I’m tired of people talking about cultural competency. I’m not sure what it even means. It sounds like it is limited to “being good” at one culture, or just good enough to pass.

I prefer to talk about cultural intelligence, or cultural flexibility which are processes to be able to interact effectively with people from any cultural group. Cultural intelligence means you know how to develop relationships with anyone whether you speak their language or not. It means that you can learn to quickly communicate with people from other cultures, and that you are a continuous learner.

Cultural competency has achieved a high level of “cliche-ness” particularly because many people who consider themselves “culturally competent,” know little about diversity.