Perspectives on Diversity and Culture - week 3

 

Perspectives on Diversity and Culture

I have many friends all over the world that I thought would be interested in helping me with this Blog assignment. Therefore, I posted a comment on my Facebook page reaching out to everyone to answer. The three responses I received where from Ms. Kristen, Tiffany and Monik. Everyone had a different perspective of culture and diversity.

The first person that answered is a person that I believe to be in many ways culturally different from me. The first person that reached out to help me was my previous director Ms. Kristin. She is employed at another military base overseas and I still consider her a colleague. Ms. Kristin is older than me, a different race them me and economically in a different class than me. Nonetheless, I admire her achievements, respect her opinions, and adore her as the beautiful person she is. Ms. Kristen stated, “ culture is the way of life that someone is raised into as a part of their family/ancestral background. Their beliefs, their lifestyle, their heritage, their  surroundings. The influences that are salivated into someone’s upbringing and they instill it in their family. Diversity is a society to which contain  many cultures.” I believe Ms. Kristen’s statement about what culture is very broad. An aspect of culture and diversity that I have studied in this course that remind me of the answer Ms. Kristen provided can be found in the Family cultures: Dynamic Interactions video. According to Nadiya Taylor, “Yeah. And I would say, for me, I think culture has become so broad, it's almost like a pair of glasses. Everything that we do, I think, is related to culture.” (Laureate Education, 2011). I like the aspect that she omitted in regard to culture being about family. However, I do think it is important to mention that family can be a combination of people that are not related by blood.

 


The second person I interviewed was my cousin Tiffany. My cousin Tiffany stated, “culture is a way of life for different ethnicities and diversity is the difference in background and the way we live. “ By saying that culture is a way of life, I believe she is insinuating that it is a lifestyle. This reminds me of the statement made by Julie Benavides in the video, Family cultures: Dynamic Interactions. According to Julie Benavides, “I think it's also lifestyle. You know, you can have an ethnic group in one community. And within an ethnic group, there could be various, various different integrations of families that are immigrants or families that have been born here in America or families that have second generation children. It's just a multitude of differences that we're seeing with culture.” (Laureate Education, 2011). The aspect of culture and diversity that I have studied in this course that are included in Tiffany’s respond is the understanding the culture can be represented by various different types of ethnicities. In addition, those ethnicities can branch off and have their own variation of the culture.

The third interview I conducted was with my cousin’s friend Monik. Monik stated, “culture is open to new ideas and learning about the past with a diverse group of people and diversity is different backgrounds coming together.” I like that Monik mentions coming together is a form of diversity. I think it is important to mention that coming together should involve respecting each other’s differences and not to conform to be together. Each culture has rules that may separate them from another culture. It is an aspect that may need to be respected if we are going to live in diverse world.

The way other people defined culture and diversity influenced my own thinking about these topics by assuring my thinking that culture and diversity cannot be defined simply. Everyone has a different perception of what culture and diversity is. However, everyone does seem to believe that culture is a lifestyle. This makes me think about if a culture is a choice. I believe some people would think not. Some people feel very strongly about their culture and would not change it. Some people feel strong enough to die for their culture.

 

References

Laureate Education (Producer). (2011). Family cultures: Dynamic interactions [Video file]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu

Comments

  1. Teach the ChildrenSeptember 26, 2021 at 8:14 PM


    I do agree with you, everything we do relates to culture. Culture shapes not only our values and beliefs, but also our gender roles, family structures, languages, dress, food, etiquette, approaches to disabilities, child-rearing practices, and even our expectations for children’s behavior. In this way, culture creates diversity. I also like to think for teachers, it is essential to see and understand your own culture in order to see and understand how the cultures of children and their families influence children’s behavior. Only then can you give every child a fair chance to succeed.

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