There are many things that can influence the way why we are what we are today and one of those many things is culture. Each and every one of us longs for a simplistic yet unique sense of culture. When we are in our home country, we feel as if we are going to be comfortable wherever we go because we perceive everybody likes everybody as long as we are in our home country. If we are removed from that comfort zone, a lot of people would tend to be more disturbed, perhaps because they cannot move freely anymore and the feeling is just different.
Upon knowing that America, known as one of the most economically stable or even the most powerful nation in the world, has a wide diversity of citizens too, it thrilled me. A non US native who did not have the chance to visit the place in his entire life would have thought that there are only two races of people living in the US: The white and the black Americans, but that assumption was absolutely wrong. America is composed of a greatly diverse culture and each of those cultures has a lot of roots.
Some of the citizens may have originated from an Irish family line and some may even come from a Chinese family line. This aroused an emotion that encourages me to learn more about what really lies behind the glorious yet prosperous face of America. Is it the people? Is culture the only thing that concerns people above everything else? Genetics and tracing the family tree also surprised me how families devoted time and effort to know where they came from or what their origins were. Your own origins are such pleasant things to know and no one would really want to miss the chance to discover where they came from.
It also opened my mind about how culture and roots affect how people behave and how people dream what they want to become when they grow up. And ultimately, it opened my mind about the importance of history, because without realizing it for a long time, I have learned that we are the sum of all the people in the past.
References
The Faces of America. Kunhardt McGee Productions and Inkwell Films. Stephen Colbert, Kristi
Yamaguchi, Mike Nichols, Eva Longoria, Elizabeth Alexander, Mario Batali, Yo-Yo Ma, Mehmet Oz, Queen Noor, Malcolm Gladwell, Louise Erdrich, Meryl Streep and Henry Louis Gates Jr. 2011. Film.
