The Stance of Cultural Humility

Source: Gordon Johnson / Pixabay

In the early 2000s, while I was working as a curriculum designer, cultural competency specialist, trainer, and coach to support HIV/AIDS peer educators (most of whom were themselves living with HIV/AIDS), a colleague decided to share with me the seminal article on cultural humility by Drs. Tervalon and Murray-Garcia (1998). Initially I felt offended. After all, I was the diversity specialist on my team, so I supposedly already knew all that. However, it didn’t take long to recognize this article as one the greatest gifts I’d ever received. It revolutionized how I approach the work I do. It’s not an exaggeration to say it changed my life!

What Is Cultural Humility?

Cultural humility can be defined as a lifelong process of self-reflection, self-critique, and commitment to understanding and respecting different points of view. It involves engaging with others humbly, authentically, and from a place of learning.

Hook and Davis (2019) clarified the intra- and interpersonal aspects of cultural humility. On an intrapersonal level, cultural humility involves an awareness of the limitations of one’s own cultural lens, and how this comes into play when we try to understand or relate to others who view the world through a different cultural lens. On an interpersonal level, it involves being “other-oriented in relation to the other person’s cultural background and experiences, marked by respect and lack of superiority” (p. 72). In other words, when we practice cultural humility, we don’t consider our lens to be better than anyone else’s lens or treat anyone’s experience as less than ours.

Unlike cultural competence, cultural humility does not require mastery of specific beliefs and behaviors that are supposedly associated with certain groups of people. Rather, the hallmark of cultural humility is the development of a respectful partnerships between diverse individuals through a process of inquiry that encourages the exploration of similarities as well as differences, and of goals and capacities (Hunt, 2001). Thus, while cultural competence focuses on cultural content, cultural humility refers to a process for deepening awareness.

In short, cultural humility is a stance—or a way of being in the world and in relationships—that encourages, supports, and helps facilitate the transformational possibilities of others. This concept has produced countless articles, textbooks, courses, and programs, and is becoming more commonplace in health and academic lexicon. Even so, its full potential to facilitate transformation in schools, workplaces, and communities has not yet been tapped.

The Origins of Cultural Humility

The concept of cultural humility grew out of the work that Drs. Tervalon and Murray-Garcia had done in an inpatient pediatric setting. They had witnessed, heard, and experienced the inequities of health care through the power differentials experienced in the patient/caregiver relationships, the institutional consistency, cultural arrogance, and lack of deep self-awareness that contributed to practitioners’ biased treatment of clients. After the brutal beating of Rodney King in 1991, they leveraged the community outcry and responded to that call for action. They called a town hall to bring together constituency groups across the hospital where they worked to discuss racism, bias and discrimination.

They also began what became known as the Multicultural Education Project, which aimed to introduce practitioners and doctors to different identity groups’ perspectives on and experiences of the health-care system. As it turns out, I was part of that project, some years before I read their article. Whether by luck or perhaps by fate, one of my mentors invited me to a panel on biracial clients in health care. While I didn’t serve on the panel, I participated in the listening and planning sessions. It was my first exposure to cultural humility critical self-reflection.

In one of those planning meetings, I shared quite a bit and spoke with great enthusiasm and conviction. I was feeling thrilled with myself, to say the least. Afterwords, however, my mentor pulled me aside. She made a point of telling me I needed to listen more and speak less. She said, in essence, that I didn’t know what I didn’t know, and that I needed to honor the elders and the wisdom of others. I knew she didn’t mean to hurt my feelings, and she had the best intentions; nevertheless, it was an ego-bruising moment. It was a powerful and humbling experience. I came to recognize what a gift it was—one I’ve never forgotten.

This blog is dedicated to these kinds of moments of culturally humble reflection, of living into the practice of cultural humility even when it’s difficult. Through stories, reflections, calls to action, and invitations to engage in culturally humble activities, we can leverage opportunities to transform the many and varied institutions we navigate and the wider world we live in.