What Cultural Competence Means to Me

Introduction

Culture is a system of values of truth, the attitudes, habits, beliefs, norms, behaviors, customs, rituals, styles, artifacts, standards, and goals that people agree with in the process of interaction and creative activities. It is preserved and transformed for subsequent generations. The role of cultural competence is the basis of socialization of individuals: culture is expressed as perceptions of each person to ensure the harmony of individuals into the common society and the labor capacity of individuals to ensure their own lives. People cannot exist if they separate from nature as well as people who are not really human if separated from the cultural environment. R. R. Park said: 'People are not born immediately, but become people in the process of education.

Topic Analysis

Culture is the basis of economic development. All cultural elements (tangible assets and intangible assets) expressed in the economic field are material facilities used for production and business and human labor capacity, which are the basis for economic and social development. A highly developed culture means a highly capable worker. Therefore, building and developing culture is the duty of every individual in the current society.

Culture is the spiritual foundation of society. It is both a goal and a driving force for the socioeconomic development. Cultural values create a solid foundation of society as a spiritual foundation. That foundation creates value as a human being, creating the formidable power of the nation, helping the nation overcome challenges of external factors to show the strong solidarity of the community together and help each other.

Culture with perfecting people becomes more important because it forms the basis of personal character. Individuals receive culture and become social people. People are more and more fully aware of the laws of movement of nature, society and self. From there they always own themselves in every situation. Culture with international integration has always been a top concern for politicians, but also for each individual.

Generally speaking, politicians are just people who stand up to replace the entire nation to say what they want to say and do what the people want to do. Through international social and cultural exchanges, cultures distill each other's cultural identities and apply it to their culture. Understand the cultural competence is the best opportunity to exchange culture and learning from each other to bring the world to higher and higher civilization.

That basically sums up what is culture means. But now we have to talk about what does cultural competence means to me? Cultural competence is all about surrounding people’s culture together and getting to know each person or groups better. It’s about our strong will and actions to build an understanding, respectful and open to the dynamic cultural perspectives environment. It will help to strengthen cultural security and work towards equality in opportunity.

Cultural competency is much more than being knowledgeable about cultural differences and has a deeper meaning than the values, belief of those different from our own. It’s about being thoughtful and considerate the culture that other ethnic represented in the community. Cultural sensitivity is one of the ways to show the level of your respects to your significant others, groups, etc. It applies to all cultures and it will be rude and insensitive if you set your culture standards to other people.

The society filled with many distinct identities and personality so it would be best not to judge by its cover and being empathetic to the people’s culture. Cultural competency is divided into two dimensions which are: internal dimension and external dimension. It can compare to The Iceberg Concept of Culture. On the Surface of the iceberg, it’s a recognizable thing, obvious thing that people will basic awareness will see from another culture, such as the food, traditional clothes, literatures, customs, visual arts, crafts, national dance, language, famous landscapes, music, festivals or celebrations, traditional games.

On the lower level, which is Shallow Culture is the implicit rules and it shows much more than the Surface which contain: non-verbal and verbal communication pattern, personal spaces, tempo of work, tone of voice, facial expressions, notions of adolescence, definition of human’s fundamental, social interaction rate, eye contact, type of medical care, concepts of beauty, ideal of teaching children, concepts of foods, certain practices. The last one is Deep Culture which demonstrates the problem solving roles in relation to age, sex, status, occupation, attitudes to work tolerance, definition of indecency.

There are seven step model places Cultural Competence on a Continuum. There are: Cultural destructiveness, Cultural incapacity, Cultural blindness, Cultural pre – competence, Cultural competence and last but not least, Cultural proficiency. For myself, I would consider myself has reached Cultural Competence Continuum. However, it’s not a natural ability to reach this level, but I evolve over time through the process of attaining culture knowledge. I couldn’t say I’m already Cultural proficiency because I still have a lot to learn and still adapting myself as slowly but stable as I should be. And I also at my state of Cultural Sensitivity which understand the diversity of all cultures.

I believe there are no right or wrong, better or worse to the concept of each culture, each has their own meaning and reason to act and think in their unique way. For the first step is Destructiveness which I never come across. I think Destructiveness happened when those people doesn’t learn anything about it and the person who raise them doesn’t teach them at all. I remember one time when I was 5 years old and my mom asked me what I think of gay couples and about the LGBT community.

I actually freaked myself out at that point and think “Nah ah, I’m not gay, I like girls”. I wasn’t aware at all because I was 5 and I didn’t learn anything about it, and the mind a child is to blend in with other people. But over the time, I grow up with the help of useful articles, watched television and learned through school. I gain more information about the LGBT community and now, I don’t have anything but respect and treat them as normal people in this world and they deserved that.

Due to the fact that I learned about it and I understand the struggles of being scared of speaking out loud their own sexuality, it touched and hurt me inside. For the Cultural Incapacity and Blindness is where people know about a specific culture but refuse to accept and understand due to their natural instinct of defenses. I went through this and I found it hard for me too. In the past, I read a lot of articles talk about black people who is usually represents fraud and thefts. At that time I was in my secondary school and I was in Vietnam and I raised my cautions up.

I would assume every black person out there is bad people and I should stay away from them. When I got to high school, I connected to social media and has many study research about famous black people who are creators, inventors, influencers, leaders, explorers such as Althea Gibson, Alex Haley, Matthew Henson, Mae Jemison, Josephine Baker, Barack Obama Robert Smalls. Not to mention, black celebrity such as Beyonce, Oprah, Whitney Houston. These people impacted my whole life’s definition about black people and reversed my whole concept of culture.

At present, I have many friends who have the ethnicity of black and has no unbiased towards them. Cultural Pre – competence is when they finally realize and accept the diversity of all cultures and getting used to it. Cultural Competence is where I’m at now and I’m trying to maintain and continuing the assessment of sensitivity to other cultures. In my country, I’m Asian so I still not open widely to strangers and I feel fine bout that and I’m not going to change my personality even if someone said “I should open more to people”.

People need to understand the fact I’m not a very easy – going person, I will become more comfortable when I am getting to know them better. The same goes with other people too. My cousin was here last summer and he was still little so when he saw Jewish people and Muslims wear their traditional hats and wore Hijabs, he asked me why they were wearing that, I explained to him because of their customs. But he laughed and said it looked ridiculous. Then I explained to him clearer about it and told him not to say that again. After that, my cousin actually went online and learnt about their culture. I feel proud of what I did because I shared the knowledge to my surroundings and it should be enhanced throughout the world.

Cultural competence is a beautiful thing and people should emphasize it daily. Cultural competence is the core of any standards and it extremely essentials to an individual’s psychological health and physical health.

References

1. WordPress (n.a), Stages and levels of Cultural Competency Development. Retrieved from:https://utahculturalalliance.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/stages_and_levels_of_cultural_competency_development.pdf
2. Rapworkers (n.a), What does it mean to be culturally competent. Retrieved from: http://rapworkers.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/what-does-it-mean-to-be-culturally-competent-1.pdf