Diversity and Culture

          For this week's assignment, I interviewed three different people and asked each of them to give me their definitions of culture and diversity.  I interviewed my dad, my teenage cousin, and a foreign exchange student I met in high school from Korea.  I chose these three people so that the answers that I received would be diverse.  My dad's (age 47) definition of culture was: "Culture is the lifestyle of a generation."  My dad's definition of diversity was: "Diversity is alot of different cultures and lives, it's also different ways of doing things and different ways of living."  My teenage cousin's (age 17) definition of culture was: "Culture is the complete make up of a person's external environment, for example, their clothes, language, food, and family."  My teenage cousin's definition of diversity was: "Diversity is a whole bunch of people from different cultures who live and work in the same area."  My Korean friend's definition of culture was: "Culture is a group of people who have shared the same belief, behavior, or pattern of living."  My Korean friend's definition of diversity was: "Diversity is a difference related to culture.  It is different groups of people from different cultures living together.  They might share their cultures and it could be a positive way of to create a cross-cultural thing that connects the world together." 
          An aspect that we have studied in this course that I see included in some of the answers that I received is diversity itself.  Each person has their own definition of culture and diversity.  Each person has formed these definitions by experiences in their lives, their cultures, their social identities.  Stemming from diversity, I see the aspect of social identities.  The definitions that they gave, for example, my dad's, come from their social identities.  My dad is has seen different generations interact, he was the youngest of seven children and when he was born, he had adult siblings.  He grew up observing interactions between generations.  I think an aspect that has been omitted from discussion in the interviews was dominant culture, simply because it was not called for, it was not up for discussion.  I simply wanted to know the basis of their thinking as it refers to culture and diversity. 
          Asking these three people these two questions has influenced my thinking on these two key elements.  It is always better to have "another pair of eyes" when looking at something, and it is the same when it comes to culture and diversity.  Being able to hear what others have to say about culture and diversity gives me the chance to think about the two topics in ways that I have not thought of before.  I am able to see through someone's eyes and maybe understand it in more depth than my initial thoughts.