Diversity Awareness & Self Reflection
In the profession of social work, there is an expectation that all service providers and professionals provide culturally responsive interventions and considerations to diverse individuals, groups, and communities. At the same time, the topic of diversity has the potential to create discomfort. How do social workers continue to not only engage in difficult conversations, but to also acknowledge and confront the layers of discomfort?
Learning about local diversity and attending cultural events is one way to challenge one’s perspective and engage with diverse others. For the purposes of this assignment choose a cultural event that you may attend and why you would choose to attend this particular event if it were an option. Ensure that this event would be encompassing of culture and that it would be realistically open to the public. Examples may be something related to gender identity/expression, race/ethnicity, class, religion, ability, sexual orientation, national origin, or age.
Address the following prompts:
Describe the cultural event in which you may choose to participate.
Explain how this experience may influence your perceptions of diversity and difference.
Analyze at least 3 key concepts in relation to this experience.
Define what it means to you to engage with diversity and difference in practice.
Describe two challenges associated with discussing and reflecting on diversity related content.
Describe one strategy to address these challenges.
Identify one positive emotion and one negative emotion that surfaced during this research
Describe one strategy to address the negative emotion in order to continue developing cultural awareness.
Explain specific steps that you will take to advance human rights and social, economic, and environmental justice based on what you have learned