4.4 The Student Experience: When You Represent a Vulnerable Population
4.4 The Student Experience: When You Represent a Vulnerable Population
Human Services textbooks often focus on the diversity represented by clients but neglect the fact that students themselves represent a diversity of experiences and outlooks. This chapter has looked at providing culturally appropriate services to clients, but what about when you as the student also represent a vulnerable population? As an intern, you may be subjected to the biases and assumptions from colleagues and/or administrators at your agency. You may be the only person of color at the agency, or represent a religious minority. It may be that you are one of few male employees at an agency, or it may simply be that you are younger than any of your colleagues.
Avoiding Tokenism
Jameela was excited to secure an internship with an agency that helped immigrants get housed, connect with social services, and complete necessary immigration paperwork. The agency had just begun a program to assist Afghan refugees and had asked Jameela to help. Jameela had been born in the US but was of Afghan heritage. She was excited to learn more and to contribute.
During planning meetings, other agency workers began to ask Jameela for her opinions on the program. At first, Jameela was honored to be included, but she quickly realized that her colleagues (mostly White) were treating her like an expert on Afghan culture. She was asked what types of foods they should provide, and what rituals they should observe with the clients. She was asked about Afghan customs, and for information on the Islamic faith. Jameela identified as American and Christian, and she was disappointed that her coworkers had made assumptions about her identity.
Jameela’s experience reflects a concept called tokenism, where a single individual is seen as representing an entire group. The term tokenism has been in discussion since the 1950s. Martin Luther King Jr. described the minimal efforts at integration as relying on tokenism as an adequate response to real attempts at integration. Malcolm X described the same view:
“Tokenism is hypocrisy. One little student in the University of Mississippi, that’s hypocrisy. A handful of students in Little Rock, Arkansas, is hypocrisy. A couple of students going to school in Georgia is hypocrisy. Integration in America is hypocrisy in the rawest form. And the whole world can see it. Why the whole world can see that this is nothing but hypocrisy.” (X, 1963)
Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter’s 1977 book Men and Women of the Corporation explored gender tokenism in the workplace. She stated that representatives of token groups had more visibility and thus pressure to perform. They also experienced discrimination based on stereotypes and assumptions about the group to which they were ascribed.
It can be especially challenging and demoralizing to have this experience as an intern. You may feel particularly powerless to address tokenism, but be aware that this is a well-kno