534 Reaction Paper

Week 4 Reaction Paper

The article I chose this week addressed social workers and their competence when dealing with clients who are multiracial. The article entitled Multiracial Competence in Social Work: Recommendations for Culturally Attuned Work with Multiracial People, took a hard look at social workers and their lack of understanding the issues that are faced by clients of multiracial descent. The authors argued that the social workers could become better equipped at handling multiracial clients if they became more self-aware, through evaluating their biases and their lack of understanding. The authors suggest that social workers at times stop and ask themselves how they feel about multiracial issues including interracial dating and marriage.

Another way the authors suggest that social workers become more competent when dealing with multiracial clients, is to build upon their knowledge of what it means to be multiracial. Become familiar with multiracial issues and history. How do different races handle interracial dating; or mixed raced children? How does this history affect and shape multiracial clients today? The authors explain in the article that seeking out this knowledge puts the social worker in a better position to handle issues that are unique to multiracial clients.

Lastly the authors suggest that social workers build upon their skill concerning interventions for multiracial clients, be prepared to discuss issues of race and heritage with multiracial clients. And the authors remind social workers to pick interventions that are culturally and individually attuned to the client.

In this article I learned that being sensitive to someone that is multiracial might be more difficult than I thought it would be. I consider myself to be very racially sensitive and understanding but I also realize that I have a strong bias when it comes to multiracial people, especially those that are mixed white and black, I tend to refer to them only as...