Cultural Competence

CULTURAL COMPETENCE
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Cultural Competence
Do stereotypes always hinder cultural competency?
Not always. Stereotypes are over-simplified beliefs, usually of other people, aimed to generalize certain groups of people based on popular or common characteristics or observations (Stereotypes | Gendered Innovations, 2022). In a way, the establishment of stereotypes is what paved the way to us knowing what should not be done or thought with regard to other people. For me, stereotypes, when properly recognized as likely misconceptions that need to be corrected, can help one build cultural competence simply because they have changed their points of views for the better.
Can stereotypes be a beginning step to cultural competency?
Yes. As discussed above, stereotypes are akin to mistakes in the common phrase of “learning from mistakes”; we should learn from it in such a way that we realize that stereotypes are not always true, and that they are not really representative of the full picture. Building cultural competence measures how a person is aware and sensitive to different cultures and their characteristics/practices (Kaihlanen et al., 2019). This means that we must first be aware of ourselves and our biases or stereotyping to start building our o...