Perspectives on Diversity and Culture

I have found that when you ask people the definition of culture and then you ask the definition of diversity all have paused and took some seconds to really think about what it means. The first person I asked was my husband he stated that culture was your race, your ethnicity and the certain things that a culture does referring to activities and events that take place within the culture. He stated that diversity is when different people come together of all different cultures. The second person I asked was my mom and she stated that culture was who you are. She stated it was not only your race but everything that makes you who you are from the way you were raised to the traditional things that you do. Diversity she stated was all different ethnicity's coming together. The third person I asked was one of our teachers. She is from Puerto Rico and when she talked about culture she talked about the different things that they do as a culture the traditional things that they do at Christmas together, how her culture feels about babies. She stated that babies are everything in Puerto Rico. She talked about family and the importance of family, and she also spoke about the language and the importance of keep their language even though they have had to learn English. We talked about diversity and she said like me and you. I am African American and she is Puerto Rican she said that is diversity. The different cultures make up diversity.
Some of the aspects of culture and diversity that I have studied in this course that were included in their answers were that culture includes your race and ethnicity and that diversity is the differences amongst people.
I think what was omitted or not talked about was that culture is the characteristic of the person and that it is everything from our eye contact, to our gestures, to how we hold our body and how we perceive the world is related to culture (Laureate, 2011).
When I talked to the teacher from Puerto Rico about her definition of culture and diversity it was so rich and she was so excited to talk about who they were as a people. When I asked my family members they had the definitions but no excitement. I wonder if because our culture had such a struggle do we make the struggle bigger then who we are as a people?
Are the trials and tribulations overriding the excellence of the culture in some of us?