Perspectives on Diversity and Culture

For this assignment, it was easy for me to find several people to answer the question of what they think of culture and diversity.  I have culturally diverse circles of friends.

Sharvedh (South American Indian) replied that he thought of culture and diversity as in how it defines through the beliefs and value of groups.

Ken (Italian-American) replied that he thought of culture and diversity as in the culture defines languages, customs, community, and values from each community. He questioned whether diversity defines the races.

Heather (American): her statement "The definition of culture is varied with how we are being raised by families from different places over the world, languages, society, the way we dress because some of us do dress differently due to our types of culture because other counties have different types/styles of how we dress such as over in England they wear fancy hats for special occasions or events while we as Americans don't wear those types of fancy hats for American types of occasions/events or in Africa, women wear types of jewelry such as earrings or too many of them on their faces/ears that are part of their culture like that. As for diversity definition has many different races, minorities such as Mexicans, Asians such as international people wherever they come from and some people do have some disabilities that are diversity as we have to deal with them as we face. Something does with different and uncommon."


There are shared perspectives of what culture and diversity defines in three persons' statements. The common grounds are: 1. groups or communities, 2. beliefs/values.  Their responses are along the lines to what I've studied this week on diversity and culture. It is clear that the definition of culture and diversity has became broad. There is no one word to describe culture and diversity. One thing I noticed that had been omitted is disability and ability. I believe that disability and ability is part of culture and diversity, because a group of people who share the same disability develop their own language, lifestyle, history, and so forth to overcome the obstacles they face daily.

My friends' comments did not have powerful influence on what I thought of culture and diversity. It showed me that we all think along the similar lines. We all just perceive it at different depth. Some of us are influenced by where and how we were raised; therefore, it lead us to think in certain ways about culture and diversity.

Believe it or not, all these three persons who replied to my question in regarding to culture and diversity are profoundly deaf. Yet, each comes from different culture background.