ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the extent to which predominant psychologies of humility incorporate diverse understandings. It explains the critical positive psychology of humility, assessing its implications for power, intercultural dynamics, and alterity. The chapter offers critiques relevant to the positive psychology of humility and seeks to demonstrate the relevance of these critiques for issues of race and culture. It focuses on the black resistance to racial oppression in the United States, and also explores how cultural expressions of self-affirmation may challenge interpretations of humility formed within Western white culture. Before the emergence of positive psychology, several psychologists equated humility with low self-esteem, a position also taken by influential secular philosophers. C. Peterson and M. E. P. Seligman's approach perpetuates an interpretive climate which presumes that recognizing or assessing the presence of certain virtues is a culturally generic endeavor, since elements of the virtues themselves have been identified cross-culturally.
