocate strongly in their practice. In a culture pluralist society, various groups have respect for one another mutually without being prejudiced, everyone expresses his own religion and belief freely without hostility. Each group might enjoy its cultural heritage openly without being threatened, no matter how small a group is, how exotic the culture is, all groups of humans coexist peacefully in a civilized society.
As for sociocultural dissonance, the groups of minorities inevitably feel stressed, sometimes confused and pained under the shadow of mainstream culture. At this moment, social workers' interventions need to strengthen minorities' identities, help them to clear their minds on the diversity and difference issues, help them understand and respect others' ideological systems, and accordingly relieve the personal tensions between different groups or individuals.
It all depends on the nature of sociocultural dissonance and the purpose of intervention when social workers consider what kinds of intervention methods ought to be used. For example, when new immigrants or refugees come to the United States, at the beginning, it is very hard for clients to make a basic living, not to mention embracing the famous “American Dream.” In my view, in this period of time, social workers' intervention should be like this: First, help them to develop personal, social and vocational competencies. Second, help them to enhance their knowledge of resources, and to move forward to fully involve themselves in the new environment. Third, establish a new social support system to cooperate with other organizations or government agencies to assist the refugees adaptation to new social roles in a different country. Fourth, social workers need to understand and respect clients unique cultures, religions or ethnic identities. We also need to promote and enhance these identities, empower clients to build strong egos, be proud of themselves and their diversities, eventually promote social progress and social justice of the whole society.
As previously mentioned, in the United States, there are four main minority races. When social workers provide service for clients belonging to these races, we must be culturally competent,which means we must have enough skills and knowledge to demonstrate that we accept cultural diversity from the bottom of our hearts. We respect and accept others cultures and values just as we do our own. Furthermore, before we get involved in the service, I think we need to do a lot of research work on certain groups, such as the ethnic history, traditional family structure, behaviour, lifestyle, religion, and customs. For instance, Asian- Americans have a very different family values system than other minorities, if conflicts such as domestic violence happen between family members, they seldom go out to look for help, even when helpers come in their house, it is very difficult for victims to speak out, because in lot of Asian countries, the family is higher valued more than the individual, the whole family will “lose face” if the victim tells the truth. Hence, when social workers deal with these clients, we also need to show strong social worker skills in tolerance of silence, being patient, being nonjudgmental and open-minded, and willing to listen. Otherwise, we can't provide effective services to the clients in these groups.
Religion plays a big role for ethnic minorities. In my view, it heavily influences people in every aspect of life: physically, spiritually, and culturally. A religious community of minorities is empowered by their religion, they share experiences and common beliefs, they find their roots and base a nuclear value in their own community. However, the minority people often feel their religion is not valued within the whole social spectrum due to Christian privilege in the United States. Besides, some atheist minorities may also feel they are marginalized because there are huge differences between their beliefs and mainstream religions. Hence there are always some potential conflicts existing among these groups of people in society, which social workers have to deal with everyday. How do we handle this situation especially when we have strong religious beliefs? In my opinion, the answer is clear and simple: non judgemental perspective, Which means social workers should not push clients to forsake their own religious beliefs and follow social workers' beliefs. Social workers need to be tolerant and appreciate the diversity of the religious beliefs. Social workers can help clients find relevant available resources through churches, temples or mosques to which clients belong. For instance, after asking the clients' consent, social workers can contact the clients' own minister, priest, or rabbi to refer them for further assistance.
Based on sexual minority status, in the Unites States, one of the most diverse groups is the gay and lesbian community. The gay and lesbian community has been subjected to discrimination and prejudice a long time before APA removed homosexual as a diagnostic category from DSM in 1973. This group of people was treated badly by the society in an extended long history. Even today, there are still prevalent homophobes around every corner of this country. This minority group has to face many various challenges in their daily life, such as work place discrimination and unequal family social benefits. Besides, when same-sex orientation adolescents have to face problems at home, in school, on the street and so on, they really need social workers to support them positively in responding to rejection, discrimination, criticism, and even insults.
Social workers have lots of chances to work with the gay and lesbian community members in totally different fields of practice. Firstly, we can find the right resources to help them get assistance. Secondly, social workers need to communicate respectfully with gay and lesbian clients. Finally, we need pay more attention to the older gays and lesbians which has been called as a misunderstood and underestimated group. In short, as competent social workers, we must be honest to be ourselves, keep candid attitudes to our clients as well. We have to know our strong points and shortcomings. We have to understand the status of the history of the gay and lesbian human rights development, we have to see things profoundly and politically. The goal of our practice is to try hard to create an environment to let every human being live better and suffer less, eliminate prejudice, fight against various injustices, and respect every individual no matter what kind of label is being attached to his face.
In sum, diversity and minority status are the object of discrimination and marginalization. That's why social workers need to get involved to find the true value of these individuals or groups. We should activate the inner power of these people, use effective skills and methods to link them to the right resources, and liberate their oppressions. We also need to empower them to find their spiritual sustenance and belongings, to promote equality in power instead of being manipulated, to keep their unique culture alive instead of being acculturated, and emphasize their distinctive personality instead of being stereotyped as the dominant culture paint them.
