ABSTRACT
For many health and mental health providers, professional development training reinforced ignoring this element or giving it little more than lip service in the pursuit of loftier "professional" goals. The skills associated with developing multicultural competence are no less important than the skills developed in professional pursuits. Developing a conscious awareness of diverse cultural perspectives is only one step in the process. Diversity is knowledge about material differences and their historical, sociological, and anthropological bases. Competency is about the knowledge as well as the skills that are needed to deal successfully with human differences-racial, ethnic, and sociocultural. The ethical, social, political, and professional reasons for implementing multicultural training in health care settings are compelling. Two questions currently face professional practice and training programs: (1) How are we implementing the cultural competence imperative? and (2) How proficient are workers in acquiring multicultural competence? This emphasis on culturally competent practice is critical, given that ethnic and racial minorities are expected to constitute over one-third of the population by the end of the twenty-first century (Bureau of the Census, 1990). Moreover, it is expected that, in cities such as New York and Los Angeles, the ethnic/racial compositions wil l outnumber European Americans (i.e., the white majority). These demographic changes, coupled with the underutilization or overutilization by various ethnic/racial minorities of social, health, and mental health services, reinforces the need for effective training of culturally competent practitioners (Cheung, 1991; Vega and Rumbaut, 1991). Recognition that all people are ethnocultural beings is a first and major step in the process of developing cultural competencies. It is easy to forget that our cultural experiences, particularly when they are the same or similar to the dominant group's, are not the only valid expressions of culture that exist. This ethnocentrism can be useful as a unifying and integrating social and psychological tool, but it can, and often does, become a stumbling block to intercultural experiences.
