He feels that his interactions with his grandparents and the rest of the extended family has never been as genuine as they could have been, if his parents didn’t make him visit them every weekend. He said that he never really felt like chatting to them, as most of the time he wanted to be out with his friends instead and was always impatiently waiting for lunch to be over. As a result of that, he still finds family meals as something negative. When he hears that his friends are meeting their family for lunch, he can’t help but feel sorry for them, even if that’s something they enjoy doing. And Peter himself spends most of his weekends doing things as opposite to that as possible, for example plays soccer, goes out with friends, goes to the beach, etc.
His suggestion of lessening the impact of cultural divides was rather ambitious. He believes that the cultural differences and the issues that come along with them will not disappear until the different cultures themselves disappears. He does understand that it is close to impossible but feels that there is no other way of avoiding cultural divides.
Interviewee Two – Miriam:
Ethnical Background: Lebanese born, she and her family came to Australia fleeing Lebanon during war.
Strong cultural values held by her family made her grow up in a very closed and small community. Miriam personally doesn’t agree with being raised that way and believes that, if there are other cultures existing around, people should be exposed to them as well. She was not aware of other cultures around her when growing up, as she was schooled in an Armenian school and was brought up in a Lebanese neighbourhood. That way she only got to see a minority of her own culture and was not allowed to experience any other cultures. Hence she believes that she would be better off growing up in Lebanon, as at least then she would have experienced every part of her culture because she would have been exposed to her grandparents’ and cousins’ influence.
Whilst growing up, Miriam believed that it was wrong to accept other cultures and to make friends with people from them. She believes that most children from her culture were raised and educated that way. She came across different cultures in high school and that’s when she started to challenge her believes and accept other societies. Even though it was against her parents, that new discovery was so exciting for her; it encouraged her get to know the ‘outside world’ better.
The way her culture influenced her interactions with others, was that she was not interacting at all with anyone who wasn’t Lebanese or Armenian. She didn’t even know anything about other cultures and was unable to tell how much different they were from her own culture.
Miriam suggested that everyone should be exposed to as many cultures as possible while growing up. That way, children would learn about other societies and wouldn’t find them different or strange. It would just be a natural part of their lives to have all the mixture of cultures around them. She believes that there would be no cultural divides if people had enough awareness of the cultures around them.
Ethnocentrism is a tendency to look at the world primarily from the perspective of one’s own culture. It is defined as the viewpoint that ‘one’s own group is the centre of everything’, and that’s what all the other groups are judged against. Ethnocentrism often entails the belief that one’s own race or ethnic group is the most important and/or that some or all aspects of its culture are superior to those of other groups. Within this ideology, individuals will judge other groups in relation to their own particular ethnic group or culture, especially with concern to language, behaviour, customs and religion (Salter, F.K., 2002).
The ethnocentric person will see those cultures other than their birth culture, as being not only different but also wrong to some degree. The ethnocentric person will resist or refuse the new meanings and new thought patterns since they are seen ad being less desirable then those of the birth culture. (Palmer, 1999)
It is clearly visible that Miriam’s family is a perfect example of an ethnocentric family. They are judging all the other ethnic groups against their own culture – the other cultures are wrong because they don’t follow the same norms, dress in a different way, they have a different lifestyle, etc. They also considered other cultures to be wrong only because they were different.
A person who is born into a particular culture and grows up absorbing the values and behaviours of the culture will develop patterns of thought reflecting the culture as normal. If the person then experiences other cultures that have different values and normal behaviours, the person finds that the thinking patterns appropriate to their birth culture and the meaning their birth culture attaches to behaviours are not appropriate for the new culture. However, since the person is accustomed to their birth culture, it can be difficult for the person to see the behaviours of people from a different culture from the viewpoint of that culture rather than their own (Beek, 1996).
I didn’t really pick any examples proving that Peter’s family going through the same faze. They seem to have very strong rules within their own family but don’t seem to judge other cultures against their own beliefs.
I believe the line between ethnocentrism and prejudice or racism is very thin and Miriam’s parents’ beliefs could be easily classified as being racist. According to Reilly (2002), racism and prejudice could be defined as an adverse judgement or opinion formed beforehand or without knowledge of the facts of the other culture. That kind of thinking could be identified in Miriam’s family. She was not allowed to peer with children from other cultures, as she was taught that it was something negative. Knowing how much her parents wanted to stay away from other ethnics, I can only assume that they knew very little about their culture and life and were definitely unable to look at the world from the other cultures’ point of view. Yet, they insisted their beliefs were wrong and inappropriate.
Reilly defines prejudice as an irrational hostile attitude, fear or hatred towards a particular group, race or religion. There definitely appears to be a lot of negative feelings towards other ethnics in Miriam’s family. It was not stated by Miriam but Reilly suggests that racism is caused by fear of the unknown. It is very likely that the lack of knowledge about other cultures made her family such a closed system. Since her parents were the first generation to leave their home country and get exposed to other societies, it must have been a scary experience to suddenly see so much variety. Locking themselves in a Lebanese neighbourhood was a form of defence to protect their culture from being taken over by other cultures.
Acculturation is a process in which members of one cultural group adopt the beliefs and behaviours of another group. Although acculturation is usually in the direction of a minority group adopting habits and language patterns of the dominant group, acculturation can be reciprocal; that is, the dominant group also adopts patterns typical of the minority group. Assimilation of one cultural group into another may be evidenced by changes in language preference, adoption of common attitudes and values, membership in common social groups and institutions, and loss of separate political or ethnic identification (Mio, 1999).
The process of acculturation definitely did not occur in Miriam’s family. It was highly avoided by her parents in fact. They did not adopt the beliefs or behaviours of the dominant ethnic group and were decidedly against them.
Peter’s family, on the other hand, seems to be acculturated within the Australian culture without any bigger trouble. I did not recognise any signs of ethnocentrism during the interview and Peter, as well as his parents, seemed to have adopted the common attitudes, beliefs and values of the Australian society.
Conclusion
Interviewing two individuals from diverse cultures was not only a great learning experience but it also helped me analyse the intricate and the obvious issues pertaining to them in that culture. It has also taught me that an issue, even though it may be common, would need to be addressed in a diverse manner as the culture itself.
References:
Beek, A.V. (1996) – ‘Cross-Cultural Counselling’
Mio, J. S. (1999) – ‘Key Words in Multicultural Interventions: A Dictionary’
Palmer, S. (1999) – ‘Counselling in a Multicultural Society’
Reilly, K. (2002) – ‘Racism: A Global Reader’
Salter, F.K.(2002) – ‘Risky Transactions, Trust, Kinship and Ethnicity’, Oxford and New York: Berghahn.
