Gobble, Gobble: Lessons on Cultural Competency from Lane Stadium

I am a Hokie—sort of. For those of you unfamiliar with public colleges in Virginia, this means I graduated from Virginia Tech. It is difficult to attend VT without becoming a football fan but for the two years I spent working on my graduate degree in Sociology, I never stepped foot into Lane Stadium to watch the guys play ball. I did watch them play from a downtown bar with a beer in my hand from time to time. Apparently this does not “count.” So this year, two years after my graduation, I bought two tickets from my brother-in-law for the Boston College game.

I did not fit in and here’s why:

1. I did not look like a Hokie. I do not own any Hokie or VT clothing. I had on a tan t-shirt that I thought coordinated well with the maroon and orange. Apparently, simply coordinating is not enough. The dress code is simple: maroon or orange (or both). Two of my friends who also attended the game spent a great deal of time trying to convince me to go to the bookstore that day to purchase something—anything with the team colors.

2. I did not act like a Hokie. Sign #1? I jumped and looked around nervously every time the cannon went off. I did not know that a cannon would go off every time the home team scored points of any kind. Our seats were entirely too close to the cannon and the Hokies scored about 600 points that day, it seemed. While I was holding my breath looking around for missles, the people around me (in maroon shirts) were waving their arms around and screaming with delight. It wasn’t until the last quarter that I stopped being scared that we were under some sort of attack when this thing went off. Sign #2? I did not know the appropriate times to gobble like a turkey or really even how to gobble like a turkey. From time to time throughout the game, people would pull their keys out, shake them and gobble like turkeys. Maybe it was when we were on defense and we were trying to distract the other team? Either way, by the time I got my keys out and opened my mouth to attempt it, it was over.

3. I do not know the players or the team’s circumstances. While others around me were yelling out specific commands to specific players, I had no idea the names, numbers, positions, strengths or weaknesses of anyone on the team. They were a group of guys (very big guys) who all had on the same color—that’s about all I could figure out. Folks around me knew who they needed to beat in order to remain in their standing in their conference. They knew which teams would be difficult, which wins would be easy, and the history with each opponent. I was content to know the current score. Thankfully I was only a spectator and not the coach or trainer or even a reporter—I would have been useless in any decision-making capacity because I was culturally incompetent.

Sometimes in our work we mistakenly think of culture as a wide-lens matter: race, gender, social class and country of origin. Certainly there exist large-scale cultural norms—to use more sports analogy, football players all wear helmets and pads, regardless of their team. But the real richness lies in expressions of micro-cultures—things we eat, say, and wear, if and how we seek help, if and when we talk about our illness, and when it’s okay to let an outsider in.

Cultural expressions are like finger prints—a culturally-competent assessment is one that I can read and immediately identify the individual about whom you are writing. Let’s head back to football season for an example: If you lined up football fans in a row wearing team stuff, eating team food, chanting team sayings—you’d know which team they were pulling for fairly easily. You’d never call a lady in a navy blue sweater and orange chinos with pearls on screaming “Wahoo!” a Hokie, would you? (Google “Wahoo” if you do not watch football or do not live in VA).

Cultural competence in a system of care is about knowing your client’s own cultural norms—not just the demographic and diagnostic stuff that earns a place on service plans and assessments. In other words, providing culturally competent services means you provide individualized services, recognizing and building on what is normal for your client in their micro-culture.

Being culturally competent in your practice will take time. It also means you might have to change your sense of ‘normal’ (I certainly would not gobble like a turkey in any other setting) and accept the position of an outsider.

I stuck out like a sore thumb at the VT game. I got harassed and made fun of because I was a picture of cultural incompetence. But I totally made an effort. And you know what? I got invited back for the last home game of the season on one condition: I wear an orange shirt and learn how to gobble. I’m totally game.