The BaCE Program utilizes multiple theoretical and practical frameworks that center racial equity and promote change agency across WSU Vancouver policies, processes and practices. The following frameworks create the foundation of the BaCE Program.
Community Cultural Wealth
A theoretical framework that recognizes an array of knowledges, skills, abilities and contacts possessed and used by Communities of Color to survive and resist racism and other forms of oppression.
Critical Race Theory (CRT)
A theoretical framework and interpretive method that examines the appearance of race and racism across dominant cultural modes of expression. CRT recognizes that people are targets of systemic racism and confronts the beliefs and practices that enable racism to persist while also challenging these systems to seek liberation from systemic racism. CRT has an emphasis on lived experience, change agency and transforming notions of race, racism and power.
Cultural Responsiveness
A framework that involves awareness of one’s own cultural identity and views about difference, and the ability to learn from the varying cultural and community strengths of systemically marginalized individuals and groups.
Equity-Mindedness
A theoretical and practical framework that calls attention to patterns of inequity in outcomes. Equity-minded practitioners are race-conscious and aware of the social and historical context of exclusionary practices across systems and structures. The equity-minded framework also requires practitioners to take personal and institutional responsibility for systemic inequities (e.g., racism) and critically reassess their own practices.
Inclusive Excellence
A theoretical framework that involves embedding systemic practices, processes and policies that center equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging in every aspect of an organization. Inclusive Excellence ensures through structural interventions that historically underrepresented populations achieve desired outcomes at equitable rates.
Intercultural Development Inventory
A theory-based assessment that is a cross-culturally valid, reliable and generalizable measure of intercultural competence along the validated Intercultural Development Continuum (adapted from the theoretical framework, Developmental Model of Sensitivity). The IDI has been demonstrated through research to have high predictive validity to both bottom-line cross-cultural outcomes in organizations and intercultural goal accomplishments in education.
Intersectionality
A theoretical framework that suggests individuals have individual identities that intersect in ways that impact how they are viewed, understood, and treated. Intersectionality examines the interlocking systems of power and oppression based on the interconnections of multiple social identities (e.g., race, gender, class, sexual orientation, etc.) of individuals and groups. Intersectionality operates as both the observance and analysis of power imbalances, and the tool by which those power imbalances could be eliminated altogether.
Multicultural Counseling Competency Framework
A framework that suggests individuals need to understand their current worldview and biases, and to continue to engage in lifelong learning through three critical areas:
- Knowledge – factual information necessary to understand one’s own and other people’s cultural heritage.
- Awareness – sensitivity one may develop about one’s self as a cultural being and others as cultural beings as well. This includes awareness of one’s own cultural heritage; awareness of one’s own biases; and awareness of differences between groups and individuals.
- Skills – the practical and applied abilities that an individual has to be an effective agent of change across cultural contexts.