Culture Clash

In class we have just finished reading the book titled "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down" by Anne Fadiman. After reading this book it has opened my eyes to the major crisis in health care in regards to dealing with those from different cultural backgrounds. In this case it was that of a Hmong family and their child who had severe epilepsy. I have worked in the health care field for over 5 years and have realized during that time there was an issue at times when dealing with those who may have a different culture or language. There were those in the clinic that you assumed understood the directions and just kind of shrugged when they left and hoped they did. There was the time when one of our female doctors had left for an emergency and a male doctor took her patients for the afternoon. There was a Somali woman that was scheduled and we had to wait for 45 minutes for her husband to arrive since in their culture a male doctor is not allowed to examine a female patient without a male family member present. At the time it just seemed like another strange thing that some patients from different cultures did. After reading this book I have a whole new outlook.

The parents of this young girl in the book had no clue how anything in the United States worked. They knew their own beliefs and cultural practices and when these clashed with the modern American medical system tragedy struck in many ways. The family did not understand what was going on when the invasive tests were being performed on her. They did not follow the orders for medications and treatments at home. They did not understand. To them epilepsy had occurred to their daughter when her soul was scared away. They had their own traditional Hmong ways of treating this, which were not going to cure her medically at all however not one medical staff ever asked or tried to understand where they were coming from. If this had happened there could have possibly been a compromise made. If there was some effort taken out to ensure a translator was available there may not have been so many misunderstandings. I could go on and on about what went wrong. The point being is that having people in our country of many different cultures and backgrounds is not going to change. There needs to be some sort of collaboration between the biomedical culture and that of the patient so that a desirable outcome is achieved by all. It may not be the ideal situation but at least everyone will be satisfied. Now I am a full advocate for the education of immigrants of the English language and the practices of our country, but we cannot expect people who are living here to completely do away with their own history and culture just because they now live in America.

Class Differences

In this course we have talked on a couple occasions about socioeconomic class and how it relates to communication. We have determined that most in American society don't really like to talk about class or like to acknowledge that there are drastic differences in how people are treated based on class status. Class usually refers to the amount of money a person makes or has access to and people tend to not discuss their financial status publically. This is fine, but when the differences in class begin to cause discrimination and stereotyping a problem begins to occur.

As I have said before, I work in a suburban school district as a classroom nurse in the medical impairments program. This year we got two new students that had previously been in a more inner city school district. This is a family that I guess would be considered "low class" compared to most others in the school. Their clothes are not as nice, they receive free lunches and they talk with some slang and "city"talk as I have heard others say. They are two of maybe a handful of African American kids in this school. As the year has progressed I have noticed the different ways both students and staff have acted around these kids. At first I thought it may have been curiosity and getting adjusted to someone new, but now I am beginning to realize that it is also "class" stereotyping as well. The parents of these kids don't have a car all the time, are unable to pay for them to participate in school activities and field trips, and are not involved in the school as most other parents are. I have heard other staff members say "how can they live?", and kids ask them why they are never at any extracurricular activities. The kids are honest and say "We don't have a car" or " My mom ain't got not money." The other kids are shocked and then shy away and snicker back and forth. I get quite frustrated that instead of coming up with ways to help these kids out people tend to just step away and talk about them and their parents behind their backs. I do understand to some point that the parents could be a little more active with their children, try and find a job to get extra money, and so on but the kids should not have to suffer from this either. I think if people were just more open-minded and stepped outside their own safety zone to try and help others they may realize there is a whole lot more going on that they could help with. If the other parents would follow their kids would then realize that not everyone is quite as fortunate as they may be.

Communication in Clothing

In the latest chapter we have read for class we discovered the importance of non verbal communication in our daily lives. I discovered how clothing can be a persons way of non-verbally communicating themselves. I had of course realized that people dressed in different ways but had never really thought of it as a form of non verbal communication. If you walk into a busy mall on any given day you can see many, many different kinds of dress that people are wearing. A person also can get some information about a person simply based on their dress. The most obvious that many in my group talked about were Somalian and Muslim women. They wear the long dresses and head coverings. This can be both a way of communicating their religion and cultural background. If you see an Indian woman in her traditional Indian dress with the shawl and bright colors you know they are expressing their Indian heritage in their clothing. There are many other choices in clothing that "speak"a persons culture and/or religion such as Jewish, African or Native American.

There are also many variations that the American culture has come up with. You see the teenage girls who are trying to show off as much of their bodies as possible without being naked. There is the grunge look and the goth look. Dark clothing, makeup and lots of piercings and maybe tattoos. There are the people that dress up fancy all the time trying to show their "class'. You will see the conservative people dressed in long skirts, pants and shirt sleeves. The list could go on and on. The point being that people can communicate a lot about themselves, their likes, and their way of life just by the clothing they choose to put on each day. I never really thought about how much a person can reveal about themselves through their dress.

Importance of Family History

This week in class we have been discussing a person's history and how it relates to communication. I discovered during this how important knowing of your personal family history can be to a person. I know very little about my family history. From what I have gathered it just didn't seem important to my family. Although I was raised primarily by my mother I actually know the most about my fathers history than my mom's, and even that is minimal. After reading the text and reading some discussion from my classmates I realize this is an important thing for me to be missing. Having a knowledge of where your family came from and the struggles or triumphs they endured can really impact how a person feels about themselves and their family. It gives a sense of pride to have a story to pass down to your own children and information to share in daily life regarding your past. It can also help to bring a family closer together by giving them a historical tie to reminisce about and feel proud of. There can also be a sense of belonging to a particular group such as a religious background or ethnic identity. I know nothing of where my ancestors came from except for the fact that my paternal grandmother was of Navajo descent. I was raised with really no religious affiliation. My mother has an atheist view toward religion whereas my maternal grandmother said she was Lutheran although I never saw or heard of her going to church. These were the two most influential people in my lives while growing up and it left me confused as to what to believe religiously. I saw my friends going to church and participating in the activities their churches offered and I thought that was something I would like. Just to feel like I belonged to a group of some kind or had some type of community to relate to.

I have now realized how important having a "story" can be to a person. I try to gather as much information about my husband's and my families so my kids can have as much historical information on our family as possible. I try to make sure that we are involved in our community and groups so they can feel that sense of belonging that I did not as a child.

Ethnocentrism in the media.

I was watching television last night and was shocked to hear a particular advertisement that gives a perfect example of the ethnocentrism that is present in the media today. It was an ad for a cell phone company. The general idea of the ad was to promote that this company now offers free unlimited calling to all mobile phones regardless of what company it was. Then their spokesperson says something to the effect of " Since we live in the freest country in the world why shouldn't we have the freest cell phone plan." The comment that we live in the freest country in the world is a blatant example of ethnocentrism. Who is to say that the United States is the freest country in the world. Do we have more freedom that that of other democratic countries? The people of this country seem to think that we are better than everyone else. They seem to look down upon anything or anyone that may act different or have different values or cultures than they do. Just because a different country may have a different type of government or ethical system that does not make us any better than them? I don't think so.
Comments like this that are made in something as simple as a TV advertisement are what continues to fuel the ethnocentric view of many in our country. A message of diversity, cultural awareness, and global awareness should be portrayed instead. If our children are raised hearing these kind of messages on television how are they going to react when they get to school or into another social situation that involves different countries and cultures? Will they automatically assume they are better than everyone else because they are American? Probably so if the media continues to portray these types of messages.

Stereotyping

I work as a nurse in a public elementary school in the suburbs. This school is in a pretty affluent neighborhood and has a very small number of minority students. All of the staff is white and seem to be pretty well off. This year we got two new students into our special education program that are bussed to our school as their home school does not offer the programming they need. They are black and until this year were going to school in Minneapolis. I have been amazed at the stereotyping that has been going on toward these kids' parents since these girls have arrived at our school. The teachers put on a good front to the other students and toward the kids themselves but when its just the adults around their real thoughts sure show.

On the first day of school these kids showed up with nothing, no backpack, no supplies and had not eaten breakfast. Instantly their parents were not good parents, were lazy, and were "not real bright." The second day still they had nothing and no breakfast was given to them before school. I actually overheard a staff member saying "They obviously spend whatever money they have on looks and not important things for their kids like food." This was aimed at their appearance. The kids have their hair done nicely and braided and someone informed us all that that "costs a lot of money" to do. So most of the staff that are involved with these kids have now stereotyped these people based upon the fact that they are black, came from an inner city school, get free lunches, and didn't come with supplies. They have never met the parents and most have never even talked with them on the phone. In the end it turns out that at their old school all supplies were provided, there was a breakfast program, the mom does hair braiding out of her home for extra money (that's why their hair looks so nice) and they are the parents to 8 children all with special needs. This is a perfect example of how negative stereotyping and ethnocentrism can give a negative light to something that is actually quite good.

The Peace Imperative

After beginning my study of intercultural communications we began discussing different imperatives in studying intercultural communications. The peace imperative was particularly interesting to me as I have thought about this particular thing many times throughout my life. The basic question is : Can people with different cultures, religious beliefs, races etc.. live peacefully with one another? Obviously not, as there are countless wars and battles between countries, cities, religious groups and so on based upon one group not liking what the other believes. This has always been very hard to understand for me. I was raised to be very open minded and unbiased about anyone who may be "different" from me in any way. This was a hard concept for my mom to instill in me since I grew up in a very small town in northern Wisconsin that was far from diverse. As I grew older and began to pay attention to what these wars and fighting were supposedly about it really bothered me. It seems to always come down to one group fighting another over differences in one thing or another. Why is this? Would the world really be a good place if everyone thought the same way, had the same beliefs, and came from the same cultural background. I don't think so. The world is as awesome as it is because of all of these differences. Even in the United States, the diversity is what makes it a wonderful place. The different foods that are available, the stories you hear from other cultures, the many different choices in merchandise, and countless other things are what make life fun and interesting. I cannot understand why billions of dollars are spent and many, many lives are lost each year over nonsense fighting. That is money that could be spent for the millions of people in poverty in the world and lives that could be spent sharing culture and diversity. The popular question "Why can't we all just get along?" certainly comes into play here. This is certainly a topic that is not going to be solved any time soon if ever at all but hopefully little by little open minds and open communication can help some.