Darmanin: The need for cultural intelligence in anti-racism policy
2025/07/08 3 Comments
While the emphasis on a wholistic policies covering all groups is welcome, hard to see how “cultural intelligence” as a term improves the reality on the ground compared to other terminology and what concrete impacts on change it might have:
…What policymakers truly need is a more comprehensive framework: cultural intelligence. Cultural intelligence, or CQ, is a globally recognized way of assessing and improving effectiveness in culturally diverse situations. Unlike traditional cultural competence programs, cultural intelligence develops four core capabilities: CQ drive (motivation to work across cultures), CQ knowledge (understanding cultural differences without stereotyping), CQ strategy (planning effectively across cultural contexts), and CQ action (adapting behaviour appropriately).
Cultural intelligence is a more holistic approach that recognizes culture as the broader context within which all identity categories operate. It acknowledges that effective policy must go beyond checking boxes for different demographic groups to understanding how cultural values, communication styles, and worldviews shape how policies are received and implemented.
The cultural-intelligence advantage
Cultural intelligence predicts success across domains relevant to policymaking: judgment and decision-making, negotiation, trust-building, innovation, and leadership. In policy contexts, culturally intelligent approaches create more effective, equitable, and culturally sensitive policies that resonate with diverse populations.
Rather than asking whether a policy affects Black Canadians differently than other groups, a cultural-intelligence lens would require policymakers to understand how cultural factors shape the entire policy environment. This includes recognizing how cultural values and norms significantly shape policymaking, and how policies that are not culturally sensitive may be met with resistance or fail to achieve intended goals.
Practical implementation
Implementing cultural intelligence in policy work requires several key shifts. First, policymakers must develop cultural competence and sensitivity (CQ drive and knowledge) that enable them to better understand the needs of diverse cultural groups and develop policies that are responsive to these needs. This goes beyond demographic analysis to understanding how cultural frameworks shape policy reception and effectiveness.
Second, policy development must incorporate cultural impact assessments (CQ strategy) and engage with diverse stakeholders to gather insights into cultural values and norms. This requires creating systematic processes for cultural intelligence among policymakers and public officials through targeted training and education that develops motivation, strategic thinking, and adaptive cross-cultural skills.
Third, policy evaluation must regularly assess cultural responsiveness, checking in with policymakers to adjust based on how policies perform across different cultural contexts (CQ action). This is a fundamental shift from static policy lenses to dynamic, culturally intelligent governance.
Moving forward together
The EDI backlash does indeed represent a critical moment for policymaking. But rather than retreating into separate initiatives for marginalized groups, a more nuanced approach needs to acknowledge the interconnected nature of oppression while fostering bridges across communities. Cultural intelligence provides this framework by focusing on the cultural contexts that shape all identity experiences.
This does not mean abandoning targeted anti-racism initiatives. It means embedding them in a broader cultural- intelligence framework that recognizes how culture shapes the entire policy landscape. When policymakers develop cultural intelligence, they become better equipped to design policies that address systemic racism while building coalitions across marginalized communities.
The authors’ call for moral fortitude in the face of backlash is well-taken. However, moral fortitude alone is insufficient without analytical tools to understand and respond to cultural complexity. By embracing cultural intelligence as a foundational policy competency, institutions can move beyond fragmented approaches to build more effective, inclusive, and transformative governance systems that serve all Canadians equitably.
The conversation initiated by the authors is an important step. The next step will be to broaden that conversation to include the cultural-intelligence framework, which can transform policy approaches in an increasingly diverse society.
Source: The need for cultural intelligence in anti-racism policy
About Andrew
Multicultural Meanderings 
Having worked in a variety of cultures and with people from different cultures, languages, and backgrounds, I have one observation: cultural intelligence or cultural understanding is a two-way street.
When in Italy, I adapted to Italian ways of doing things, and learned a great deal, particularly about improvisation, creativity, and flexibility in rapidly changing environments. Incidentally, one close collaborator was Tuscan, the other was Roman, and these two highly effective and talented women had almost antithetical approaches to projects, the Tuscan being almost Swiss in her precision, and the Roman a superbly flexible improvisor.
When working with the Swiss, frequently seen as the best managed and most innovative of industrial societies, I adapted to their way, and, again, learned some very useful habits, attitudes, and methods, particularly as regards a calm, almost deadpan, methodical, systematic approach to problems and projects.
Ditto, when working with the French and their rather Cartesian approach to things, where I learned about going back to basics, asking fundamental questions, and looking at the whole system or big picture, or the British and their understated empiricism, and nuts-and-bolts, and if it ain’t broke don’t fix it conservatism.
From American colleagues and friends, I learned a sort of inventive, rambunctious, trial-and-error, let’s just do it attitude, pragmatism in practice.
Also, for a long time, a close friend and collaborator was Haitian. From her I learned, again, a great deal.
“When in Rome, do as the Romans do,” is an ancient saying, and is, I think, relevant.
For a society to function effectively it must have a basis of common rules, languages, procedures, and approaches, within which, of course, a great variety of approaches, attitudes, and cultures can and should coexist, adding to and enriching the whole.
As for Blacks, in my experience Black people come from a great variety of very rich cultures, backgrounds, social and economic classes, and professional fields, and use a variety of languages, and there is not a single “Black” identity, particularly in Canada where a majority of Black Canadians are first or second generation. With two Blacks I know, I often speak Italian. Others, for course, are Francophone or Anglophone, or Allophone.
Discussions of these issues in Canada in my experience tends to float around at a very abstract level, fluctuating between the Pollyannaishly anodyne and the militantly accusatory, generally being Manichean and polarizing, rife with stereotypes, and far from the intense interpersonal highly varied individual granularity that make up most people’s experiences most of the time.
In the end, dialogue – the two-way street – is more respectful and effective than ideologically conditioned hectoring.
Thanks Gilbert, informative and thoughtful as always, and how we are enriched by this diversity and yes, how it works best in both directions. Multiculturalism often used a “two-way” street metaphor which, while having merit, could also mean just passing in opposite directions without much if any interaction and integration.
Thanks, Andrew. I agree. Setting up dialogue is it seems to me the key, and one way of breaking out of the dangerous straightjacket of “identity politics.” One of the problems of identity politics is this, I think: if one group, say Blacks, practice it in a militant exclusionary way then other groups, say, Whites, will adopt it too, in reaction. Escalation and the balkanization of society can then easily follow. You are certainly posting lots of fascinating material!