Culture…what are we talking about here?

Intercultural—people from diverse cultures interacting, one-on-one or in groups, face-to-face or indirectly

Cultural diversity—on the surface, just what it implies. But a word of caution. We are not referring to the diversity of races, ethnic groups, nations, or languages.

A word, then, about what culture is and what it isn’t…

Culture—shared ways of understanding most everything…a sort of shared code. It’s social glue for any cohesive group, and it’s essential to the human experience. Without culture we couldn’t make sense of each other’s behavior. By far, most of culture is unconscious. The part we see or hear or recognize as someone else’s culture (like language, food, music, how to conduct business, or social and political customs) is built on this unconscious part.

Cultural competence—the ability to be effective with people from cultures other than your own. Most of cultural competence has to do with that unconscious, invisible part of culture.

It follows that our cultural competence training isn’t language training, or how-to-not-be-prejudiced or a culture-by-culture list of do’s and don’ts. (But those are all valuable, though.)

If that’s not what we do, then what DO we do?