Cultural Competency, White Privilege, and Intersectionality

Introduction: Racism and the Sotomayor Hearings

Recent awareness about the definition of racism arose during the Sotomayor Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Greenwood and Christian (2008) refer to the heterogeneity of women and illustrate some of the biases in the approach toward Sotomayor. Unzueta and Lowery (2008) as well as Cannon (2008) focus on white privilege and institutional racism. Greenwood and Christian (2008) note that political ideology mitigates gender — that is, a woman may feel differently even about her fellow women depending on her political stances. Being a woman might have a biological universal constant, but culture, religion, and politics play important roles in self-definition.

Greenwood and Christian (2008) do not directly address the ways that gender and other variables affect social status. Unzueta and Lowery (2008) and Cannon (2008), on the other hand, do discuss social status at length. Race and self-perception are keys to unraveling the problems associated with institutionalized chauvinism.

Defining White Privilege and Learning Organizations

Unzueta and Lowery (2008) and Cannon (2008) focus on the concept of white privilege. White privilege is defined as "unearned group-based privileges" (Unzueta & Lowery, 2008, p. 1492). The key to the concept of white privilege is not merely that the phenomenon exists, but that it is so readily denied by those who benefit from its power unwittingly — that is, white people. Unzueta and Lowery (2008) claim that white individuals are uncomfortable with the concept of white privilege because it threatens their "self-image" (p. 1492).

Cannon (2008) applies a similar concept of white privilege to what the author calls learning organizations. Learning organizations are institutions that acknowledge white privilege and actively address the problems associated with it. Among those problems are denial and the perpetuation of social injustice. Although Greenwood and Christian (2008) do not explicitly address white privilege in a general sense, the authors do indirectly approach the issue in their article "What Happens When We Unpack the Invisible Knapsack?" Rather than addressing the ways white privilege operates broadly, Greenwood and Christian (2008) examine white privilege specifically within the context of non-Muslim women's perceptions of the hijab, or head scarf.

Intersectionality, Gender, and the Hijab

The study by Greenwood and Christian (2008) reveals the ways culture and religion intersect with gender. The authors base their research on the theory of intersectionality, which holds that social identities such as race, gender, class, and religion do not operate independently but interact to shape individual experience. White privilege, gender, and any other issue related to social justice and personal consciousness are situational. Each individual will experience race, class, gender, power, religion, and ethnicity in different ways.

The hijab case study is particularly instructive. Women from non-Muslim backgrounds often have difficulty accepting the cultural practice of wearing the head scarf. Greenwood and Christian (2008) frame their explication of the hijab in terms of white privilege: non-Muslim women who scorn the hijab are projecting a cultural bias onto Muslim women, imposing their own standards of freedom and identity rather than respecting a different cultural and religious framework.

Conclusion: Uprooting White Privilege and Patriarchy

White privilege is equal to gender bias among the remaining social injustices that plague the planet. Discrimination based on race and gender is rooted in business, politics, and social life. Until the root causes of white privilege and patriarchy are identified and addressed, prevalent political and social problems are likely to persist. The three articles examined here collectively argue that genuine cultural competency requires more than tolerance — it demands a willingness to confront one's own unearned advantages and to understand how multiple axes of identity shape every individual's experience of power and belonging.