For this weeks blog assignment I asked 3 people about their perspectives of diversity and culture.
Holly: A 52 year old African American woman “Culture is a heritage of customs, traditions, mindsets sort of like a thread that binds a group of people together. Diversity is the blending of different customs, traditions, mindsets without altering their culture with the understanding that it is the difference that brings value to the blend. (Does that make sense?)”...
Mahita: A 38 year old bi-racial, African American/Caucasian woman: I look at it like diversity being different types of cultures... and culture being part of our background that makes us who we are...
Diversity is various groups of people coming from different backgrounds, of different races, religions, and and identifications.
Diversity includes experiences and circumstances that create diversity amongst human beings such as economic and social statuses.
Diversity creates pathways to social identification classifications identities help us recognize similarities and difference within a group.
Culture as a wide range of characteristics including, but not limited to race, economics, gestures, and body language.
Surface Culture consist of the obvious outward classifications such as race or ethnicity
Deep Culture moves beyond surface cultural references and permeates attitudes and feelings derived from interpersonal relationships of influence.
Having dominance in culture sets the standard according to how others should present themselves
Mahita: A 38 year old bi-racial, African American/Caucasian woman: I look at it like diversity being different types of cultures... and culture being part of our background that makes us who we are...
Al: A 31 year African American male: Diversity is being different or being the minority...culture is a standard of the majority...the majority determines if you are diverse or not.
What I have learned about culture so far in this course:
Diversity is various groups of people coming from different backgrounds, of different races, religions, and and identifications.
Diversity includes experiences and circumstances that create diversity amongst human beings such as economic and social statuses.
Diversity creates pathways to social identification classifications identities help us recognize similarities and difference within a group.
Culture as a wide range of characteristics including, but not limited to race, economics, gestures, and body language.
Surface Culture consist of the obvious outward classifications such as race or ethnicity
Deep Culture moves beyond surface cultural references and permeates attitudes and feelings derived from interpersonal relationships of influence.
Having dominance in culture sets the standard according to how others should present themselves
Cultural discontinuity has to do with losses or inabilities to continue cultural practices, ideas, or values for reasoning specific to interruptions with cultural connection.
Cultural invisibility occurs when aspects of culturally related significances are not acknowledged, not accepted, or ignored.
I believe Holly placed considerable thought in to her answer and nicely summed up some meaningful aspects of culture and diversity together. For example she clearly articulates her thoughts of culture and diversity as sharing similar components, but differ in the view one is founded in bonds and the other highlighting dissimilarities.
Al pointed out that in culture there is a majority and minority group. His statement “The majority determines if you are diverse or not” relates to the notion of dominating cultural power. Some aspects that were not highlighted by the three interviewees were the effects of cultural dominance and social classification.
I have realized that everyone has their own ideas and thoughts about culture and diversity. Even though each individualized thought and opinion is stated differently there is commonality in the meaning behind each point of view.
