ABSTRACT

Cultures consist of teams of people who, because they ground their understanding of the world on a common postulate about its nature, share a specific moral vision for a behavioral domain. 'Social justice' makes for wonderfully generous sentiments. Unfortunately, the social work profession, like most people, uses this term in a culturally incomprehensible manner. The woman's current physical characteristics reflect a shift from a culture that left her overweight to a culture that pushed her to take systematic weight training and exercise seriously. Racist culture postulates that skin color signals a fundamental difference in kind between groups. Non-racist culture assumes no fundamental difference in kind between groups whether marked by skin color, gender, height, ethnicity, weight, disability, or some other physical characteristic. Cultural authorities the cast of characters and voices in our minds keep up an unceasing litany of what we should do and heap praise on us when we do so.