What's your culture?

- At the heart of cultural competence is being aware of yourself and your own culture to realize that many of your beliefs and actions are driven by your identity, your background, and your experiences. It requires you asking and answering the question, "who am I, culturally?" Some of us may not think much about our culture, it just is. It is like a fish swimming in water and not realizing it is in water until you take it out. Culture refers to those values, beliefs, and traditions. We are taught by the groups of people we belong to. As part of that, we are taught behaviors, ways to act around these values, beliefs, and traditions. Our culture is a set of unwritten rules that govern how we, as individuals and as a group, act and behave with regard to our beliefs and values. Understanding your culture starts with understanding how your intersecting identities shape who you are. For example, I identify as Black, a baby boomer, heterosexual, cisgender woman raised in Upstate New York. I have two children, I am widowed, and I am an entrepreneur. These identities shape how I see the world, my values, and my beliefs. Consider another person who identifies as Black, but they were raised in Nigeria. While we share the same race, culturally, we likely have very different behavioral norms based on our experience of coming from different continents. Now, I would like you to think about your different identities and their impact on you. How would you answer the prompt, I am. For example, here are some other ways that people may identify. Think about the aspects of your identity that are most important to you. For example, your race, ethnicity, gender, parental status, generation, geographic region, your profession, hobbies and religion, and many more. I've included a worksheet to help you explore your intersecting identities, your own I am. Our values are shaped by our identities. We can share the same values around the world, such as honesty, equality, and integrity, but the interpretation of how we live out these values can be very different, even across cultures in your own country. Let's take a very easy example, eye contact. In the Western world, making direct eye contact is valued. It denotes truthfulness, directness, and confidence. But in many parts of the Eastern world, to show respect, you would not make direct eye contact, especially with someone who is an elder or your boss. It's actually in these differences that we tend to unconsciously make judgments. We see people from different cultures behave in ways we don't understand, so our judgments are rooted in our own sense of right and wrong and our own assumptions. We might minimize differences and inadvertently assume that everyone interprets or should interpret values in the same way that we do. So enhancing cultural competence is all about practice. So this week, I'd like you to practice by intentionally thinking about relationships where you might share a value with someone else, but the interpretation of how you live that value is different. It could be as simple as how you greet someone. Do you kiss, do you shake, or do you bow? We're all happy to see our friends, but how we express that differs culturally. Or it could be as complex as how we discipline our children. We all care about our children, so the value is the same, but the behavior can be different culturally. Becoming culturally competent means that we understand our own culture and something about other cultures and how they are different from ours, and it's a lifelong, ongoing learning journey.