Family Culture: A Case Study

Cultural competence refers to understanding other cultures, by obtaining cultural education, understanding how different cultures function in society, how society has treated their culture and their cultural behaviors (Lum, 2004). While interviewing individuals from a different culture the interviewer must show the ability to ask questions about the interviewee’s family and culture without appearing insensitive. Interviewing Deona Queen gave the opportunity to acquire information about her family’s cultural background, while learning how ask question in a sensitive matter. All information obtained during her interview was used to compare to one’s own family cultural background. Deona Queen was encouraged to give a brief description of her …show more content…
However, the information that is needed to do the cultural interview needed to be more specific, so that an accurate analyzes and comparison could be made. Therefore, more specific questions was asked, such as what is her family culture, and that is when Deona revealed that her family has been raised with strong African American women being the head of the household. Which is starting to become more common within the Black community. This is a result of post slavery, which caused a major change in the family structure. Urbanization was another result of the shift in family structure and cohesiveness, because it allowed women to enter the work force, which required long hours away from the family (Reed, 2016). It was also stated during the interview that Deona have six siblings, which she considers to be a blended family of biological, step and half sisters and brothers. Her blended family of siblings resembles one’s own family of half brothers and sisters. Having a blended family have shaped the way that Deona and I formed both our self-identity and social identity. Self-identity refers to how we both view ourselves, which is connected to our self-esteem (Johnson, 2016). Social-identity, which is developed by others and may or may not be different from our own self-identity (Johnson, 2016). Both self-identity …show more content…
One of the main goals of slavery was to destroy the hierarchy of the black man, which was used to provide, protect and discipline. This is still accurate for Deona’s family culture. Deona’s grandmother was the head of the household, which means that she made all the decisions for the family. This tradition is still being practiced because all of Deona’s extended family and their households are operated the same way, with the women in charge. However, this is completely opposite of my family culture, because my grandfather held the traditional role of provider, protector and disciplinary. My grandmother was the nurture of our family, and yes she worked, but my grandfather made it clear that he held the dominate position in our family. One thing that both of our grandmothers had in common was their place of birth. While discussing and comparing families I had to make sure that I maintain my self-awareness by not labeling her family practices as an issue or not acceptable to what society views as socially normal. However, with grandparents having to take on multiple roles because of the raising numbers of single family homes in the African American community, it is important to have some form of information on this situation. By doing this I was able to recognize this as a strength. Which led to questions about why all of the women in her