CULTURALLY COMPETENT

Becoming Culturally Competent In A Culture Different From My Own



Becoming Culturally Competent In A Culture Different From My Own

My Culture and How I Grew up

I grow up in Haiti, at a very early age I was at the boarding school. I was around lot of Nuns. My parents were overseas, so I was basically raised by nuns. I came to USA when I was 9 years old. In Haiti neighbors were friendly and took care of each other, it was like a big happy family. The expression “we learn more in the first six years of our lives than we do in the remaining years” is very true in my case. I grew up in a very loving family, where we care and respect each other and respect and love other people's cultures, religions and views. We do not judge or take prejudice on other people. I never really encountered any racism. But when I came to USA, it was whole new story or different side of living. There were a lot of racism around me and I knew that there was racism between black cultures. Same as in Haiti if a mother have two kids one is light color and one is darker. The light colored kid would get a special treatment and the dark color kid would stay at home and do the house work and they would send the light color kid to the school and outside. In America I faced a lot of racism, especially at the hospitals. I see that patients who are well educated are treated better and patients who are not that educated are not treated well, they do not get extra care.

Stereotyping or Prejudice

Two instances of stereotyping or prejudice which I have experienced or observed include the following:

Lighter skin child getting the higher preference.

Educated people get better treatment.

The discrimination based on skin color is not justified as it is important that each person or child should be treated equally. I think there is no need to explain what could cause harm to those present in the minds of stereotypes and prejudices. It is clear that in a single article, it is difficult to describe an efficient way to get rid of all the stereotypes that impede life; however, even the wise are unlikely to help anyone. So here we consider only one, very simple and accessible example of thinking that helps to get rid of stereotypes. To get rid of a good bit of prejudice, I suggest ceasing to associate with any other cultural group of people. The ethnic or racial discrimination in based on skin in schools are taking into consideration the supposed origins of people to feel that are light skin children more than others to have better education, or they are put in positions without issues. Skin or color based discrimination always end up having real consequences on the situation of those affected and most often the victims are ...