Perspectives on Diversity and Culture

I asked three people for their definition of diversity and culture, a Palestinian, Christian, middle-aged male, a Palestinian, Muslim, female, thirty-something Palestinian, and an Anglo-Saxon, Christian, twenty-something, American.

The first person responded, "Culture is a set of values and habits that people start doing, and they keep on doing. They would be difficult to change later. Diversity is differences, being different".

The second person's response was similar. "Culture is, the ideas, the customs or social behaviors as part of a society. Diversity a range of different things. I think the culture of each society would make this diversity because each culture has, even small things that are different than the other.

The third person responded, "Culture includes but is not limited to a group's ideals, beliefs, customs, practices, values and mythologies. Each person is a part of many cultures, and some of our cultures may play bigger roles in our lives than others, and this balance may shift over the course of our life. Culture helps inform who we are in the world, and we reproduce and contribute to our various cultures. Although culture is typically thought to pass from one generation to the next, it also passes intragenerationally—especially with the internet which allows for easy contact between groups that were once isolated from each other. Diversity is the variety that allows for the sustainability and advancement of natural and human systems. A group or system can be diverse in countless ways including ethically, socioeconomically, religiously, linguistically, by age, gender, skill sets, and much more".

All the responses touched on some aspects of culture and diversity that have been discussed in this course. The third person added an interesting idea not discussed before, that the balance of aspects of our culture may shift over the course of our lives.  It takes culture out of the realm of a static fact and into the realm of a living, growing aspect of who we are. I have found this to be true as I have moved into different cultural circles as I began living in different countries and taking on their cultural worldviews.  Culture can be static too if a person does not have the opportunity to move or the desire to embrace a new cultural point of view or way of living when presented. I have met women who have married into a new culture but have maintained a static culture stance. They did not embrace the customs or language of their husband's culture. They remain always on the outside and miss out on knowing the culture in a more intimate, relatable way if they had added on a new layer of cultural identity.  

The definitions of diversity reflect the cultural context of each responder.  The topic of diversity is in the news, taught in schools and propounded universities especially in North America and Europe. It is not generally discussed in the Middle East, at least in my experience here. The first two responders, both life-long residents of the Middle East gave a textbook answer which reflected their understanding and interest in the topic. To a culture that has had to survive by emphasizing the collective and similar cultural characteristics to live in harmony, diversity can be there, but must be de-emphasized to avoid conflict. The American included a more in-depth discussion that included some of the ideas of individual diversity that we have been discussing in this course.  Like the Middle East, the West has been struggling with conflict among diverse cultures, but instead of pushing diversity to the side, they are educating, celebrating and working for society to embrace diversity in order to avoid conflict.  I think each approach has its merits based on the cultural context.