Cultural Humility is Your Friend

In a previous post, I talked about my journey as someone who has been engaged in scholarship and advocacy centered on social justice, only to become shocked and appalled when so many people in progressive circles that I had once aligned with turned out to be very comfortable parroting Hamas talking points, perversely calling their one-sided and harmful advocacy “social justice.” I never assume that everyone does or should think like I do. However, at a minimum I did assume a certain level of humility from those who I know are not well-versed in antisemitism or in the history of the Middle East.

These acts of hypocrisy amongst so many in progressive/social justice spaces has led me to become more interested in the topic of cultural humility, including my guest-editing a double issue of School Psychology International on this topic. Emerging from the medical field in the late 1990s and most prominently associated with the scholarship of Drs. Melanie Tervalon and Jann Murray-Garcia, cultural humility is just as it sounds. It involves starting interactions with persons from cultural backgrounds different from yours from the perspective that you do not know as much about their culture as they do and entering these interactions with an openness to learn. The key attributes of cultural humility are: (1) openness, (2) self-reflection/awareness, (3) lifelong learning, (4) empathy and compassion, (5) to be “other oriented”, and (6) acknowledging and seeking to balance power imbalances. Social justice is and necessarily should be a contested topic. However, the value of cultural humility as a component of applied social justice is not particularly disputed.

So why, then, do so many social justice thought leaders wade into topics related to Judaism, Israel, antisemitism, and/or the Middle East more broadly as if they are experts? Why, for example, do so many non-Jews feel justified in explaining to Jews what is and is not antisemitism, something that they would not do to individuals from other minoritized groups?

Not shown here is my long pause between the last sentence and this one. I wish I knew the full answer. I recently was honored to learn from so many amazing speakers at the Contemporary Antisemitism Haifa 2026 Conference. A recurring theme was that, while there can be impactful strategies, ultimately antisemitism is shape-shifting and not rational. That understood, I do think there is potency in reminding people about cultural humility, particularly persons who are concerned with being on the right side of justice. One simply cannot claim to be “socially just” and claim more expertise in another culture than people within that culture. Starting on October 7, 2023, many of my US-based psychology and education colleagues all of a sudden became Middle Eastern scholars.

While it’s tempting to go point-by-point to counter their inaccuracies, perhaps it is more impactful to bring the conversation back to cultural humility. Are they actually listening to their Jewish colleagues and their allies, or speaking over them? Is it appropriate to speak over other groups and, if not, why is it OK to speak over Jews? When engaging with people who identify with social justice, the concept of cultural humility is your friend. Remind them of the potency of listening, of not assuming that you know more about another part of the world or about the lived experiences of Jews–or any other group–than they do. If they value cultural humility but are not acting in accordance with these values when speaking to or about Jews and/or Israel, put them in the position of arguing in favor of cultural arrogance. It’s not about shaming people but helping them to see the logical outcomes of their viewpoints and that what they are arguing is not in accordance with their stated values.