The Importance of Cultural Responsiveness

Years ago, it was possible for a person to be surrounded by people who looked like them and are from the same culture. In college and in your future job, you will have an opportunity to interact with many different people. In order to create a positive environment that promotes diversity, we all must improve our cultural responsiveness.

According to the National Center for Culturally Responsive Educational Systems (NCCREST), “cultural responsiveness is the ability to learn from and relate respectfully with people of your own culture as well as those from other cultures.”) To learn more about your personal cultural competency, click here to take a self-assessment. The National Center for Cultural Competence suggests that people can increase their cultural competence by engaging in the following categories.

Awareness:
We first need to examine our values and beliefs about diversity to recognize any unconscious biases that can create barriers for connecting with other people. Based on research by Dr. Banaji and Dr. Greenwald, these blind spots come from a lifetime of exposure to cultural and societal attitudes about gender, race, ethnicity, religion, social class, sexuality, disability status, and nationality. To learn more about your implicit biases, consider taking the Implicit Association Test. This test measures attitudes and beliefs that people may be unwilling or unable to report. It is particularly useful for identifying implicit attitudes that you did not know about yourself. For more information about the IAT, click here.

Knowledge:
To truly appreciate diversity, we need to learn more about each other. Explore the experiences of other people and search out different perspectives than your own. Try reading and watching documentaries about diverse populations. Put yourself in situations where you will meet people different from you. When learning about history, ask yourself “whose voice is missing”? As you interact with the world around you, does everyone have the same human rights? Are certain groups over or underrepresented?

Take Action:
The CEO Act!on for Diversity & Inclusion is the largest business driven commitment to advance diversity and inclusion. More than 700 CEOS have formed a coalition and pledged to take action to cultivate environments where diverse experiences and perspectives and welcomed and employees feel comfortable and encouraged to discuss diversity and inclusion. Their pledge is a great example of how to take action in our own lives.

act on pledge

Source: CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion

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