As explained in the Gorski article, using the terms ‘culture’, ‘cultural competence’ and ‘cultural competence’ can be dangerous when addressing issues of access in education. Gorski elaborated on this idea, explaining that cultural competence presumes cultural homogeneity within diverse groups. Presumptions such as this demonstrate essentialism: “embracing the idea there is some singular and consistent true nature shared among large groups of people”. These frameworks of cultural competence and cultural proficiency often overlook deeply important matters: equity and justice. Culture is often emphasized “at the expense of emphasizing other ways in which students are marginalized”.
Gorski also explained that the term ‘culture’ is often used as a code word for race, socioeconomic status, and other equity-related issues in order to make the conversation more ‘bearable’ for more privileged people. Through language like this, the true issues being discussed are overshadowed and the conversation shifts away from its goal – discussing equity and inequity: “because inequity and injustice are not cultural problems, they cannot be resolved through cultural analyses and cultural solutions”. When culture is emphasized and equity is deemphasized, there is an ‘illusion’ of progress when in fact little progress is being made.
In his writing, Gorski explains that he stopped using the phrase ‘multicultural education’ as it offered people a way out of their commitment to equity (they could focus on cultural diversity, creating work that asked students to make incredibly broad generalizations about entire nations of people). The focus of his programming is now equity literacy, “cultivating in teachers the knowledge and skills necessary to become a threat to the existence of inequity in their spheres of influence”. By shifting the frame towards equity and away from culture, important issues such as racism and heterosexism are placed at the center of the conversation.
The equity literacy framework: The ability to recognize subtle inequalities, the ability to respond in the immediate term to inequity, the ability to redress inequity in the long term, the ability to sustain equity efforts.
From this reading, what sticks with me are ideas of cultural homogeneity and the danger of the term ‘culture’. It served as a really important reminder that what we think of as specific ‘cultures’ are made up of unique individuals. It can be easy to think of a culture I am not familiar with as one concept that can be defined and studied – but that is of course not the case. To think in this way is not only untrue, but is actively harmful. I think that keeping these ideas in mind while studying music from a global perspective (and taking a language) will be incredibly important. Especially in an academic setting (when large ideas are covered very briefly), stereotypes and generalizations can be made easily. It will be important for me to question broad representations of culture that are presented to me and to notice how they might divert my attention away from issues of inequity.
