Blog Post 3 - Cultural Intelligence

 Hello!

Today's blog is about cultural intelligence and responsiveness.

I think cultural intelligence is basically being culturally aware. To me, it is acknowledging that other people have different experiences, views, and values based on their culture, and being able to respect those differences. 

Cultural responsiveness to me is more about putting cultural intelligence into actions. Some actions include showing curiosity about other cultures in order to learn more, being an activist for a more inclusive society, and inviting a variety of different people to the decision making table.

Showing curiosity about other cultures in order to learn more is very helpful for current and future interactions. The more you learn about another culture, the easier it is to communicate with people from that culture in future interactions. It can also help you understand how unique each person is, which in turn can fight stereotypes.

When you think of being an activist, it is easy to immediately think about people who go to protests. If you are like me, then you might not be the type to go to protests. However, protests and social media are both great ways to bring awareness to an issue, and get people talking. They also help the government see how many people care about an issue. I also think there are many other ways to be an activist. For example, if you see someone being treated unfairly, stand up for them. If you have friends or family talking negatively about a culture, educate them about that culture and why it is great. It might be difficult to do if you are the only person in that group who disagrees with the negative things being said, but stand your ground. 

And last, but certainly not least, is inviting a variety of different people to the decision making table. I think this cultural response stuck out to me the most during this course. I feel like it is something that is easy for us to just not think about, and the media does not cover it. In class, we learned about the sink sensors not detecting people of color when they first came out due to the lack of darker skinned people being included for testing. This issue is still ongoing, because recently I have also heard about face recognition software not being able to detect dark skinned people as easily as white, due to the same reasons: there is a lack of people with darker skin being asked to help test this software. Some other issues I have also heard about include crash test dummies always being fit, average height males. Cars and seatbelts are not tested with the safety of short people, overweight people, or women (especially those with larger breasts) in mind. However, the majority of the world population fits into at least one of those categories, and cars are not tested to protect any of them. So with this stuff in mind, it is extremely important to invite people from all different backgrounds to give input about different projects, so you can make sure your finished project is something that will work best for everyone, and not just a small portion of the population.

I try my best to incorporate these things, but I am especially glad that the final point was brought up. Even though I have read articles about face recognition software not working for people of color, or crash test dummies only being fit, average height males, the idea of those issues being solved simply by inviting a variety of different people to the decision making table did not occur to me. This is an important action that I really want to remember and bring with me into my new career.