Blog Assignment: Perspectives on Diversity and Culture

The people I spoke with about diversity and culture all seem to agree that culture is how you grew up and the things you did when you grew up. They felt that culture was the way you celebrated things such as Christmas and Thanksgiving. One particular friend thought of culture as how they celebrated their daughter's 16th birthday with a huge celebration. She would dress up in a beautiful gown and they would consider this her coming out party or becoming a woman. They all felt religion was a part of culture also believing that most believed in God and even the differences in how they worship.

Also, there was some commonality on believing diversity was defined as the different races working together for one purpose. They believed having all types of people that included African-Americans, Latinos, Chinese, Japanese, and Caucasian and the like going to school or working together made things diverse.

Before starting this class I believed the same about culture and diversity. Reading all the information that describes culture as being more than just religion or dress or celebrations but also the things around you that helped to mold you into the person you are. Learning that the different classes of people, employed and unemployed, married and unmarried, even widowed persons could be considered diverse groups. Also, finding out about the dominant culture and how we may relate or even begin to change the things we learned to fit into that dominant culture may cause other problems in you being the person you were born to be.

MY FAMILY CULTURE

Imagine the following:

A major catastrophe has almost completely devastated the infrastructure of your country. The emergency government has decided that the surviving citizens will be best served if they are evacuated to other countries willing to take refugees. You and your immediate family are among the survivors of this catastrophic event. However, you have absolutely no input into the final destination or in any other evacuation details. You are told that your host country’s culture is completely different from your own, and that you might have to stay there permanently. You are further told that, in addition to one change of clothes, you can only take 3 small items with you. You decide to take three items that you hold dear and that represent your family culture.

 

The three things that I would take with me would be pictures I have of my family in a globe, my cell phone and my bible.  I chose these three items because with the family globe of pictures, it gives me joy to remember how things were; my children when they were born and some of the birthdays and other celebrations that have occurred over time.  I would take my cell phone to possibly be able to communicate with other family members and friends to find out how and if they are surviving and how things are working in our country and other parts of the globe. Also, with the phone, the world wide web is everywhere and I may be able to communicate via email, facebook or twitter with others. Also, I can pull up information, games, phone numbers and other things on my phone to help keep abreast of what’s going in on the world and also it would allow me to look up information about the country I will be living in and their culture. I chose my bible because my God is very important to me and also to continue to keep the faith and believe all things are possible even through tragedies. There may be a different religion there and it may not be possible to get a bible but I can always read it whenever I am discouraged or down because of what’s going on.  If I could only keep one thing, it would be the phone. My phone would enable me to communicate with people all over the world and find out how they are living and what’s going on in other parts of the world.

This was very interesting because I had to really think about what things I would chose and also about culture. Because my ancestors were brought to this country from Africa, my culture has basically become the dominant culture in America.