Cultural competence and cultural humility: A critical reflection on key cultural diversity concepts

Abstract

Summary: Cultural competence has commanded respectable attention since its introduction in cross-cultural discourse. Cultural competence has been presented as a framework capable of promoting culturally sensitive practice and for training cross-cultural workers. However, a smorgasbord of definitions and conceptualizations has generated intense controversy around the construct, with many questioning its relevance or ability to address structural problems. Disenchantment has led to calls to jettison and replace cultural competence with cultural humility. This paper presents a critical reflection on cultural competence and cultural humility, including critiquing the critiques of cultural competence. Findings: A critically reflective analysis suggests that semantic appeal does not necessarily give cultural humility a utilitarian edge over the construct it seeks to supplant. Cultural humility appears not to add more value to social work practice than cultural competence. From a social work perspective, cultural humility is essentially a repackaging of anti-oppressive practice; the fundamental ideas underpinning cultural humility have previously been developed and are foundational principles of anti-oppressive social work practice and education. Critical analysis also reveals that many of the critiques of cultural competence lack analytical rigour. Applications: Deep-level theoretical analyses can lead to innovative perspectives that allow for critical re-examination of extant methodological approaches and promote culturally empowering social work practices in our super-diverse, postmodern world. Rather than dismissing long-standing, potentially effective theoretical and practice tools with happy abandon, adapting them in light of current developments would help move social work to a new, enlightened level of relevance in working with diversity and difference.