22 Important Points of Cultural Awareness: A Curated List for 2022

A 2/22/2022 listicle from Dr. Hakeem Leonard, Assistant Provost for Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity and Associate Professor of Music Therapy at Shenandoah University (SU).

Introduction to the List: I was asked by the Transformative Teaching & Learning folx at my University to create a listicle (an article in a list-based format) of 22 important points about cultural awareness and self-awareness. With us being in Black History Month, some points on the list are specifically rooted from Black lived experiences.

1. Cultural Self-Awareness: The first step of cultural knowledge is not competence of understanding others, but cultural self-awareness while being in relationship with others. Here is an intercultural rubric that includes a continuum of growth in cultural self-awareness.
2. Othering: Growing in cultural self-awareness helps to reduce cultural othering.
3. SU’s IDE Definitions: Shenandoah’s inclusion, diversity, & equity (IDE) definitions were created to support an understanding that disrupts cultural othering while also embracing difference. The keywords descriptions in the IDE definitions use language such as “each of us has a unique, multifaceted identity” and “‘diverse community’ means everyone.” But also see points 10 & 11 below.
4. Togetherness: By normalizing difference, it is implied in these IDE definitions that we all need to explore our cultural self-awareness. To promote a culture of belonging, it’s important for everyone to explore their diversity. This prevents dynamics of ‘us versus them’.
5. Similarities and Differences: Cultural awareness needs to encompass both the similarities and differences of people. For curriculum and pedagogy, the culturally relevant pedagogy concepts of mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors can help frame similarities and differences. This concept was originally used by those teaching children’s literature but has also been expanded and can relate to curriculum content and pedagogy.
6. Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors: Mirrors might be understood as classroom experiences that allow students to see themselves represented, validating their own lived experience. Windows might be experiences that allow, invite, or inspire students to bear witness or relate to the experiences of others. We can also find mirrors in each other’s experiences. Sliding glass doors might be pedagogical practices or classroom community dynamics that hold space for moving in and out of mirrors and windows.
7. Multicultural Framework: Multicultural frameworks help us to understand how we are all different. Let’s normalize conversations about difference and embrace the creative power of existing together in difference. Here is a link about approaches to multicultural education. How might our programs take more of a transformative and holistic approach to embracing difference?
8. The Platinum Rule: One important concept to reframe relationships around difference is the platinum rule by intercultural researcher Milton Bennett. While the golden rule says to value people as you value yourself, the platinum rule says to value people as they value themselves.
9. Curiosity > Knowing: While the golden rule is rooted in ‘knowing’ (i.e. I know how to value myself, so “I know how to value you”), the platinum rule is rooted in bearing witness and ‘curiosity’ (i.e. I don’t know you, so “how do I value you?”).
10. Power and Privilege: Cultural awareness should not only present ideas of multiculturalism but be informed by a lens of power and privilege. Together with understanding that everyone is diverse, this point helps us to have a “both/and” perspective. Please read the next point for more explanation.
11. The Nuance of Both/And: By “both”, this means that all people are diverse, not just the ‘diverse people’; by “and”, this means while everybody is diverse, there are important historic experiences that we need to understand and examine such as race and racism. Shenandoah’s IDE definitions convey this nuance.
12. Historical Exclusion: Some of these important specific experiences other than race are gender, sexuality, dis/ability, and religion, where people have and continue to navigate exclusions.
13. Double Consciousness: W.E.B. DuBois articulated the very influential concept of “double consciousness”, known by most from his 1903 book, ‘The Souls of Black Folk’. Double consciousness has since been used by many historically excluded groups to convey experiences of othering and belonging. This video presents the concept.
14. “I Belong to Myself”: In saying that he wants to be Black and an American, DuBois is essentially saying that ‘I want to belong to myself and belong in the world’, but they won’t let me. In our classrooms, students can have increased stereotype threat when classroom dynamics, content, or pedagogy don’t tend to belonging. We must create learning spaces that not only move beyond exclusion, but also beyond belonging through assimilation and sameness.
15. Intersectionality and Belonging: The Combahee River Collective (CRC), a group of Black feminists and Lesbians, also expressed wanting to belong to themselves while belonging in the world. The term intersectionality was coined at a later time, but the CRC Statement was a precursor to it.
16. Frame of Belonging: The women in the CRC were ‘othered’ not just by the dominant culture, but also by freedom movements of both white feminists and black men, so in this statement they define the terms of their humanity and belonging for themselves. The origin of intersectionality is rooted in Black women naming themselves, so that the terms of their belonging are clear. Intersectionality and other critical frames support us to view power and privilege to expand our frame of belonging. How can our students belong to themselves and belong in our classrooms?
17. Privilege and Belonging: Our cultural self-awareness should include understanding the ways we are privileged in belonging to ourselves where others are not. Relating back to mirrors and windows, certain identities in our society tend to be socialized with more mirrors (i.e. representation, validation, access) and less windows into other people’s experiences beyond stereotypes.
18. Privilege and Stereotypes: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED Talk ‘The Danger of a Single Story’ (short and full video links here) provides a powerful illustration of how stereotypes may exist about others when we have been privileged in belonging to ourselves.
19. A Professor’s Cultural Self-Awareness: As professors, it is important for us to expand our cultural self-awareness in relation to our teaching. Our ability to support belonging is rooted in reflexive action, not just proper techniques. This will allow growth in understanding ourselves as cultural and diverse, as well as view how aspects of our identity may connect to assumptions about belonging, disciplinary knowledge, and learning. This type of awareness when incorporating a lens of power and privilege is sometimes known as positionality.
20. Students’ Lived Experiences: Inclusion happens best when we hold space with people in a way for them to belong to themselves while being in relationship with us or being in our classrooms. So many important inclusive pedagogy approaches (such as for classroom climate) or activities such as values affirmations (link 1 and link 2) are rooted in how students’ existing strengths, values, and experiences shape the classroom environment.
21. Relational Work: According to relational-cultural theory, cultural self-awareness is not ego-centric and needs to be understood beyond individualism. It grows most effectively while people are in relationship to cultural difference and holding space for others.
22. Message in the Music: I’d like to conclude by reflecting again on the platinum rule but leaving a musical aesthetic for you to remember it. Just for a moment, you’re enrolled as a student in my Critical Consciousness course. In the spirit of Black History month, this list not only provided information about cultural self-awareness, but purposely includes elements of Black lived experience in doing so. There is a famous Eartha Kitt interview where the interviewer insinuates to her that love (i.e. also think ‘belonging’) is rooted in compromise (i.e. assimilation). Kitt counters that love is rooted rather in belonging to yourself and choosing to share that with someone. R&B singer Jamila Woods created the song called ‘Eartha’ to convey the meaning of Eartha Kitt in this video. Here is the song- the refrain at the end truly speaks to what Kitt is saying and to the spirit of the platinum rule. It goes, “Who Gonna Share My Love for Me with Me?” Translation- Who is going to support students belonging to themselves while belonging in our classrooms?

Concluding Note About Developmental Process: The journey of cultural growth is a developmental process. Here is a link to the Intercultural Development Continuum. The entire continuum is informative, but I want to highlight ‘minimization’ of difference, where emphasizing sameness is the norm. With my training as an administrator of the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI), I’ve learned that minimization is the area that many people embody in our society due to the normalization of a colorblind approach to relating to others.

When we talk about growing cultural self-awareness, we have to consider that and acknowledge it as a part of our growth journey. On the linked page, if you select the ‘minimization’ area, you’ll read that minimization usually takes one of two forms. (1) Because many people embodying dominant aspects of culture have not had to explore their own culture to understand their belonging, commonalities are often emphasized. On the flip side, (2) many people embodying non-dominant aspects might minimize parts of themselves to assimilate into dominant cultures as a survival mechanism.

Valuing people as human beings in our common humanity is essential, but it’s important to move beyond sameness. To disrupt the othering that occurs by not embracing difference, it’s important for each of us to grow our own cultural self-awareness, understanding it as a developmental process, while being in relationship with cultural others.