Educating the Next Generation of Emergency Management and Homeland Security Professionals: Promoting Racial and Ethnic Understanding via Cultural Competence and Critical Race Theory

Abstract

In this article, Critical Race Theory (CRT) is employed as a pedagogical tool to help students understand themselves as well as the standards and virtues used in American society to judge others. A solid understanding of race, culture, and ethnicity and how these factors intersect is critical in the fields of emergency management, security studies and homeland security. Such an understanding will afford educators, students, and practitioners the opportunity to view and value the multiple strengths culture and racial background bring to the continued development of communities. In this article, we discuss how an understanding of ethnicity, culture, and race in recognizing one's own raciality can enhance a practitioner's education and experiences in the field prior to graduation, in one's career after graduation as well as for life-long learning. Specifically, the use of CRT in academic, training, and community-based settings via broad curricular modules, along with a Social Justice Ally (SJA) framework for purposeful action, will lead to a greater understanding of one's role in the community as an emergency manager, homeland security, or security professional. This article proposes techniques for addressing cultural diversity on the microlevel in the classroom or during training exercises. Arguably, programs and training exercises that couple CRT and a SJA perspective, will graduate/certify students with a more complete set of skills in order to enhance their effectiveness as policy makers, emergency management community-based practitioners, and homeland security and security professionals of the next generation.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical race theory, emergency management training, homeland security training, race, ethnicity

Notes

¹Moreover, as Huggins (2012) points out, multicultural education in preparing social work professionals has been an embedded pedagogical approach since its inception of the discipline. The social work curriculum allows for inspecting the values, beliefs, languages, customs, and behaviors of different ethnic groups. While multiculturalism addresses these contrasting cultural paradigms, it does not elucidate the inconsistencies in economic prosperity, educational achievements, and incarceration rates between minorities and the dominant culture (Huggins, 2012). Nor does multiculturalism instruct the student in understanding the underlying governmental, educational, and legal policies that manifest the sociocultural, economic and political inequalities that exist. Hence, multicultural education alone does not inform students and practitioners in the social services to their abilities for dismantling the institutional and structural racism that perpetuates the disparities within and among groups in a society.

²Cultural Competence alludes to our ability to function within a body of people that have a shared sense for communicating and living with one another based on common values, language, and customs. The individual has the ability to problem solve and navigate the nuances of a particular “neighborhood” that includes beliefs and norms that cultivates identity formation and everyday experiences. In that respect we develop the competencies within the context of the community that we are immersed in to actualize personal and collective life goals. Cultural Competency then means having the capacity to understand and competently navigate the systems that define another culture. To be multiculturally competent, one must be able to traverse their own self-awareness to realize the experiences of people and communities that are different from himself/herself to be fluent in more than one culture. This would entail being able to communicate cross-culturally and have a sense of empathy, a deeper understanding and respect for and ability to work with others as an ally despite the contrasting ethnic, religious, political, gender, historical, and personal constructs that define how a person views and experiences the world (Kivel, 2007).

³The researchers interviewed five students (group 1) in a sociology course about race relations. Group 2 consisted of six students in a large introductory education course (For more information and methods of the study, see Reason et al., 2005).

⁴http://igr.umich.edu/article/community-action-social-change-minor

⁵http://www.lehigh.edu/∼inmca/ambassadors.shtml