Mentoring the Mentors of Underrepresented Racial/Ethnic Minorities: Beyond Cultural Competency

The majority of mentoring programs and mentoring-related literature focus on mentee training needs, with significantly less guidance for mentors. Moreover, most mentoring the mentor models assume generic mentees (i.e., a form of normative Whiteness) with little attention to the social and structural concerns of underrepresented racial/ethnic minorities (UREM). Despite ongoing calls for increased attention to diversity in research training programs, especially in health disparities research where racial/ethnic disparities are striking, most programs tend to address the mentees’ cultural competency needs in conducting their research rather than the training needs of the mentors. In this capacity building session, we critique the frame of “diversity as the problem” (rather than the lack of mentor consciousness, knowledge, and skills), highlight the need to extend mentor training beyond aspirations of cultural competency toward cultural humility and cultural safety, and consider challenges to effective mentoring of UREM, both for White and UREM mentors. Examples of successful mentorship models will be provided.