Race, Identity, Competency? Expanding Our Understanding

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Session Type: Concurrent Sessions

Session Capacity: N/A

Location: N/A

Room: Union Square 23 & 24

Floor: Fourth Floor

Many clinicians consider the development of cross-cultural competencies a critical learning goal. Sue Bryant and Jean Koh Peters’s formative work in this area, including the “Five Habits of Cross Cultural Communication,” animates much of our teaching on these skills. Issues of race, culture, gender, and identity are not static; rather they are complicated, nuanced, and often shifting, particularly as the public discourse on these concepts informs both our and our students’ understanding of them. As a result, clinicians must remain flexible and creative, adapting the Five Habits and other resources to best teach our students and serve our clients. The current public discourse on race, gender, and gender identity are markedly different today than three, five, or ten years ago. For example, the BlackLivesMatter movement and the proliferation of advocacy through social media has pressed considerations of race in criminal justice and policing into the public discourse. In addition, the last national election and the fallout have further centered issues of identity in its various manifestations.
This concurrent session will consider strategies for teaching cross-cultural competency in the current racial atmosphere, with a focus on clinics that are not explicitly or perhaps typically associated with racial justice. We will consider how we can accomplish this learning goal in different pedagogical spaces (seminar, rounds, supervision). We will address the specific challenges to discussing race and gender with students who are hostile to them or who did not anticipate such discussions in their chosen clinic.