Perspectives On Culture And Diversity

I asked three very different people about their ideas regarding culture and diversity. Elijah, a fourteen year old boy with an African American father and a Caucasian American mother sId that culture is "How people act and what they do. Like, traditions they have." He defined diversity as "The difference between people and things.".

I then spoke to JoAnne, a sixty four year old married nurse who grew up in a neighborhood on the north side of Chicago. She defined diversity as "the differences between people of differing backgrounds, such as Religious, ethnic, or geographic.". She went on to define culture as "the traditions with which you are raised. These include ones core values, celebrations, foods and beliefs."

finally, I spoke to Milan who is a 55 year old professor of linguistics who was born and raised in Serbia. He began by telling me that his definition might not be politically correct, and then went on to give me the following definitions:

Culture - culture is a system of beliefs shared by a society whereby that society is able to sustain itself physically, intellectually and morally.

Diversity - diversity is an aspect of a culture which reflects that culture's willingness and ability to incorporate within itself tolerance for and encouragement of expression of attitude towards reality such as does not reflect the most prominent traits of the mainstream but which brings with itself potentiality for enrichment, expansion and innovation.



While I found that Elijah's definitions were far less complicated and involved than those of Milan and JoAnne, they all said basically the same thing. I think that JoAnne had a good point when she mentioned that culture involves core values. I think that this alludes to the unconscious portion of culture that we exhibit without thought. I also appreciated Milan's thorough definition of culture. He defined diversity within a cultural group rather than diversity between different cultural groups. This was a different perspective than I have really thought about, even though we have been discussing this very subject in the class. I mostly appreciated Elijah's definition, however, because it was simple and straightforward and unclouded by the complexities of adulthood.