Culturally Intelligent Leadership

Preface

As a young Hmong American child growing up in two cultures, I played a game where I guessed the cultural background of everyone around me, regardless of their ethnicity or race, gender or class. It was my version of the game “I Spy,” a popular game in the United States that encourages children to be observant of, and learn to identify, objects, places, people, and things. My elementary schoolteacher taught me the game, and because I wanted to be “just like every American child,” I played it every time I had the opportunity. At that time, I did not realize that I was categorizing the things “I spied” into boxes:

I spy a white person who goes to church.

I spy a rich, white man going to work.

I spy a black man running to catch the bus. ...