Hispanic Culture Essay

“Culture is a cluster of intangibles and tangible aspects of life passed down from generation to generation.”(cite) More importantly, culture is define as the way of life of a group of people who share these same values and beliefs, therefore, we will check the Hispanic culture. The U.S. Census Bureau defines Hispanic or Latino as mutual inhabitants in the United States who are of Latin American or Spanish origin. Latinos has become a larger proportion of the U.S. population, there is a greater need for social work education to offer culturally sensitive training to social work students (Furman, Bender, Lewis, & Shears, 2006; Iglehart & Becerra, 1995). A Hispanic woman, Marcela Hede voices that, “Being Hispanic is mainly defined by my language

There’s an Igbo and Yoruba proverb that states, “It takes a whole village to raise a child” (cite). This quote explains that a strong support system that is extended to relatives and family friends assists with an individual’s human behavior development and social environment. With African American culture, the relationship with religion entails that we possess a strong spiritual belief. Therefore shows that religion provides a sense of power and purpose greater than self through worship and praise as a substitute for mental and medical assistance in the African-American community. Hispanic cultures beliefs about health and illness The essence of both family and religion contributes similarities within these cultures because it helps with (idek). However, one of the differences of African-American and Hispanic cultures is their verbal and non-verbal communication (). For instance, Hispanics will not make direct eye contact as a sign of respect, uses a medium to high-level gestures, and their intrapersonal distance is less than an arm’s length. Alternatively, African-Americans typically convey themselves directly and lengthy for dialogue, uses frequent and sporadic large gestures, and interpersonal distance extends from appromixely four to twelve feet

As a social worker, the ability to merge cultural competencies with social work methods and theories allows intervention to be customized to meet their client’s need-based which vary upon culture. Since there are a massive amount of different cultures with different traditions, values, and beliefs the social worker needs to obtain the fundamentals of the culture in order to assess and advocate for the ethnic group effectively. The NASW of Ethics clearly values the competence and the Ethical Principle of Social workers practice within the areas of competence and enhances their professional expertise. In addition, “ Cultural competence is a set of congruent behaviors, attitudes, and policies that come together in a system or agency or among professionals and enable the system, agency, or professionals to work effectively in cross-cultural situations” (NASW, 2000b, p. 61). Cultural competency ensures that our primary mission of the social work profession to enhance human well-being and help meet the basic human needs of all people, with particular attention to the needs and empowerment of people who are vulnerable, oppressed, and living in poverty.