Читать книгу Counseling the Culturally Diverse - Laura Smith L. - Страница 53

As mentioned earlier, each of us is born into a cultural matrix of beliefs, values, rules, and social practices. By virtue of social, cultural, and political distinctions made in our society, perceived group membership exerts a powerful influence over how society views sociodemographic groups and over how its members view themselves and others. Group markers such as race and gender are relatively stable and not very subject to change. Some markers, such as education, socioeconomic status, marital status, and geographic location, are more fluid and changeable. Although ethnicity is fairly stable, some argue that it can also be fluid. Likewise, debate and controversy surround discussions about whether sexual orientation is determined at birth and whether we should be speaking of sexuality or sexualities (Sue et al., 2016). Nevertheless, membership in these groups may result in shared experiences and characteristics. Group identities may serve as powerful reference groups in the formation of worldviews. On the group level of identity, Figure 2.1 reveals that people may belong to more than one cultural group (e.g., an Asian American female with a disability), that some group identities may be more salient than others (e.g., race over religious orientation), and that the salience of cultural group identity may shift from one to the other depending on the situation. For example, a gay man with a disability may find that his disability identity is more salient among the able‐bodied but that his sexual orientation is more salient among those with disabilities. We are drawn to exploring experiences based on our social identities; we often read books, listen to music, watch TV shows or movies by or about people who are similar to us in terms of race, gender, sexual orientation, or any combination thereof.