Perspectives on Diversity and Culture

Amanda Bavuso

Amanda is my sister’s sister-in-law. She is about my age and comes from a similar background as myself.  

• Culture: helps you define who you are, what your background is, and where you fit. Culture can be seen through traditions, clothing, decorations, and ceremonies.

• Diversity: is simply how God created the world ... Yellow, red, black, and white…tall and short, big and small. Diversity keeps new ideas moving. Without it we would all be the same ... How boring.

Tony Bavuso

Tony is my brother-in-law. He is a couple years older than me. He was home-schooled until his junior year of high school.

• Culture is how certain ideas and ideals are applied commonly by a group of people that identify those people as a distinct group and as different from other groups of peoples.

• Diversity is the state of having a group of similar things that are also different from each other.

Clay Campbell 

Clay is like a father-figure to me and a grandfather-figure to my children. I have known him many years from the church we both attend regularly. He is a Marine to the core, which is a little amusing if you knew him. He is very short in stature, but he is a Marine none the less. 

• Culture is the characteristics of an environment that depicts the values of the society in question. An example would be the military (at least the Marine Corps as I knew it). The culture of the Marine Corps was one of Honor, Courage and Commitment.

• Diversity would be a mixture of cultures in a larger society. Again, using the military as an example. The Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard and Merchant Marines all have different cultures but all begin with U. S. And together they make up our Armed Forces. Semper Fi!

Karen Morrison

Karen is the wife of very dear friend. She is Puerto Rican. I don’t know her very well since they live in Florida but we keep in touch through emails and texting.

• I would have to say in my culture we have different customs like the food we make...like my mom makes rice with beans, platians...they way the puertoricans teach different things to their kids. For example I learned to cook at 10 turning 11 years of age. So it does depends. Now, I'm not sure about diversity.

Which aspects of culture and diversity that I have studied in this course are included in the answers I received—and what are some examples?

• A lot of the answers I received talked about the “surface culture” such as when Amanda talked about how culture can be seen through traditions, clothing, decorations, and ceremonies. When she talked about diversity she talked about being yellow, red, black, and white…tall and short, big and small.  I really enjoyed how Clay used the military to define culture and diversity. I feel that his definitions talked about “surface culture” and also the “deeper culture”.

Which aspects have been omitted—and what are some examples of such omission?

• I feel that the “deeper culture” was not thought about with the exception of Clay. No one really addressed the “invisible” part of culture or diversity. Clay talked about the underlying values.

In what ways has thinking about other people’s definitions of culture and diversity influenced my own thinking about these topics?

• While talking to people about their definitions of culture and diversity, I realized that many people still only think about the “surface culture” and never really take time to think about the “deeper underlying culture” that truly makes us who we are today.