Personal Narrative: Cultural Perspective

Personal Narrative: Cultural Perspective

What is culture? Culture is the idea of what is wrong or right, the concept of what is acceptable within our society. Culture serves us as a guide, taking us to the "right way" and helping us to make sense of things that surrounds us. There are many different cultures around the world. A lot of them are similar in specific ways and others are just completely different, this difference explains why we think that people from different backgrounds are "weird".

The person that I interviewed is from the United States; he is 20 years old and a student at Tri-State University. John Smith is an African American from East Chicago, IN. John comes from a community where Hispanic people represents 60% of the population and African Americans represents 40%. There is no existence of White European Americans in his community. He has two siblings and his parents are still married. He came to TSU to play basketball and get his degree in communications.

Comparing John's culture to mine was very interesting. I'm from Brazil, a third world country in South America and I'm also a communications major at Tri-State University. In general, I can say that our cultures are somewhat similar. Our countries are both a democracy. Elections, a president, and the senate are common characteristics of our democratic countries. Our laws are similar as well. The only difference is that in Brazil they are not enforced effectively. Therefore, people do not really care about our laws and they can get away with a lot of things just by bribing the police. Politicians are seen, in general, as corrupted people that only care about their own benefit, maybe this is why our economy is so bad. Our cou...

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... dollars right now, all of them answered they would buy something very expensive. If the same question were asked to people from Brazil, a lot of the answers would be something along the line, " I would travel around the world!" This response shows how self-centered and materialistic Americans can be most of the times. This individualistic view of the world just allows them to think about their own benefits and nothing else. That is why their awareness of other cultures is so poor and their geographical knowledge is less accurate when comparing to Brazilians.

To conclude, I would say that these two cultures are somewhat alike, but each has its own uniqueness and this it what makes the world interesting for us. Being able to learn about different cultures in this class is a good opportunity to open our eyes for what we have been missing out during this entire time.