Orientation)
Cultural humility represents a learned ability to suspend
one’s own personal biases, assumptions, beliefs,
and suppositions about another targeted person or group
in deference to learning, knowing, understanding, appreciating,
and valuing persons and communities whose culture,
race, ethnicity, gender, social class, sexual identity,
religion, ability status, and other markers of identity are
different than one’s own (Gallardo, 2014). Cultural
humility involves surrendering to a curiosity and willingness
to learn about and value the lived experiences of
targeted others, including the multiple systemic disparities
(e.g., social, political, social class, educational,
healthcare) within which their lives have been shaped.
Cultural humility necessitates an openness to recognizing
the innate strengths, assets, tenacity, efficacy, and opportunities
that characteristically define the upbringing of
the targeted other. As a consequence of appreciating the
lived experiences of targeted others, cultural humility
entails integrating said learning into revised ways of
thinking and feeling about and behaving toward the targeted
individual or group. Cultural humility represents a
life-long practice of self-examination relative to the environmental
and systemic forces that have shaped how a
person has come to see himself/herself in the world
(Tervalon & Murray-Garcia, 1998). As a result of self-examination
cultural humility evidences an openness to
making necessary corrective adjustments to intrapersonal
appraisals and to approaching and responding to interpersonal
and group interactions (Hook, Davis, Owen,
Worthington, & Utsey, 2013). Sport and exercise psychology
have gradually expanded their work (e.g., scholarship,
applied practice, and consultation) with diverse
cultural, ethnic, and racial communities. The emergence
of cultural sport psychology (Schinke & Hanrahan,
2009; Schinke, McGannon, & Smith, 2012) and the integration
of cultural humility as a key component of this
developing field represents an encouraging byproduct of
this intentional expansion.
