Cultural Humility | Juliana Mosley, Ph.D. | TEDxWestChester

Nameste, you may be wondering why I greeted you with a bow, bow and welcome with Namaste, as many know that in other cultures and social engagements in other countries, these gestures would be accepted and even expected when meeting someone. and a meeting will end. East Asian countries such as China, Japan and Thailand are commonly used at the beginning and end of a martial arts competition. Bowing would be the appropriate gesture if a lady had the opportunity to meet the Queen of England and also for the dancers to thank her. To an audience at the end of their performance, the welcome namaste is used in Hindu culture and religion and also at the end of a common yoga class and literally translates as the divine in me, wishes to the divine in you, these gestures highlight the concept. of

humility

, literally being able to bow to another person's

cultural

personality and position, but for many of us Americans, we would struggle with the concept of humbling ourselves, we wouldn't go so far as to say I'm superior, but definitely I don't think we are less than that, the question arises that if I humiliate myself by defaulting to being less than or giving power to another person, let me offer you a contrary perspective tonight, let's think about the physical posture of being able to bow and bow. bow, it actually takes physical strength in the back and knees to be able to do that, even for me, I would have to have a day with good weather, not including today, where the twins, good old Arthur and the writers, no No No it bothers me to be able to bow properly, so giving in to the concept of

cultural

humility

means that you are so aware that it is okay to introduce another culture and another person's point of view because you will be based on who. you are in retrospect.

I found that I had one of my greatest humbling experiences during my senior year of high school in the spring of 1992. I know I don't look that old anyway, so I attended the Indiana Academy of Mathematics, Sciences and Humanities. is a special boarding school for academically talented juniors and seniors, and because of our advanced curriculum and focus on college preparation, we were offered foreign language courses that were not typical for high schools at the time, such as Russian, German, Japanese and Chinese. If a quarter of the world speaks Chinese, I need that to be the majority, so after almost two years and learning over 300 characters, our teacher decided we needed to have a true cultural immersion experience, and by the way, that's enough characters for actually be conversational, so I know what you're thinking: we went to China, no school didn't have that kind of money, but she gave us the next best opportunity to go to our rural location in Indiana, Chinatown in Chicago, there you go, My classmates and I were extremely excited about the opportunity to use Mandarin for the first time with native speakers, so we spent most of the day walking around the city, shopping for souvenirs of course, and enjoying the sights, we finally decided to have lunch a bit and eat what we thought was pretty authentic Chinese food. we sit in the restaurant, we open the menu and we are excited, we can read most of the characters one by one, my class can start ordering their meals and the waitress can tell that she was impressed by her smile and even slight bow I was the last in placing my order trying to give me more time to gather my words but I got a very different response after only three or four words the waitress literally runs off to the back of the restaurant.

I look at my teacher and I asking her if I said something wrong for those who don't know that Chinese is a tonal language, therefore the meaning of a word changes depending on one of the four tones. She assured me that my Chinese was fine. She had no idea why. The woman ran out just as we were finishing our conversation, the waitress returns with what seems to be the entire kitchen staff and tells me some Mandarin to speak again and just like that I finished placing my order, I can see it by the huge smiles and even The head nods that that great mystery had been revealed, maybe they were used to white Americans speaking their language, but I think I may have been the first black person they saw speak Chinese as a cultural diversity trainer.

I have learned that this was truly one of my greatest experiences of cultural humility. I didn't know then what I know now, but I have spent approximately two years discovering who I was as a black, American, and native English-speaking person, to learn and appreciate the culture, history, and language of China that I so desired. being a part and being immersed in this wonderful culture and so we have this concept which I realized was really the highlight for me, the kitchen staff or the restaurant staff were impressed, maybe even honored that we , as Outsiders, we would have learned their language and I was trying so desperately to do the right thing that I wanted to honor the country, the culture and the language that I loved so much and that's why I think this kind of cultural surrender and the growing multicultural diversity in our society is the foundation that led doctors Melanie turbot and Jan Marie García to develop the concept of cultural humility in 1998, these doctors sought to develop a concept and a model that was an extension or went beyond the limitations of cultural competence but They essentially realized that they are the experts in medicine but not the experts in their patients' culture, but they fundamentally understood that culture weighs heavily on patients' thoughts. someone, their beliefs, their habits and the choices they will make.

For your life, you see that cultural competence is learned knowledge and also a set of skills that you need to handle intercultural relationships, but in reality it can have some shortcomings and cause bias because the focus is largely on what you learn and not necessarily on looking at and evaluating your own personal experiences, therefore, cultural humility was created to be a process-oriented approach that takes into consideration who you are, your experiences, how you experience the world, how you see the world through your own identities, let's take me as an example tonight. I see the world through my lens of being a black, middle-class, heterosexual Christian woman, to name a few, as a cultural diversity trainer.

I have used the concept of cultural competence for many years, but I see cultural humility as an evolution of that work, if not that. Cultural competence is bad, but now we've taken it a step further and what we've done is focus on who we are and then also be able to value what others bring to the proverbial table, so let's evaluate these two. Tonight's schools of thought cultural competence suggests that learning is finite, which means I can take a course, I can take a workshop and learn about a group of people, so it's possible for someone to say, "Hey, I understand." to Mexican Americans in their culture before teaching in Houston Texas I took a cultural diversity workshop where, as cultural humility says that learning is infinite, we are lifelong learners who must critically evaluate ourselves, we must look at who we are, what we believe and why based on our own experiences, so I had the opportunity a couple of years ago to do follow-up training for an organization that I had worked with previously, actually here in Westchester and on these one-day retreats, You know, we usually have food, a little potluck, everyone brings something, so there was one gentleman who brought a dish that I fell in love with, I think I probably ate two dishes anyway, so what happened?

I saw him and said, hey, did your wife make that dish she made last time? Everyone already knows, she said not my wife. I didn't do it and think, "My God, how did I fall into this gender norm?" I immediately apologized and then used it as a teachable moment for our training session, but that's why it's so important to critically reflect and constantly reflect. evaluate even for me as a trainer what happened. I was so influenced by social norms that I myself fell into one even when I know what is culturally inappropriate. Cultural competency number two says that it has to do with books and learned knowledge and that has power that would mean that my certification as a diversity trainer takes priority over all my life experience working with diverse cultures.

Cultural humility, on the other hand, seeks to fix and challenge those power imbalances, recognizing yes who you are, but that we have to see everyone as a complex. multidimensional being that brings to the table its experiences its culture and its heritage and this is demonstrated in the formation of a pearl so you have a small granule of sand that is lost from its friends ends up slipping into it Easter is all about a fear and a fear sudden, this is a big strange place and I don't know where my people are, the oyster says, hey, what's going on and they're moving and I'm starting to bite, so it does what I call.

The movement shakes and begins to release the tar from the neck. This serves two purposes: it coats the granular sand providing a tight covering that makes you feel a little safer in this big strange place, but it also stops the irritation because you no longer feel the little granule of sand moving around and essentially what happens. is the sandé oyster, they learn to coexist, share their power and create something of beauty, a pearl, finally, cultural competence is about self-defense, where we could have a woman, for example, who uses her personal connections to help elevate your career instead of using the resources before you to help all the women in your organization collectively break the glass ceiling of cultural humility and then say no, we want you to aspire to have partnerships so you can learn about not just a group of people, but also being able to defend them and realize that we do not live alone in this diverse world and that we need everyone to be there, and we saw that recently in the last few months with all the cases of devastation that we had. hurricanes that hit Houston Miami the Caribbean in Puerto Rico leaving thousands of people in waist deep waters without electricity homes completely destroyed in all their material possessions then you will remember the hundreds of people running for their lives when all they were trying to do was enjoy a concert in Las Vegas or entire neighborhoods burned down leaving thousands homeless in Northern California and even this week a small Baptist church in Texas a mass shooting leaving 26 dead some of you right now are fighting back tears. and the overwhelming sense of emotion even as we remember these events, but one thing I want you to see and remember were all the images on television and on social media of people doing whatever it took to save another person in those moments, their race and ethnicity.

Socioeconomic status, political affiliation and religion did not matter, it was the Human of the man that shined and it cost someone to risk their life for another person. There is even an image very close to my mind that I love and it is the face of an older white woman. be in the hands of a black woman and I would like to think that she is telling you that together we will get through this and, you see, I am offering you the opportunity to take the path of cultural humility to position yourself and humble yourself so that you can better learn from others while do this.

I hope you do the three things we talked about. May you consider that learning is a lifelong process. Take a seat in that classroom. Be willing to learn from each other as we share. I hope that you yourself will do everything in your power to change and challenge those power imbalances in a way that allows us to live together in community in our diverse society and then ultimately be able to advocate and partner with others in a way that Let us task our systems and institutions with leveling the playing field so that equity becomes the norm and humanity is our most important identity.