Cultural Incapacity Individuals at the next step, cultural incapacity, also promote one culture over another, albeit more implicitly than individuals at the cultural destructiveness stage. Cultural incapacity is manifested in the doctrine of “separate but equal,” with the accompanying segregation and discrimination. In the United States, both cultural incapacity and cultural destructiveness have been made illegal through constitutional, federal, and various state statutes.
The attitude of superiority of one’s culture over the inferior culture stems from the notion of the other being different or distasteful. Often physical (visible) characteristics, especially race, gender, sexual orientation, and age, are used as the basis for cultural destructiveness. Although staff members of a health program are not likely to be at this end of the continuum, health programs might be needed by and planned for individuals with attitudes reflective of cultural destructiveness.