The ACTION taken in helping an individual is based on the analysis of reasons that lie behind the problem. There is rarely one cause( concept of multicausality) or a simple solution:
                                                                                                                  
Choice of the particular course of action is based on all the available options available for addressing that particular  that cause and the choice is rarely obvious; human service workers have to accept and work with ambiguity.

Inadequate understanding leads to designing ineffective strategies. Thus, a good foundation  for an effective plan involves gathering accurate relevant information about the person, the problem and the situation.

Each course of action has to respond to the individual's unique circumstances. Thus, all effective strategies involve:

• collecting relevant data
• building a trusting relationship  
• negotiating a contract
• designing and implementing a action plan
• evaluating outcomes and reevaluating for what might have been improved.

Sensitivity to issues of cultural identity is important in our multicultural society and critical to human service work. 

We also need to understand the psychological and cultural foundations of prejudice and the effects of discrimination on human experience. 

Discussion of the cycles of change: what has changed over the years and why? What remains the same? What does 'backlash' refer to and why does it occur?

The role of perception:  We categorize experience as part of being human. If every new situation or object or person had to be confronted as a total mystery, something to be discovered without any reference to what we have already experienced, we would never get through the day. However, much of what we experience is colored in our perception by what we have been taught, both consciously and subconsciously, since early childhood. Then our expectations lead to seeing reality through colored lenses, not in the clear light of day, and we react in response to these distortions. Our prejudices are most dangerous when we don't know they exist.

For instance, when women's 'place' in society was accepted as secondary to men, the problems resulting from this assigned cultural status were invisible. With the advent of the fight for women's rights, many problems that stemmed from patriarchal attitudes and values became visible and, once named, addressed with social programs, education, etc.   Battered women's shelters, rape crisis centers, women's health centers, support for girl's sports programs in schools, and many other changes have come about because of the Women's Movement. It's not that the fight is over, but at least now we are becoming  more aware of the effects of sexism on our lives. (As long as we accept that it's okay for women to earn less than men, that will not change, but merely knowing that it is wrong does not change it.) 

Struggles with our individual or personal racism, sexism,  and other prejudices have to be a constant and conscious;  when you feel that sudden surprise as that gay/lesbian person, your fat next door neighbor, a person with a disability, or individual who lives in a trailer park does something unexpected, something which contradicts your expectations, use that moment to face your prejudice, to accept it's existence in how you have been thinking, and to work against it.

The next level of struggle is with other individuals' prejudices: do you confront them? educate them? tolerate them? ignore them?  How you deal with their behavior will depend on the time, place, setting and whether your reaction will do more harm than good. (People had some good examples of this one!)

We had an extensive discussion of the experiences of racism in our lives. Race is not  a 'biological concept'; genetic diversity between people of different 'races' is no more or less than the genetic diversity between two people with the same 'race'.  ( I like to remind people who try to make a biological argument for 'race' as a reality that genetically we share 30% of our genes with a banana, but the genetic difference 'black' skin and 'white' ( 'pink' and 'beige') is no more than the difference between my dirty-blonde (and now gray) hair and my niece's red mop. No, ethnicity and attitudes define 'race', and there are divisions and prejudices within each race: the Swedes look down on the darker immigrant Finns, the lighter-skinned Puerto Ricans are considered 'prettier' by some that their darker-skinned sisters. And economics status further divides people. We discussed how women and African-Americans who have 'made it' economically or into positions of power seem to acquire prejudices against where they came from, against those who are still where they once were. (Again, it is a very human defense to want to distance yourself from poverty, powerlessness, etc, and feelings of superiority are just that : a defense.)  

What are the effects of  discrimination? Lower self-esteem, learned helplessness, poor performance on tests, etc., but also many people also gain strengths from developing coping skills, and from being exempt from some of the performance pressures that go with being expected to excel. A child who has a learning disability may be free to explore things which engage his curiosity while his classmates are being pressured to get tops scores on the state mastery tests. Young African-American adolescent girls are less affected by the tyranny of the skinny images of women presented in the media as 'ideals' and have higher self-esteem than white peers with the same degree of body fat. 

The effects of affirmative action. Affirmative action tried to compensate for years of discrimination by promoting acceptance of minority races and women. This meant that in many situations when two individuals with equal abilities competed for the same position, a minority individual was given preference. After the affirmative action laws were passed there was an outcry by those who felt that this was a form of reverse discrimination, as unfair in its way as discrimination was.

Backlash against social movements:  Any social change is met with resistance by those who benefited from the way things were. Also, people in a competitive society are likely to direct their own feelings of inadequacy and insecurity at those who they perceive as  threatening them, resulting in all the '-isms' (racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, anti-gay, anti-immigrant, anti-Arab or Muslim, etc) that embody their anger and fear. Those in power are not going to yield any of their benefits without a fight and it takes mass movements to resist or change the status quo. For every concession to social unrest, there is resistance and resentment by those who have had control of the power.  Thus, despite the enormous changes brought about by the civil rights movement and the women's movement, we still have powerful remnants of racism and sexism affecting our lives every day.

HS workers must constantly work against prejudice personally,  interpersonally, in small groups, in the community, and in our larger society.

• Personally we have to seek out our own biases and prejudices, welcoming the opportunities to come to know ourselves, however ugly, better so that we can work for personal change.
• Interpersonally and in small groups, we have to address bias and prejudice in a voice that can be heard, to resist complicity with the acts and voices of bias and hate, and share our work on ridding ourselves of prejudice.
• Large scale (mass) movements provide the motive for large scale societal changes: Human service workers need to educate themselves about the issues that affect people's lives, provide informed opinions to discussion of the subjects and for political pressure for change at all levels of government, and support for organizing and demonstrating for change.

What is wrong with 'tolerance' for other cultures, ethnic groups, people who are different in their beliefs and behaviors?  According to the dictionary, to tolerate is 'to put up with', 'to suffer to be', 'to endure'. (Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, Pub 1987). When much of the push for services by the first social workers for the poor new immigrants was to integrate and socialize them into the American way of life, tolerance of their differences was   a radical notion. Today, I hope and trust, we are moving past tolerance to a true appreciation of the richness that our diversity as a society has to offer.

The text discusses this notion in terms of  a 'melting pot' in which diversity is lost as we all become more and more alike, versus a 'salad', in which component maintains it's unique contribution to the overall mix. 

It is one of the 'laws' of how we organize our sensations into perceptions that we tend to perceive consistencies and generalizations about groups; a floor lamp is a light is a lantern is a flood light, is a spotlight, etc. Thus, it is natural that we group people by ethnic background, regional accent, hair type or skin color, economic status, instead of by their individual and unique characteristics. (Perceptual laws of groupings) It is when these short-cuts to perception, these groupings, lead to general (and generally negative) assumptions about all of a group's members that a useful ability becomes ugly bias and destructive prejudice.

Describe the strengths gained and damages done by society to members of minority groups. We never got to discuss this assignment directly but it was a great discussion about each of our personal encounters with this critical subject.