Perspectives on Diversity and Culture

     The assignment for the week was to gather three individual definitions of culture and diversity. We were to include diversity of in the people we select to answer our question. The three people I interviewed and their answers follow:

Stormy is a Caucasian woman in her early thirties. She defined culture as a group of people that are joined together with common beliefs and practices. She defined as the opposite of culture. She said it’s a variety of people with different beliefs and practices.

Qamarah is an African American in her early forties whose religion is Islam. Qamarah defines culture as the characteristics of a group of people, defined by language, religion, food, social habits, music and arts. Diversity is having many different types, forms and ideas.

Joe is a fifteen year old African American male who is a Christian. Joe defines culture as traditions, customs, the way we live, our life style. And he defines diversity as different group of people. 

     Each person I asked to give their definition of culture has included some of what I have learned as about culture and diversity. No one really mentioned the deep culture. No one mentioned language, costume, etc as part of culture. My thinking about culture remained somewhat the same when I think about other people’s definition of and diversity. I began to realize out diversities can lead to the creation of new cultures. An example of the creation of the new cultures is my parents. My mother was raised in the south to a traditional African American family. My father was raised in DC. My mother in father ate different foods and their holiday traditions were different. Some of the foods that they ate on holidays were the same types, but prepared differently. My mom was used to having cornbread dressing, but my dad was used to bread and herb dressing. My dad did not like my mom’s dressing and my mom did not like the type of dressing my dad liked. To make sure that my dad enjoyed the holidays, my mom started making a little of both dressing; However, when we became older by mom combined the two types of dressing. My dad and mom were satisfied with the outcome of the dish. For us, the children, a new tradition/culture was created for our Thanksgiving and Christmas Holiday.