Cross-Cultural Conflicts In The United States

Post your thoughts about the potential impacts of cross-cultural conflicts within the United States.

As a member of the Military Intelligence Community and an All Source Intel Analyst instructor, the concepts of cross cultural awareness is something that I must consider and address frequently. I am a certified instructor for an INSCOM approved Critical Thinking Course that was designed and developed off the teachings of Dr. Richard Paul and Dr. Linda Elder from the Critical Thinking Foundation out of San Francisco, CA. In this course we discuss how different aspects of self and community contribute to the differences experienced across different cultures.

The first thing that we must remember is that cognitive biases in the brain are unavoidable

This is also related to the groupthink and herd behavior. How this effects the cross-cultural conflicts in American is the jumping on the bandwagon because of one’s own little conviction and the ease to fall on the stronger convictions of other. One might feel slighted because of a cultural difference but will use the movements of others to cause unnecessary extremes in peaceful protests. The bandwagon is a compounding effect and has the potential to take a cross-cultural difference that is being brought to the forefront for movement and change, and drive it to conflict and discontent. The bandwagon has the potential to completely destroy the legitimacy of a movement and this has been demonstrated recently with the “Black Lives Matter” campaign. The movement is important and has the possibility to really effect change, however because of the current actions of bandwagon-ers, the movement has received a lot of bad

First, culture is a shared system of meaning and knowledge conveyed between groupings of people. It is a way of thinking, the guidelines of human relationships, and it operates subconsciously. We learn culture through socialization and there are cultures within cultures… within cultures… within cultures… One can be a member of many cultures in many different places and many different situations. However, often in the US cultural differences are described through ethnic groups which consist of individuals who are bound together, often closely, by a shared cultural structure and sense of ethnic identity. The central and defining feature of an ethnic group may be racial, religious, geopolitical, linguistic, traditional, tribal, or some other combination of these or other characteristics. Because of these close bonds with which these groups are culturally/ethnically connected a tendency, and varying degrees, of ethnocentrism can exist. The ethnocentric view that other ethnic groups and their member are inferior may be expressed in a number of ways. For example, through prejudice, paternalism, contempt, discrimination, scapegoating, racism, and genocide. In the US we have seen several examples of this throughout history and some if these continues to be played out in America