Perspectives on Diversity and Culture

I do not usually get offended even though some attitudes or words casted to me could be microaggressions. However, I have an experience where I was not really happy. Me and my husband visited an insurance company to get a life insurance. The agent was male. Among questions he needed to ask us for the setup, there was a question about occupations. I answered a stay-at-home mother. He said “It is the hardest job,” but I felt the faking of politeness in it. I understand he was trying to be nice, but I was not happy because I felt his prejudice that all housewives need to hear compliments since they are not really compensated and being a housewife is not a career. However, I chose to become a stay-at-home mother and I was totally enjoying it thus I did not need pity or a fake compliment to make me feel better. Also from my experiences, working outside and being a stay-at-home mother are both hard work in different ways and I did not feel that being a stay-at-home mother is the hardest. This made me think he was just being polite. So if he used the word “the most compensating or the worthiest” I would have been more happy.  

This experience made me think that one of the big effects of discrimination, prejudice or stereotype in the form of microaggressions is creating another prejudice towards an ‘’opposite” or “counter” group which in my case was career-focused males. I also think that prejudice and steretotypes, especially if they are microaggressions, from others make the targeted people think people from other groups are not able to understand them and builds a wall between them.

Perspectives on Diversity and Culture

First I talked to my husband. He feels that culture is the deeply held beliefs and learned behaviors that a person gets from the people that they grow up with and live around. He says that culture forms many of the basic filters that shape how we begin to approach the world around us since the thoughts and words of others tell us almost everything we need to know about how to get by in the world. It tells us how to greet people, what things are just “edible” and what things are really foods, as well as what it takes to be a “good” person.  Since culture has been with us since birth, it even affects the parts of our minds that just process information as emotions, and without words, so that we react to things based on our culture without even realizing that we’ve had a reaction or have knowledge of the event in our conscious minds.

As for his definition of diversity, he says that he sees diversity as more than a situation where people are just allowed to be different. He says that this is just tolerance and that tolerance can just turn in to negative feelings that are bottled up and hidden, or come out in negative ways later. He thinks diversity is about seeking out and celebrating differences and not trying to say that everyone is really the same if you can get past the little things.  He said he feels that things are usually better if there are different ideas that are being considered.  He said that there can be more than one way of doing things in many situations, and in others, even if there is a better way, having different points of view can help us use “…the best practices,” or at least make a conscious decision to do things in a certain way based on values, or objective facts rather than just doing what others have done previously for the sake of doing them without having to think about why.  My husband also added though that this idea was easier to talk about than actually do, since our cultures really do make us react to things that our culture sees as wrong at a “…deep, emotional level.”

His definitions are more detailed and complicated than I expected. I believe this is because he majored in Anthropology in college and Applied Linguistics in his master. The examples he gives are similar to what I learned from the course. However, his idea of us getting aspects of the culture by how we act and what we say in certain situations is inspiring.

Second, I talked to my friend Mie. She has similarities to me because she is a Japanese woman who is married to an American man. The differences are that she is more than 10 years older and she has lived in many places in the US and Japan. Her definition of culture is focused on people having different ways of living such as food, houses and fashions and different attitudes towards things such as education and morals. She also shared stories about the military community that are very unique and show a lot of insight about one of the military’s sub-cultures. She shared that the wives of service members, amongst themselves, will unofficially organize themselves in ways that reflect their husbands’ ranks in the military. She also shared that attitudes towards her (as a foreigner) are different various areas of the US. Her definition of diversity is being different. She thinks the measurements include skin color, languages, food, manners and attitudes towards toward everything such as people, education and their job.

I think her answer reminded me of one of the panelist’s telling the culture is about how people exist in the world not only about how people look or what languages they speak. It was a little difficult to see cultures which are not ethnical cultures. So, her story about the military community gave me a hint to see cultures based on non-ethnical ways, which I have been omitted. Her definitions are similar to mine but her experiences with other cultures made me clear that there are so many kinds of cultures.

The third person is my father-in-law. He seems to be in different cultures from me because he is 74, a male, Caucasian, and an American who is a veteran of the military. His definition of culture is that it is the environment that someone grows up in, and the norms that reflect the beliefs of a particular group of people. And his definition of diversity is a recognition that there are differences, and a desire to become aware of the differences that exist without really being concerned with labeling those differences as objectively good, or bad, or grading them on relative scales of better to worse.

From his answer, I was able to see that some aspects of cultures are ascribed, which I learned in week 1. The omitted part is that people do think cultures in good/bad scale even though I learned that it should not be seen like that. Because of my backgrounds, me, and people around me are usually the ones who focus on understanding and co-living with differences as if they are looking at cultures from outside or between cultures. So, I felt that his ways to see cultures as if looking at from inside are to the point.

My Family Culture

I would choose a omamori, manekineko , and chopsticks.  Omamori is a talisman. It is a small bag that contains paper or wood chip inside on which something religious is printed. I would bring one for my family’s health. Manekineko is a statue of cat and one with right hand lifted gather the luck of money and one with left hand lifted gathers the luck of people. I would bring one with left hand lifted. The last one is chopsticks.

I would explain that omamori is important because I can mentally depend on it for my family’s health. Manekineko is similar. I would like it to help me to gather people in the new country so that I can have another happy life there in my new community. Chopsticks might sound less important compared to the other two. But from my experience living in a foreign country, the only thing I get frustrated with and find inconvenient regularly is when I don’t have chopsticks. I think this is because they are an important part of my daily life.

I would feel sad, similar to a feeling of having to leave my friends behind when I had to give up two items among three I brought.   If I was forced to choose just one, I would have to keep the manekineko.

Since I have lived in the United States as an immigrant, this simulation may not be a big impact on the way I see my culture or how I handle with cultural issues. Even though I know I do not usually stick to my culture, it is interesting that I try to bring Japanese items that will bring my lucks or works as a guard. It means that Japanese culture means a lot when it comes to spiritual beliefs. It also proves that I see myself as belonging to Japanese culture even though I am not planning to go back to Japan or that I seem not to care about Japanese culture in my daily life here.