Acquiring and Applying Cultural Knowledge
Doing the Work to Acquire Cultural Knowledge
Once you know who is in your catchment area, you can begin doing the work of building knowledge about each group’s culture, child rearing practices, and other ways of being. EI already has practices in place to help you get to know more about families (see McWilliams, 2009 Routines Based Interview) and integrate that information into your EI sessions (see DEC Recommended Practice, 2014). In light of these practices, I often get asked two questions. The first question is always a variation of “If we’re using Family-Centered Practices, aren’t they already culturally responsive?” and the second is, “Why can’t I just ask families what I need to know about them?”
To address the first question, my answer is that yes, when done really well, Family-Centered Practices can be culturally responsive; however, researchers in our field have discovered that Family-Centered Practices are often not being done well. Many EI providers either aren’t fully abiding by family-centered practices at all (Schumaker-Murphy, 2019) or believe that they are engaged in Family-Centered Practices, but their EI clients don’t find their interactions with that provider Family-Centered or culturally responsive (Puig, 2012). Some EI providers report that ideologically racist or otherwise stereotypically negative beliefs keep them from engaging in family-centered practices with fathers of color (McBride et al., 2017). Black families report that they often felt that their EI providers discounted their family cultures and values (Deneen et al., 2016). Meanwhile, Spanish-speaking families shared that initial evaluations included test items that they felt were “unnatural” for young children and that they faced discrimination from their EI providers (Durán et al., 2023).
As for the second question– “Can’t I just ask what the family thinks that I need to know about them?” While some people will tell you that yes, you can and should (after all, we have a whole Routines-Based Interview protocol especially made for EI!), my answer is a resounding no. After conducting interviews with Black parents about their experiences in EI, I learned that some families find this approach to be an incredibly disrespectful way to learn about them. Adrienne, one of my former EI clients, felt that expecting families to teach you about them without coming with some level of knowledge about their ways of being placed a burden of an unreasonable amount of labor on families. She said that she is more than happy to have conversations with EI providers who come in with some knowledge about Black culture and ways of being. Adrienne shared an example of a time when an EI provider decided to work with her daughter, Oneida, on pretend play and hair care. The provider brought in a doll with straight, silky hair and a comb that would never work in Oneida’s curly hair. Adrienne was very frustrated that the provider didn’t bother to think about Oneida’s hair until she was in the home. Then she asked Adrienne about hair routines only after Adrienne pointed out that the doll’s hair was very different from Oneida’s and would need different kinds of styling and products. Adrienne commented that she would have been okay with the provider asking about hair care if she had indicated in any way that she understood the cultural differences in hair care, but the provider had not. Adrienne went on to comment that “Anyone who wants to learn something to understand it will truly make a way. There are so many resources out there for everyone, and anything that you want to know exists somewhere.”
Adrienne believes a lack of life experiences contributed to her EI providers’ lack of cultural proficiency. She stated that the members of her family’s EI team didn’t “come off as being extraordinarily culturally competent… and the first time they were interacting with Black people was as a clinician, and what that did was not enhance their cultural competency at all, in fact…it validated biases. We’ve learned that our family’s success [in EI] is because of our cultural competency and being able to understand young White women. I’ve gotta code switch and make them feel comfortable so that Oneida can get good treatment. This learning on our part is what Black people do. We learn this really early on that this is what we have to do.”
Additionally, for families whose identities fall outside the dominant American culture, there are socio-historical factors and power dynamics at play that may inhibit them from sharing what their home lives are actually like with EI providers or other home visitors. Ibraheem and Crenisha, two more of my past clients, shared with me that based on their previous experiences with White women, they were afraid that I would judge them if they used slang or shared what their daily lives were actually like until after they had known me for several months. Ibraheem said that at first, he felt that I just wouldn’t get them because “there’s some white people that like, been around Black people. I didn’t get the vibe you were one of those. Some people are like White-White, you know? They grow up and everybody’s the same. They’re all homogenous and they don’t really get a lot of experiences with Black people. And those people, you can tell. Even the people with the purest of intentions, they just don’t know.”
Case Study: They Don’t Come Off As Being Extraordinarily Culturally Competent
