ABSTRACT
In an increasingly globalized world today, communities face a growing need for intercultural mediation. In the workplace, school, family, and local community, people have no other choice but to be exposed and to interact with others of diverse cultural backgrounds. While such exposures have the potential of helping people to exchange new ideas, develop critical thinking, awareness, and cross-cultural communication skills, the exposure also involves certain risks, such as those of causing misunderstandings, developing stereotypes, and elevating hostility against culturally different others, resulting in an escalation of cultural conflicts in their communities. Even though intercultural mediation has the huge potential for mitigating such cultural misunderstanding and tensions, there is a huge gap between intercultural mediation's potential for constructively resolving such conflicts and the reality of how it has been practiced and utilized. This chapter addresses the existing limitations and challenges of intercultural mediation in the contexts of community mediation service in the United States, with a particular focus on cultural humility. To make community mediation truly inclusive, intercultural mediation needs to play a key role. However, intercultural mediation is often understood in terms of cultural competency that could oppress some communities’ voices, especially those of traditionally marginalized communities. This chapter suggests that there is a need for intercultural mediators becoming culturally humble to make community mediation accessible to those with diverse backgrounds.
