Abstract
Crisis in society can be caused by a number of social, political, environmental and economic factors including dramatic and immediate ones like the assassination of national leaders or the 9/11 attacks in the United States, or they could be longer term ones like the Global Financial Crisis. They all have significant effects in terms of intense distress within individuals and communities. They also bring out the best and the worst in human responses. In particular, crises that can be directly or indirectly blamed on human agency are very prone to be turned into issues of racism and racist action across cultures and affect community resilience. Currently, cultural competence is a widely used method of developing the ability of people to manage inter-cultural relations, including issues of racism-related crisis. This paper will draw on the literature and research of cultural competency to argue that, while this method has some areas of strength, it also has some major failings such as the use of inappropriate terminology, lack of acknowledgement of the issues of power and racism, lack of cultural safety and the lack of acknowledgement of the dynamic nature of cultures. In this paper, the principles towards developing an alternative framework of Culturally Dynamic Partnerships (CDP) will be presented as a way towards enabling communities to deal with racism-related crises. This model would incorporate some of the most effective aspects of older models of cultural competence and cultural safety while going beyond some of the negative issues inherent in them.
Highlights
Notions of crisis are not new and the ideas reach back as far as Greek civilisation where the term was used in the sense of reaching the crucial point that would tip the scales and as Koselleck and Richter (2006, p. 361) argue, at that time the concept of crisis was applied to ‘life-deciding others as scapegoats to blame for the crisis situation
It becomes relatively safe for perpetrators to commit acts of covert racism without fear of condemnation or punitive actions, which is why covert racism remains the predominant form of racism experienced today (Holdaway & O'Neill, 2007)
The last few decades have seen the widespread adoption of the notions of cultural competence, cultural safety, culturally inclusive practice, and cultural sensitivity as ways of enabling work across cultures, at least in countries like the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia
Summary
Notions of crisis are not new and the ideas reach back as far as Greek civilisation where the term was used in the sense of reaching the crucial point that would tip the scales and as Koselleck and Richter (2006, p. 361) argue, at that time the concept of crisis was applied to ‘life-deciding others as scapegoats to blame for the crisis situation. Notions of crisis are not new and the ideas reach back as far as Greek civilisation where the term was used in the sense of reaching the crucial point that would tip the scales and as Koselleck and Richter 361) argue, at that time the concept of crisis was applied to ‘life-deciding others as scapegoats to blame for the crisis situation. The darker side of human beings can often emerge at this time in the form of violent acts of racism, often impacting on those of minority cultures in society (Gopalkrishnan, 2013a). Some aspects of culture and its relationship with racism will be examined so as to provide the background to appropriate responses to crisis-related racism
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