Cultural Self Analysis Essay Example

Culture is the root of life. It is what gives meaning to people living as one nation. What sociologists call Culture is the entire way of life a community passes from one generation to the next; here, the values, folkways, mores, history are all the same. Nonetheless, culture is an environment wherein people have ways to express themselves, that is, in the process creating artworks to be artifacts. These artifacts are the product of merging a people's culture and society - their past and their future.
Since I originated from Haiti, there is one artifact from the said Island that I, and most Haitians, particularly value - the “Tambour”. The tambour is a drum-like musical instrument made of wood; it has a lumen similar to an enormous straw with one end covered with dry animal skin from either cow or goat.
When we strike it, it brings us happiness and for a while makes us forget whatever it is that divides us. The tambour helps us Haitians to unite for a common cause.
It has always been like that with our ancestors, and it continues to be the same until today. According to history, Haitians identify themselves as products of Negros being sold during the slave trade - deported by slave owners to the Caribbean Island of Haiti. Their purpose was to drudge, toil, and work hard in the farm just to improve the master’s life. Since they are a low-income family (Peasant) cultivating land the old-fashioned way, they depended on good rainy season to harvest bountiful crops. Therefore, our parents always fostered education; believing that only education could lead us to a decent life, of being useful to the community and to the nation. If any failure should happen on this journey to knowledge, we can always bounce back.
Born from the union J.F. Antoine Pierre & A.F. Benjamin in Mirebalais, Haiti. My great grandparents originally were from places such as Nigeria. Congo, Benin. Our primary language is Haitian Creole. Although majority of the population identify themselves as Roman Catholics, the reality is that most of them still practice VOODOO.
We are fortunate enough not have experienced any racial behavior that could have infringed our relationships with people from different ethnic backgrounds since we immigrated into the United States (US), specifically Boston, Massachusetts, in 1987. A friend introduced us to a Caucasian woman who gave us the lead to attend a community-based school in Cambridge to learn spoken English. We greatly appreciate her effort.
I was born and raised in a rural zone, where the firmly attached stigma is it’s a complicated way of living in which most of necessities are missing. Because of this, the core values consist of having openness for learning, along with having respect for all. Openness for learning means that parents give full right to the teacher in enforcing learning with the exception of breaking bones and causing injury to the eyes. And as for respect, we work through the challenges together. Aside from the prevalent problem of ethnicity here being 95% uniform, another issue is class division; the noble and clergy are comfortably well-off while the people (the majority) live in abject poverty. In the family, we share stories about survival through sharing among brothers and sisters.
In a sense, we do not have the linguistic barrier as we all speak Haitian Creole. For those who can afford to go to school, they learn French as a second language and in the process create a distinctive mark in social class. Ties are close such that neighbors are family members who watch over each other’s kids.
Human sexuality is a strong physical drive in both sexes. In our community, sex talk often happens among peers because it is a difficult subject with parents. It is one of our taboos. We try as much as possible to avoid being parents before having enough economic support to start a family and fully assume the associated responsibilities.
Parents use a number of cues such as looking at you a certain way to immediately let you know your behavior is unacceptable. This form of communication that takes place without the medium of words but through body language (via head, legs, fingers or body movement) are prevalent.
After staying in the US for more than a quarter of a century, the feeling is still more of integration rather than adoption of culture; it is totally different from where we came from. Here, we learned to become more tolerant of other people’s ways, selecting only a few typical values in order to adjust to a new way of dealing with others. We find ourselves rejecting a number of values deemed necessary in the dominant American culture and adopting only the minimum to be considered standard. American culture values education by encouraging the older adults to continue their education. We do have evidence; education helps us step up on the ladder of opportunity, knowing that our effort will not be vain. Although learning is a lonely pursuit, the result is oftentimes success.
Reading helps us to understand the value of people from different backgrounds. We accept what makes them different from ourselves. Luckily, we do not suffer from our cultural differences in the classroom. Although most of the groups in our presentations have three different cultures, it does not affect us in our clinical practice; we all follow the dominant culture, the American culture.
Each culture is unique in a way. It is inevitable that we become prisoners of own culture; often falling into judgment of other cultures according to our standard. The diversity in American society, particularly in the classroom, helps us appreciate rather than judge other cultures. An example is at the workplace where the tearoom is a congregation of different cooking habits, various food and spices that come lunchtime all different flavors are widely accepted. As Human being, we have to be ready for improvement and learn to adjust without generating immense change by breaking our tradition. Despite learning and experiencing that culture shapes us, I believe that the truth is, we shape culture.