Blog # 2

The way that Parisa felt that she was treated by her European peers really interested me while I was reading. They thought of her as a stereotypical Muslim woman and were not expecting her to be creative and expressive. Her peers were not open minded what so ever when it came to Parisa’s culture. They were only thinking of her in the stereotypical way. Her European peers seemed to be practicing the essentialist views of culture since they could only view Parisa in one way and were surprised when she acted another way. Essentialists see culture as very “black and white”. They don’t see how culture can be intertwined with others and how individuals within a culture can still be unique individuals. The idea that if you think that you need to know about someone’s presumed national culture before you can effectively communicate with them is also something that caught my attention while reading. By thinking that you need to know about their culture first, you are defining the person before you even meet them. However, that is how essentialists think. They think that each culture is completely different and that all the persons in a culture are the same. A non-essentialist would get to know the person first before making a judgment on that person. The saying “you can’t judge a book by its cover” is how a non-essentialist would view the idea of communicating with people and getting to know them. The thought that when people are in strange environments, they can sometimes exaggerate specific aspects of their culture kind of confuses me. I understand that when a person is in and awkward situation, they tend to stick to things and topics that they are most comfortable with. However, I find it odd that people would play into the stereotypes that society has given their own culture. Like I said before though, maybe they think that those aspects of their culture will be able to be understood best since outsiders to their culture have probably some knowledge of the stereotypes. I feel like being comfortable is what the essentialist view of culture is all about. In the essentialist view, cultures are not complicated. The borders between different cultures are very clear and there is no mixing, no connections and no critical thinking involved. In my opinion, the essentialist view is rather boring. I also agree with the idea that we all have our own unique cultural identity. As Holliday shared, he is part of a variety of different cultural groups and so is everyone else. If people within the same cultural groups find themselves being part of other and different cultural groups, then I think it’s obvious that even people that share a culture can still be very different. We talk about this idea a lot in my Bilingual Education classes. A lot of times, Hispanics are lumped into one large cultural group. While these students may share the same native language and in that sense share an aspect of culture, they are all extremely different. A student from Mexico and a student from Honduras eat different food, listen to different music and may even speak different dialects of Spanish. It’s important, as future educators, to recognize that even though students may seem similar in certain aspects, they are all unique and have their own experiences that shape their own personal identity and culture.