Episode 804: Cultural Competencies

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Welcome back to Season Eight of Linking Our Libraries! We are so happy to have you with us this season!

We are the Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange. Our members are libraries of all sorts: public, schools, academics, special libraries, archives, and history centers. Join us in working thorough skills library staffers can use to be more successful in their work! 

We are talking to you from Minnesota, and our state has recently set up requirements for teachers in their licensure requirements to take seminars in cultural competencies. Today we are going to briefly look at the topics covered in this training, and see how it can apply in library work.

The Basics:

It is the job of libraries to serve the information needs of their community members – all of their community members. And most of us are pretty nice people, who try to make that happen. But most of us are also middle aged white women. These are not bad qualities, it is just limiting in perspective. Nobody can know all things, or have all experiences. So working in libraries means it is important to reach out to different sources of information, so we are ready to provide the best, most diverse sources of ideas to share with our community.

There are all kinds of cultural competencies we could be discussing. But for the purposes of today’s discussion we will look at the topics identified by Minnesota for teachers to work with.

What are cultural competencies?

In the state statutes, “”Cultural competency training” means a training program that promotes self-reflection and discussion including but not limited to all of the following topics: racial, cultural, and socioeconomic groups; American Indian and Alaskan native students; religion; systemic racism; gender identity, including transgender students; sexual orientation; language diversity; and individuals with disabilities and mental health concerns.”  

The state has standards for the results they want to see from the training, and what people can expect to take into their work. “Training programs must be designed to deepen teachers’ understanding of their own frames of reference, the potential bias in these frames, and their impact on expectations for and relationships with students, students’ families, and the school communities…” https://www.revisor.mn.gov/rules/8710.0310/

We are working from the perspective of libraries and library staff, so we are interested not only in the work of building our own skills, but also in providing information to members of our community. So today we are going to browse through these competencies and some ideas and resources. These will be useful to all of us, as well as useful to pass on to your community members.

On our show notes page will be links to all the books and resources that we discuss today. You can get more information, and book descriptions by following these links.

FIRST:

Our first cultural competency is racial, cultural, and socioeconomic groups. This includes a huge group of different people we can explore in all sorts of different ways.

The American Psychological Association has this to say: “Socioeconomic status (SES) encompasses not just income but also educational attainment, financial security, and subjective perceptions of social status and social class. Socioeconomic status can encompass quality of life attributes as well as the opportunities and privileges afforded to people within society…Thus, SES is relevant to all realms of behavioral and social science, including research, practice, education and advocacy.”

A few nonfiction adult books you might read and share:

And a few fiction books you can read and add to a school library:

Race and ethnicity are complex issues, and have been politicized and made more complex with upheaval in society. But defining race and ethnicity can be a struggle. The census has recognized five categories of race:

  • Alaska Native
  • Asian American
  • Black or African American
  • Native American
  • Native Hawaiian, and Other Pacific Islander
  • White American

The Supreme Court has held that race is not limited to these five, but can include all ethnicities, so would extend to Hispanic or Latino, Jewish, Arab, Italian, Hungarian, Laotian, Zulu, and more. The ideas of race, ethnicity and culture can all be very intertwined.

As this issue comes more to the forefront of discussions we all have across the country, it is easier than ever to find articles, podcasts, webinars, and of course a lot of books. Take this opportunity to look widely around, and to spend time working to understand issues faced by all kinds of people – people you know, see, and work with every day as well as people who are not visible in your community. 

A greater understanding of different issues facing different people will always be helpful in any library work. As a profession that shares the best information with people, we have a role to play in helping people to become aware and anti-racist. “According to OverDrive, a digital reading platform for libraries and schools worldwide, books by Black authors increased by 200% since the end of March through September. Additionally, titles on anti-racism spiked by 297% from the end of May to the end of June (in the wake of the killing of George Floyd).” This is our responsibility.

Here are a few books for adult readers:

Here are a few fiction books for young readers that you can read and also add to a school library:

Second

The second cultural competency identified in MN state statutes is American Indian and Alaskan native students. This is another huge, very diverse grouping of people, with all kinds of different backgrounds and experiences. We are looking at this group as one group, just as an introduction. But it would be valuable for your library to look around at some specific tribes near you, and find material to connect your library with their culture.

One easy tool you can use, as well as putting it up on your website, is the website Native Land.You type in an address, and you can see the tribes who have lived on your land. Their website says “We strive to map Indigenous territories, treaties, and languages across the world in a way that goes beyond colonial ways of thinking in order to better represent how Indigenous people want to see themselves.”

You might try a selection of these books for adults:

We have a selection of books for young readers, from the American Indians in Children’s Literature website:

THIRD

The third classification of cultural competencies defined in the statue for training is religion. This is always a tricky subject to discuss, as people’s deeply held beliefs are important to them and they may feel a need to defend their beliefs in discussion before reaching out to other ideas. But of course, in a library we would not ask people to change their beliefs; we are here to provide more information and ideas to build understanding and empathy. Learning more about unfamiliar ideas and beliefs may be interesting to you on a personal level, and will let you be ready to serve the needs of your community more effectively.

Here are a few books for adult readers looking at information about religions:

And we have some books for young readers, to read yourself and to add to a school bookshelf:

FOURTH

The fourth cultural competency to cover is systemic racism. The Aspen Institute defines this as: “A system in which public policies, institutional practices, cultural representations, and other norms work in various, often reinforcing ways to perpetuate racial group inequity. It identifies dimensions of our history and culture that have allowed privileges associated with “whiteness” and disadvantages associated with “color” to endure and adapt over time. Structural racism is not something that a few people or institutions choose to practice. Instead it has been a feature of the social, economic and political systems in which we all exist.”

Here are a few books for adults:

And here are a few books you can read with kids or add to the shelves in your library:

FIFTH

The fifth cultural competency identified as important for educators is gender identity, including transgender students. Many people do not have to think about their gender identity, so it is good to be reminded that this is not the case for everyone. As library people, we always have a responsibility to help community members to find the best information. And in this case, it can include helping with some definitions. These come from the Human Rights Campaign website.

“Gender identity

One’s innermost concept of self as male, female, a blend of both or neither – how individuals perceive themselves and what they call themselves. One’s gender identity can be the same or different from their sex assigned at birth.

“Gender expression

External appearance of one’s gender identity, usually expressed through behavior, clothing, haircut or voice, and which may or may not conform to socially defined behaviors and characteristics typically associated with being either masculine or feminine.

“Transgender

An umbrella term for people whose gender identity and/or expression is different from cultural expectations based on the sex they were assigned at birth. Being transgender does not imply any specific sexual orientation. Therefore, transgender people may identify as straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, etc.”

We found some books for adults that you might read and collect:

Here are some books for younger readers you might read and add to your collection:

Sixth

The sixth cultural competency we will discuss is sexual orientation. This is different from our prior competency, which was internally focused on how a person sees themselves. This looks at the way people want to interact with others. The Human Rights Campaign defines sexual orientation as “An inherent or immutable enduring emotional, romantic or sexual attraction to other people.” We have talked about this several times in our podcasts, particularly in YA books.

We have some books for adults that you may choose:

There are an increasing number of books about LGBTQIA lives across books for young people of all ages. Here are a few books for younger readers:

Seventh

The seventh cultural competency to work on skill building is language diversity. Learning languages can be not only a useful skill, allowing us to community with members of our community; but it has important health benefits. Speaking and reading more than one language helps to build more neural connections, which may help to stave off dementia and make your thinking more flexible and fluid. It would be valuable for everyone who works in a library to pick up at least a few words in other languages.

It is never too late to work on learning new languages! There are a lot of free resources available to help. One good one is the free app DuoLingo. Give it a try, and explore all the possibilities of language learning!

There are several book available for adults to enjoy:

And for kids, and to add to your library shelves, here are a few you can consider. You can also find books available in English as well as another language, to help people of any age to hone their language skills:

Eighth 

  • Our eighth and final cultural competency we are exploring today is working with individuals with disabilities and mental health concerns. This is an area that requires not only good books for you to read and to share, but also a careful examination of the physical offerings in your library. Is your website accessible to people with disabilities? How about your book return area? Can people even make it inside? Can they reach the books? If there are not people in your library with physical and mental challenges, your library needs to be adjusted because these people are in the community you are supposed to serve.

Here are some books for adults you might consider:

There are a lot of good books for kids and young adults in this area; here are a few:

Books Read

And now we have one of our favorite parts of each episode: sharing books we have been reading! Links to each book will be on our show notes page, with a link to Amazon.com. If you buy a nice book – or anything else – Amazon will give us a small percent of their profits. Thanks in advance!!

Conclusion

Thanks to you for joining us this week! It’s always better when you are here with us!

Here are a few quick takeaways from today’s discussion: the eight competencies we briefly discussed and shared books with you  

  1. racial, cultural, and socioeconomic groups
  2. American Indian and Alaskan native students
  3. Religion
  4. systemic racism
  5. gender identity, including transgender students
  6. sexual orientation
  7. language diversity
  8. individuals with disabilities and mental health concerns

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Check back in with us next week for another library skill!