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Essay / Classism in Social Work - 1390
The empowerment perspective, “support[s] the development of innate abilities and recognizes differences in positive ways, also helps social workers increase each client's ability to learn to use your own abilities. systems in a constructive way” (Empowerment, 2011). This means that it is when social workers use the positivity of being of different races and religions to help the client. For example, it would be recognizing that being black or Muslim is not a bad thing, but that there are many positives. To address the impact of classism, a social worker would “help clients [to] better understand these contradictions [(that the media and the world sends to them about what the attitudes, patterns, and behaviors of certain classes look like)] could help them understand” (Liu, 2005). This means that the social worker would help the client understand the benefits of belonging to a certain class and how to obtain a higher class. Because the media often send contradictions, such as saying “saving is important, but you have to spend to succeed” (Liu, 2005). Finally, an understanding of the social construction of culture will be used in social work practice, as it could help a social worker better understand their clients. This could help them better understand how their customers perceive themselves or how they think society perceives them. What can lead the social worker to understand the lives of their clients and who their clients are, in a better way.