Culture and Perspective

Happy Saturday!

This week is all about diversity, culture, and perspective while relating that to how we as individuals navigate through our environment.

It's interesting for this week's blog because this conversation came up naturally between me and the gentleman who is courting me. As a Black woman, I realize there are inherent stereotypes and misconceptiona about me that have been the general framework for how the world nviews me. I'm either the Black woman from the syrup bottle, a Nicki Minaj, or the "loud" "ghetto" baby mother with the fake long nails and nasty attitude. Unfortunately, none of those sound too appealing and don't fit me exactly individually.

If I am being candid, I am a mixture of all three in my own self-fufilling prophetic way. I'm a sassy, sultry, motherly Black woman if we look into that stereotypical context; but I am also much more than that and the very idea of me not fitting into one of more of those three categories baffles people of other backgrounds.

The gentleman courting me is a white guy, an older gentleman in his 30's and seems pretty well-rounded. We have previously spoken on culture and cultural differences but when we divulged deeper into discussing privledge, "deep culture", and dominant cultural oppression, he got offended and defensive. Of course I expected this but seriously :/

It baffles me how white people are conditioned to feel that eliminating racial bias and racist undertones in our social culture perpetuated by an oppressive dominant culture is to carry this bullshit " We are all one race:human race " concept.

When asked about how he feels diversity and culture affects him compared to people if color, he immediately refers tonhim growing up in  a "diverse" neighborhood with no racisim. That made me laugh. He also felt that exaggerating our differences through cultural practices instead of just adopting "American" cultural practices is part of why there is so much of a toxic climate between race. When told that that is false and only further proves that be is privledge as a white male to force-feed cultural practices that make him comfortable, he was immediately offended and felt he was attacked for being white.

Needless to say, he and I have alternating viewpoints on culture, diversity, and perspective. If anything, this further proves that the discussion of individual differences and how they make America beautiful and iconic is useful and needed to alleviate ignorance. Burying our cultural variances under a defacto dominant culture creates internal and external strife that further deepens the divide of an individual, their identity, and their respective communities.

Having these tough conversations with our young ones about identiy, culture, and diversity early allows those attidues to be normalized and create an environment of total acceptance and understanding.