Perspectives on Diversity and Culture

Through the use of social media I posed 2 questions to my family and friends. The amount of replies that I received was more than I thought I would. It was interesting to see how each person answered the questions differently depending on their own culture.

The two questions that I posed was:
What is your definition of culture?
What is your definition of diversity?

When looking over answers I noticed a difference in answers between my older friends and family and my younger friends and family. When answering the question, what is your definition of culture, my older friend and my dad answered that culture is beliefs, values and the way one is raised, your surroundings, food, clothing, housing, music, holidays, language, style, values. My younger friends had close to the same answers but adding ideologies and behaviors.

When answering the question, what is your definition of diversity, this is where the answers seems to grow very different. My older friends and family replied with representing differences between people, groups, communities, cultures and doing new things. My younger friends and family responded with the relationships between subjects including both visible and invisible qualities that make each unique as well as commonalities that share. A groups of people may be different because they are from various cultures, and differences amongst a society. I thought that it was very interesting that my younger friends looked at diversity from a very big picture, where my older friends were not as wide viewed. I think this shows how much diversity has come into play as my generation has grown up and how much we have been taught that we are all the same we just live a little differently.

After looking at the answers from friends and family I realized that their answers were very similar to the ones that I have been studying in class. We have read about values, beliefs, language and behaviors. We have also talked about how being diverse is that we all might be different on the outside but on the inside we are all the same.

I think that my friends and family pretty much hit the nail on the head when discussing this definitions. I think they hit on both surface culture and also on deep culture. In regards to culture they didn't mention gender roles, roles of children, showing emotion, family relationships, or ideas about education. These are all very important cultural roles that we need to be respectful of.

When talking with my friends and family I have thought about my own views on these definitions. I work in an area with lots of diversity and culture. The one comment that really made me think was "Think of it as big picture vs. small detail." Your culture is the big picture and being diverse is just a small detail that only brings us closer together.