Diversity Competency: Understanding Cultural Differences
What is Diversity Competency?
Diversity Competency is possessing the cultural knowledge and understanding to serve diverse communities effectively.
Four Host-Ideologies
- Multiculturalism Ideology: Recognizes and supports people of diversity in maintaining or promoting their diversity, provided that their practices do not clash with the laws of the nation.
- Civic Ideology: Subscribes to the multiculturalism ideology principles but does not support state funding to maintain and promote ethno-cultural diversity.
- Assimilation Ideology: An ideology that expects people of diversity to relinquish their culture and linguistic identity and adopt the culture of the host state.
- Ethnist Ideology: An ideology that expects people of diversity to assimilate, but the state defines which groups should assimilate and which ones are not rightful members of the state.
Host community: comprises groups of people who have the power and influence to shape attitudes towards the remaining groups in society.
LGBTQ+
LGBTQ+: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and others.
Ontario Human Rights Code
The Ontario Human Rights Code, enacted in 1962, states that we recognize all people:
- Have human rights that cannot be infringed upon or dismissed
- Have individual dignity and worth
- Are entitled to equal rights and opportunities without discrimination
Protected grounds: age, race, ethnic origin, disability, family status
Protected social areas: accommodation, contracts, employment, goods, services, and facilities.
Five Major Religions
- Christianity: Identifies sin as a fundamental human problem and offers salvation from sin through Jesus Christ as a solution. 33% of the population is Christian.
- Islam: Jesus was the penultimate and one of the most important prophets of God, but not the Son of God, not divine, and not part of the Trinity.
- Judaism: Comprises the collective spiritual, cultural, and legal traditions of the Jewish people.
- Buddhism: Regards ignorance, not sin, as the fundamental problem and prescribes enlightenment as the solution and the goal.
- Hinduism: Views the entire universe as God’s and everything in the universe as God.
Islamophobia
Islamophobia: The fear of, hatred of, or prejudice against the religion of Islam or Muslims in general, especially when seen as a geopolitical force or a source of terrorism.
Police Force vs. Police Service
- Police Force Approach: Policing that emphasizes crime control and enforcement of the law and that police need to be hard on crime.
- Police Service Approach: Associated with the community policing approach with the objective that police work for and with communities.
Community Policing
Community Policing: Policing that is associated with the police services and with the mandate of policing for and with communities. Example: Drug awareness presentation at a school.
Cultural Iceberg
Surface Culture:
- Food: Hunting animals for food, “scone”
- Festivals/Holidays: Powwows
- Language: Many, Ojibway
Deep Culture:
- Notions of Leadership: Chief and council government
- Concepts of Self: Identified with a ‘spirit name’
- Attitudes Towards Death: Afterlife of the spirit world