[Music] nameste perhaps you're wondering why i just greeted you with a bow a curtsy and a namaste welcome as many are aware in other countries cultures and social engagements these gestures would be accepted and even expected when meeting someone were ending an encounter the bow used in East Asian countries such as China Japan and Thailand is often commonly used at the beginning and ending of a martial arts competition the curtsy would be the appropriate gesture if a lady had the opportunity to meet the Queen of England and also for dancers to say thank you to
an audience at the end of their performance the namaste welcome is used in the Hindu culture and religion and also at the end of a common yoga class and it literally translates to the divine in me vows to the divine in you these gestures highlight the concept of humility literally being able to bow to the culture persona and the position of someone else yet for many of us Americans that is we would struggle with the concept of humbling ourselves we would not go as far as to say I'm superior but we definitely don't believe that
we're less than so it begs the question that if I humble myself in my by default saying that I'm less than or giving power to someone else allow me to offer you a counter perspective this evening let's think about the physical posture of being able to bow and curtsey it actually takes physical strength in one's back and knees to be able to do such even for me I would have to have a good weather day not including today where the twins good old Arthur and writers don't bother me to be able to do a proper
curtsy thus to yield to the concept of cultural humility means that you are so self aware that it's okay to have the introduction of another culture someone else's viewpoint because you're gonna be grounded in who you are in retrospect I find that I had one of my greatest humility experiences during my senior year of high school the spring of 1992 I know I don't look that old anyway so I was attending at the Indiana Academy for mathematics science and humanities this is a special boarding school for academically gifted juniors and seniors and due to our
advanced curriculum and our college prep focus we were offered foreign language courses not typical to high schools at that time such as Russian German Japanese and Chinese me being Who I am I figured if a quarter of the world will speak in Chinese I need it to be in the majority so after nearly two years and learning almost 300 plus characters our teacher decided that we needed to have a true cultural immersion experience and by the way that's enough characters to 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 our rural Indiana location Chinatown in Chicago there you go my classmates and I were extremely excited the opportunity to use Mandarin for the first time with native speakers so we spent most of the day walking around town buying souvenirs of course and taking in the sights finally we decided to have a little lunch and eat what we thought was pretty authentic China's food we sit down at the restaurant we opened the menu and we're excited we can actually read most of
the characters one by one my class may start to order their meals and the waitress you can tell that she was impressed through her smile and even a slight bow I was the last one to place my order trying to give myself more time to get my words together but I got a very different response after only three or four words the waitress literally takes off running to the back of the restaurant I look at my teacher and I ask her did I say something wrong for those who don't know Chinese is a tonal language
therefore the meaning of a word changes based on one of the four tones she assured me that my Chinese was fine had no idea why the woman ran off just as we were finishing our conversation the waitress comes back with what appears to be the entire kitchen staff and she says to me a Mandarin to speak again and so I finished placing my order I can tell by the huge smiles and even the head nods that that great mystery had been revealed perhaps they were used to white Americans speaking their language but I think I
may have been the first black person they ever saw speak Chinese as a cultural diversity trainer I have learned that this was truly one of my greatest cultural humility experiences I didn't know then what I know now but I have been spending about two years yielding who I was as a black person American and native English speaker to learn and appreciate the culture history and language of China I wanted so desperately to be a part and to be immersed in this wonderful culture and so we have this concept that I realized that was really the
pinnacle moment for me the kitchen staff or the restaurant staff was impressed perhaps even honored that we as Outsiders had learned their language and I was trying so desperately to give it right I wanted to pay honor to the coat the country and the culture and the language that I had become so fond of and so this type of cultural surrender and the increasing multicultural diversity in our society I believe is the foundation that led doctors Melanie turbot loin and Jan Marie Garcia to develop the concept of cultural humility in 1998 these physicians were looking
to develop a concept and a model that would be an extension or go beyond the limitations of cultural competency but yet create a cultural framework that would help them to better serve their patients essentially they realized they're the experts in medicine but not the experts in culture of their patients yet they understood fundamentally that culture weighs heavily in someone's thoughts their beliefs their habits and the choices that they will make for their life you see cultural competency is learned knowledge and also skillset that you need to manage cross-cultural relationships but it actually can have some
shortcomings and cause prejudice because the focus is heavily on what you learn and not necessarily looking at and evaluating your own personal experiences thus cultural humility was created to be a process oriented approach that takes into consideration who you are your experiences how you live the world how you view the world through your own identities let's take me for an example this evening I see the world through my lens of being a black woman who's Christian middle class and heterosexual to name a few as a cultural diversity trainer I've used the concept of cultural competency
for many many years but I see cultural humility as an evolution of that work not to say that cultural competency is bad but just that now we've taken it another step and so what we've done is have that focus on who we are and then also being able to value what others bring to the proverbial table and so let's evaluate these two schools of thought tonight cultural competency 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 you may have someone
say hey I understand mexican-americans in their culture prior to my 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 self evaluate we must look at who we are what we believe and why based on our own experiences and so I had the opportunity a couple years ago to do a follow-up training to an organization I had worked with previously actually right here in Westchester and at these day-long retreats you know we normally have food nice little potluck everybody brings
something and so there was a gentleman who brought a dish which I fell in love with I think I probably had two plates anyway so um and what happened I saw him and I said hey did your wife make that dish that she made the last time y'all already know he said my wife didn't make that I did and I thought oh my goodness how have I slipped into this gender norm I immediately apologized and then I used it as a teachable moment for our training session but this is why it is so important to
critically reflect and constantly self evaluate even for me as a trainer what happened I was so influenced by social norms that I slipped right into one myself even when I know what is culturally inappropriate number two cultural competency says that is concerned with book and learned knowledge and that that has power which would mean that my certification as a diversity trainer takes precedence over my entire life experience of 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 multi-dimensional being who brings to the table their experiences their culture and their heritage and this is demonstrated in the formation of a pearl so you have a little granule of sand who loses his way from his friends ends up slipping into it Easter it's all of a sudden afraid and scared this is a big foreign place and I don't know where my people are the oyster is saying hey what's going on your and they're moving around and I'm starting to itch so it does what it I call the shimmy shake
and it starts to release this neck tar this has two purposes one it coats that granular sand providing a tight covering making it feel a little bit more secure in this big foreign place but it also stops the irritation because it no longer feels the little granule of sand moving around and so essentially what happens is the oyster sandé they learn how to coexist they share their power and they create something of beauty a pearl finally cultural competency is concerned with self-advocacy where we might have a woman for instance who uses her personal connections to
help elevate her career instead of using the resources before her to help all of the women in her organization to collectively break the glass ceiling cultural humility then says no we want you to aspire to have partnerships so that you can learn about not only a group of people but to be able to advocate for them as well realizing that we do not live in this diverse world alone and that we need everybody to be there and so we saw this recently in the last couple of months with all of the instances of devastation we
had the hurricanes that plagued Houston Miami the Caribbean in Puerto Rico leaving thousands in waist-deep waters no power completely destroyed homes in all of their material possessions then you'll remember the hundreds of people running for their lives when all they were trying to do was enjoy a concert in Las Vegas or the complete 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 the tears and the overwhelming sense of emotion even as we
recall these events but one thing that I want you to see and remember was all the images on television and in the social media of people doing whatever it took to save someone else in those moments their race ethnicity socioeconomic status political affiliation and religion did not matter it was the Humana of man that shined bright and cost someone to risk their life for someone else there's even an image that stands very close in my mind that I love and it's of an older white woman's face being held in the hands of a black woman
and I would like to think that she's saying to her we will get through this together and so you see I offer you the opportunity to take the road to cultural humility to position yourself and humble yourself so that you can learn best from others as you do this I hope that you will do the three things that we talked about that you will one consider that learning is a lifelong process take your seat in that classroom be willing to learn from one another while sharing of yourself I hope that you will do whatever is
possible in in your power to shift and challenge those power imbalances in a way that allows us to live communally together in our diverse society and then finally to be able to advocate and partner with others in a way that we charge our systems and institutions to level the playing field so that equity becomes the norm and humanity is our most important identity namaste [Applause] [Music] you
