Reflective Essay: My Cultural Identity

My Cultural Identity I have never really sat down and thought about my cultural identity, at least until I started this class. I never thought about how my identity was different than that of other members in my community. I also never put much mind to the communication challenges that I could face when speaking with members of my community. To be totally honest, there is more cultural differences that I have faced and actually paid attention to, and now I seem to understand the importance of how one culture differs from another. In the text, we talked about during the course of this class is stereotypes, which the text defines as “widely held beliefs about a group of people (Intercultural Communication).” In my life and in my community,

I grew up believing that this was right, it was how everyone else is. Until sometime in Middle school, when learning about black history and the civil war. I learned so much from this teacher, and to her I owe so much. I learned that not everyone is prejudice, just because people are a different color than you, or even different beliefs than you, is not a reason to stereotype and be prejudice. From that time on I started to make friends with people of African American decent and I learned firsthand that I was brought up

Despite my efforts, I failed in the department. I upset my parents many times, because we got into heated debates about how people of other races than us are bad. But after what my middle school teacher taught me and opened my eyes as to how things are wrong, I started to develop my own mindset and broadened my network of friends. I no longer listened to what I was taught. What aspects of intercultural communication have I faced in my life? In my community there are multiple mini marts and gas stations that are ran by people of other cultures. Many of these people that own and run these businesses have a hard time speaking English. I have learned that I have to slow down what I say so that they can process what I am wanting. There are also times that it is very hard for me to understand them. I feel so bad that I have to ask them to repeat