Cultural awareness is the ability to observe, appreciate, and accept similarities and differences between cultures. When people have cultural awareness, they can acknowledge, respect, and build upon ethnic, sociocultural, and linguistic diversity as they think, feel, and act in their work and lives. Cultural awareness also necessarily involves people being conscious of how their own organizational and national cultures impact their values, beliefs, biases, judgments, and, especially, behavior.
Cultural awareness is the first and most foundational element in achieving cultural competence. If you don’t have it, it will be nearly impossible for you to acquire the skills and practices needed to develop cultural competence. If you are culturally aware, you will most assuredly better understand yourself and be much more interested in seeking out relationships, building connections, and collaborating with people from different cultural backgrounds. The opportunity to gain new levels of cultural awareness and practice new depths of acceptance will happen often.
There is not one aspect of human life that is not touched or altered by culture. Culture affects personality, how we express ourselves, the way we think, how we solve problems, how transportation systems function and are organized, how economic and government systems are put together, and more. Culture is commonly depicted as an iceberg. This image was first used by Sigmund Freud, who likened the conscious mind to the exposed tip of the iceberg and the unconscious mind to the rest, hidden beneath the surface.