Whiteness and Cultural Identity

As the majority of the EI workforce is White women (Childress, et al., 2024), most of the EI providers I encounter when I run DEI communities of practice are White women. Like most members of the dominant culture, the White women I work with usually have not had to examine their own identities and cultural backgrounds. When I ask participants to list words that describe their identities instead of defining themselves by their race, White women will list their gender, ethnic heritage (Irish, Italian), professions (occupational therapist, social worker, developmental specialist, teacher), relationships to others (mother, sister, friend), religions (Catholic, Jewish). We don’t talk about our Whiteness much because it is seen as “the default identity, the cultural wallpaper” (Bazelon, 2018, ?page number?). Historian Nell Irvin Painter (2011) posits that this is true because we see Whiteness as “bland nothingness” since it is defined by what it is not- Black.

I can relate to this experience of not thinking much about my race or thinking to list it when talking about my identity.  When I was a sophomore in college, I was asked to describe my family culture.  I earnestly responded that I did not have one. I had grown up in homogeneous towns in rural and suburban Illinois with people just like me.  When we learned about what “culture” meant in school, it was always in reference to other people who lived somewhere else or weren’t like us. At the time, I believed that culture was exotic and different, two things that I didn’t think a White girl from DeKalb, Illinois, could ever be. Of course, that is not all that culture means, but I hadn’t had enough education or experience to understand that at the time.

My ignorance of my own culture was a product of  “the mythical norm” (Lorde, 1984 ?page number for the definition of the mythical norm?). The mythical norm is a shared definition of what it means to be normal or fit in.  In the U.S., the mythical norm is white, thin, able-bodied,cis-gendered, heterosexual, Christian, English-speaking,  and middle or upper-middle class. People who do not fit into the mythical norm are “othered,” while those of us who fit neatly into it are seen as normal.  In EI, we sometimes unintentionally “other” families when we make assumptions based on the mythical norm. Early in my career, I would automatically refer to a child’s parents as “mom” and “dad.” One of my first families was Korean American and spoke Korean at home.  After a month of referring to the child’s father as dad over and over again in every session, I finally noticed that the father referred to himself as “Apa.”  Without meaning to, I had repeatedly communicated that the “normal” word for father was the English one.

Barbara Rogoff (2003) likened the difficulty of seeing our own culture to fish being unaware of water because it is the only environment they have ever lived in. It is hard to define something that you are immersed in. We often don’t notice aspects of our culture until they are missing or replaced by something else (much like I never gave any thought to how to behave in grocery store lines until I was presented with people who behaved differently than I did in those lines). For many of us in the United States with White identities, our cultural practices surround us so tightly that we are not presented with experiences during which they become noticeable very often.  We see reflections of ourselves in the media we consume, in the public school curriculum and vacation calendars, in the language we see on street signs, and even in the holiday decorations that line our streets in December.

At the same time that our own ways of being constantly envelop those of us with dominant cultural identities, folks with identities outside the dominant cultural norms are bombarded with their otherness constantly, so it becomes evident to them very early in their lives how their home cultures differ from the dominant culture. For example, an American Muslim family living in my community would be exposed to all the same Christmas light displays and have the same public school vacation calendar centered around the Christmas and Easter holidays. However, instead of reflecting their home cultures, these things would be in contrast to them–a constant reminder of the ways their family is not part of the mythical norm. Building on the fish and water metaphor, people outside of the dominant culture are like frogs who move between the water and the land. Frogs can easily maneuver in the water and know how to adjust their movements and behavior to function on land. Often, their transitions between land and water appear seamless but require a lot of knowledge and skill.

The term for the change in language use in the ways people present themselves based on the setting comes from linguistics and is called code-switching (Haugen, 1954).  When applied to everyday life, code-switching is the practice of changing one’s behavior to fit the cultural norms of the culture that has the most capital in a given setting (Ray, 2009).

Everyone code switches to some extent depending on the circumstance.  I dress differently for work than I do when I’m going to a wedding, and despite being known for throwing around curse words when talking with my friends, I’ve never said a swear word in front of my grandmother.  Neither of those examples, though, requires me to leave behind the essence of one of my identities. Sometimes, people with marginalized identities have to take on an almost totally different way of being in order to fit in, prevent being judged in stereotypical ways, or being overtly discriminated against.  Code switching becomes harmful in early intervention when families feel as if they have to change their behavior significantly in order to protect themselves or their children or in order for them to retain access to services. During interviews about their time in EI,  Crenisha and Adrienne both shared stories of how they had to code-switch constantly during EI home visits.  Crenisha said,

“the way I may have talked to Ayden…I felt like I had a talk a little bit more different… I couldn’t use too much slang…let’s keep it professional, let’s not talk in slang..let’s make sure that I’m using complete sentences and not speaking in slang, and I don’t want [the speech therapist] thinking that I’m confusing Ayden if I’m talking in a different tone or in a way…it was just that with some providers, I felt like I had to tighten up a little bit because I was always afraid of being judged.”

Adrienne described her early intervention team as “front-room people.” She said,

“The way they design houses, you have your front room, which is where all your nice stuff is. Kids can’t usually play in there… You behave a certain way for front–room people, but they’re not in your house, and they don’t see the rest of the house, your bedroom, your kitchens, where the actual living happens and the life.  What you learn is that these people coming into your home have to be front-room people.”

Reflective Tool: Determining Your Relationship to Dominant Cultural Values