You Don’t Have to Get It to Respect It: A Case for Cultural Humility

International Youth Day falls mid-August. It’s not the most recognised day of the year. I suspect this is in-part because once kids are big enough to be referred to as “youth,” they’ve lost their baby teeth and therefore most of their cuteness. The cuteness has been replaced with steely resolve, absolute rejection of performativity for adults, and an unnerving ability to hold a mirror up to us, unveiling our double standards, insecurities and lack of understanding about many complex social matters.

And yet they are still just kids who are learning to navigate this world, who will make mistakes and need support. Quite frankly “the youth” are terrifying and wonderful.  

The statistics on our young people are not good by any available measure. Increasing numbers of kids below the poverty line, in the justice system, struggling with poor mental health, school refusal, social isolation and disillusionment. Some kids are experiencing a combination of these things. These struggles are in addition to the general challenges of being a teen, dealing with changing bodies, and social and academic pressures.  

I have always felt like kids, no matter how big, are our kids. We, the community, have a responsibility to all of them, to show them care, compassion and support. 

I recently attended a wonderful celebration of the life and work of Professor Fiona Stanley. Professor Stanley is exceptional in her ability to identify and create the conditions for others to thrive. Her work has focused on children – particularly those facing the toughest paths, and she has been relentless in her mission to improve the lives of these children. 

One of the many simple yet profound quotes of Professor Stanley’s that I tried to discretely type into my phone was, “Aboriginal youth are not the problem. They are part of the solution.” A statement so honest and bold that it stunned me. It takes someone very caring and honest to make such a statement and someone exceptional to follow through with actions to back it up, which Professor Stanley has done over many decades. But we can’t rely on the extraordinary few like Professor Stanley to create the change our kids need.

Kids big and little, of any ethnicity, religion, gender, social economic status (or any other way we want to divide and label) are not the problem. They are children within systems, within a community that is failing to provide them the conditions they need to thrive.  And they can only be a part of the solution if we adults allow them to be. 

Like many generations previous, the social and cultural gaps between younger and older Australians feels very wide, and at times, unbridgeable. The good news is that acceptance and ability to value difference doesn’t require one to understand another’s perspective or any great cultural change. As Emmanuel Collard so clearly explained to me recently, we just need a bit of cultural humility – understanding that other people think, act, look and behave differently and that’s okay.

When we come at things with cultural humility, we usually end up wondering why we are doing things the way we are (the way dominant culture requires) and then considering how we could do things better. Historically, young people have played a vital role in forcing major social change – leading protests, marches and toppling cruel and unjust regimes. No one rejects antiquated systems as expeditiously as young people do. It requires humility for those in dominant positions to consider and action young people’s ideas before things get to crisis point.  

I spend a lot of time with young people and know them to be bright, insightful, thoughtful, critical and very funny. They know about all kinds of things that I didn’t know about at a similar age and they need to be a part of discussions and decisions that will impact them, both now and into the future. It feels like we are getting close to crisis point in so many areas, so surely it is a good time to find ways to bring young people’s voices to the forefront. 

I offer here some ideas of how we might do that.

When an opportunity arises (survey, online comment, feedback forms, community consultation) to provide comment on a local matter, rather than immediately commenting from your own view or past experience, take the time to ask some young people and integrate their views into your response. If you are involved in anything aimed at young people personally or professionally (education, health, sport, arts, public infrastructure) run the ideas past some young people first and ask that they are invited to the table.

And if you like the idea of countering negativity, keep an eye out for good things that kids are doing in your neighbourhood and share them with the community (the community Facebook page is a good place for this). It’s easy to forget that the good outweighs the bad and we all feel better when we celebrate it.