Exploring the Difference between Cultural Humility and Cultural Competence
As the world moves towards globalization and cultural diversity, understanding the difference between cultural humility and cultural competence is critical. Both cultural humility and cultural competence are essential for individuals and organizations to effectively engage with diverse communities.
What is Cultural Competence?
Cultural competence is the ability to understand, respect, and effectively interact with people from diverse cultures. Culturally competent individuals possess knowledge and skills that enable them to communicate and interact with people from different cultural backgrounds. They can appreciate different cultural practices, attitudes, beliefs, and values and use that knowledge to create effective cross-cultural interactions.
Cultural competence involves acquiring knowledge of different cultures, behaviors, and languages, which often results from training or extensive experience. It is paramount when delivering services to individuals from different cultures, such as mental health services, education, and healthcare.
What is Cultural Humility?
Cultural humility is a mindset and approach that involves acknowledging and respecting individual cultural differences, as well as recognizing that we all have our own biases and prejudices. Cultural humility is a process of self-reflection and self-awareness, seeking to understand and respect diverse cultures and worldviews.
Unlike cultural competence, cultural humility goes beyond knowledge and skills and focuses on values and attitudes. It emphasizes the importance of actively listening, learning, and being open-minded about cultural differences. It involves admitting that we don’t know everything about a culture despite having the knowledge or experience about it.
The Differences between Cultural Humility and Cultural Competence
Cultural competence emphasizes skills and knowledge, while cultural humility emphasizes values and attitudes. Cultural competence is an external approach, while cultural humility is an internal approach. Cultural competence is more focused on getting things right while cultural humility is more focused on being present and open to what we can learn from others.
Cultural humility acknowledges power imbalances that exist between different groups (e.g., race, gender, sexual orientation, or socioeconomic status) and works to promote mutual respect. Cultural competence is sometimes criticized for being too static and doesn’t account for power imbalances that affect people’s experiences and perceptions of other cultures.
While cultural competence is essential, it is not enough for effective cross-cultural interactions. Cultural humility involves a deep appreciation for diversity, an open and curious attitude, and a willingness to learn and recognize gaps in one’s understanding and interactions with other cultures.
Examples of Cultural Competence and Cultural Humility
A culturally competent mental health professional may recognize and be knowledgeable about the different cultural values and beliefs around mental health in a community. They may integrate these values and beliefs to offer culturally sensitive treatment, language interpretation, or culturally safe spaces for their clients.
A culturally humble media journalist covering an event in another country may acknowledge that they don’t understand the culture fully and seek to learn from locals about their customs and traditions. They may recognize their own biases and prejudices and seek to challenge them actively.
Conclusion
Cultural competence and cultural humility are both crucial for effective cross-cultural interactions. While cultural competence emphasizes knowledge and skills, cultural humility emphasizes values and attitudes. Cultural humility involves deeper self-reflection, an openness to learning, and a willingness to challenge one’s biases and prejudices. Understanding the difference between cultural humility and cultural competence can lead to better relationships and interactions with diverse communities and individuals.
