Perspectives on Diversity and Culture

Perspectives on Diversity and Culture

One of my best friends, she is a Chinese American.
She explains: Diversity can include anything that makes an individual different from the larger group.  Such as race, ethnicity, religion, disabilities, etc.  It can also include things such as how people dress and people's values.
Culture can include family history and the lineage of their ancestors.  It can also be developed from the environment a person is raised in. 

A Portuguese American co-worker.
She explains: Diversity in a classroom is the presence of different types of people/students in the classroom.  Diversity is the mixtures of different types of people in one place. 
Culture is the customs and values that a person or group of people have.  Culture explains people behaviors, its their religion, what they wear and explains how they think about themselves and other.

An African American male:
He explains: Diversity is different types of people.
Culture is someone's customs.

How interesting it is to see the definitions by women and the simplistically thought definition by a man.  Each person's definition was pretty much on the right track to all the information we have learned about in this course.  None of the people I interviewed spoke about culture and diversity influencing the identity of a person.  My Chinese American friend did touch on the environment that a person is raised in as an element of their culture.  In Ngo's (2008) article Beyond "Culture Clash" Understandings of Immigrant Experiences he explains culture and identity as dynamic.  Identity is constructed by the social relations at play in a person's life.  Thus culture has to do with an person's identity as well as their environment.  Each participant touched on surface culture, the differences between people, their family and ethnicity.

Overall, putting together the definitions of my peers was the summation of my definition of culture and diversity before this course.  They each have listed an aspect of culture and diversity but I now know that each is simple to understand but quite complex to explain.  It is important that when thinking about these topics, you have an open mind it is also important to have an idea of your own culture and self-identity.