The National Association of Social Workers Code of Ethics and Cultural Competence: What Does Anne Fadiman's The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down Teach Us Today?

This article discusses limitations in the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) Code of Ethics conceptualization of "cultural competence." It uses the case example presented in Anne Fadiman's classic (2012) work, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures, to explore the conventional markers of cultural competence, as taught in contemporary graduate-level social work education curricula, and their implications for socially just practice. Furthermore, it proposes that an expanded commitment to antiracist practice is necessary to deliver care and craft policies that, in the spirit of the NASW Code of Ethics, truly respect the "dignity and worth" of the individual.