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.
