Perspectives on Diversity and Culture

For this assignment, I talked to my Filipino friend, Chinese American cousin, and my Chinese colleague at work regarding cultures. Interestingly they all have similar perspective of cultures and understanding of diversity. My colleague who came from China and the Filipino friend who is not born in the US think that people generalize their cultures in certain ways and these stereotypes did not reflect to their “deep” culture.  Many of their origin cultures they have in hometown sometimes unconsciously discontinue after living in the US for a long time. One example of culture discontinuity is my Chinese colleague was used to celebrate Lunar Year (Chinese New Year) in the past and will take a day off to go to visit relative and gather. But because most of her Chinese friends or families did not celebrate this occasion anymore, so she did not want to continue this culture. She said one year she brought her children to China and brought her to see the dragon dance in the Chinese New Year Parade, go to the flowers market etc. to experience the traditional way of Chinese New Year.  Her children were very excited and learned a lot about Chinese cultures from this trip. Moreover, they both expressed that the location of where you live in your country influence your cultures. People live in the urban maybe more educated and their culture is different than people live in the rural area.  They both think that diversity meant people come from different countries or have different skin color. 

  On the other hand, my Chinese American cousin think culture only related to nationality. He thinks if you are Chinese, you will live in Chinese culture, if you are Chinese American then you have mixed cultures with Chinese and American, and this applies to all ethnicities. He thinks cultures are traditional practice your ethnicity developed and accumulated from their ancestors and pass on to the next generation. He also thinks diversity represent the person’s skin color or nationalities. 

This is a very interesting assignment to get to know more about my colleague, friend and cousin. It is more interesting to know how  people grow up in different countries have different perspective than people born and live in where they are living now. It seems like as people move out from their home town, they also bring in their culture and perspective to the new town, so they will see the difference of culture and diversity. However, for people who live in the same town where they grow up may not understand the diversity and culture differences are more wide and deep than just food, music, books, literacy etc., but more into day-to-day life. I learned that we cannot assume a person’s culture by where they are form or how they defined themselves. If we want to know about their “deep” culture, it takes time to observe and learn. Most importantly, we should always remain neutral perspective when we learn other about other cultures and diversity.