DSJSW Week One, Post Two (Synthesize & Connect)

    Understanding culture is a crucial part to getting to understand a community and the people within it. Culture, defined by Marsiglia and Kulis in 2015, is the lens through which people understand their lives, needs, and possibilities  and is under a framework through which they construct dreams, and gain support necessary to make them a reality. Furthermore, culture can provide both a sense of identity and strength, as well as harm, restrict, and oppress. In this course, Mitchell argues that those in social work should challenge culture respectively when it perpetuates injustice, but in order to do so, people must first have a deep and complex understanding of culture and its intricacies. The first steps to understanding culture is by understanding the three cultural processes - assimilation (fully adopting norms, symbols, behaviors and beliefs of a new culture), acculturation (mixing new and old culture, often to be accepted by dominant society), and enculturation (recapturing and reconnecting with one's culture). By acknowledging the three different kinds of cultural processes, it becomes much easier to understand individuals relationship with their community and their background. 

    When learning about different people and their place in society, it is crucial to take a deep look into their community and their background to get accurate representation as to who they are and why. In Austin, Texas, a study showed that while people often perceived panhandlers as lazy and unwilling to contribute to work, most panhandlers with forty to fifty year old white men who had extensive work history, most likely in manual labor, with over one-third having served in the military. Often times they became injured while working or aged-out of manual labor and had insufficient health care, which led to the exacerbation of both mental and physical illness and injury. All of this leads to the first main idea of this course, which is that health is directly impacted by income, and those that live in poverty are more likely to suffer from health issues throughout their lives. 

    To quote Bryan Stevenson, "The opposite of poverty is not wealth. The opposite of poverty is justice." When reflecting on social justice as a whole, it is clear that there cannot be a truly just and equal world that still allows for the continuation and acceptance of poverty. Thus, in order to advocate for a socially just world, it is crucial that social workers are given the tools that they need to understand and advocate for those that society has exiled, as well as work to build a society in which extreme inequality and poverty (which overlaps but are distinct) are not accepted or maintained.