Examples Of Self Awareness And Cultural Understanding

Self-Awareness and Cultural Understanding
A person is shaped by their past, but is also shaped by the past of those around them.
My maternal grandmother was born in the Netherlands and came over on a ship at age 3. Their family was in search of medical assistance for my great grandmother who was ill. Unfortunately, she died soon after they arrived in America. My grandmother had 3 other siblings and it was hard on her father, so he searched for a new wife. The woman he wanted to marry refused to marry him unless he would become a Christian. So he became a Christian, married, and they had two children of their own
I know less about my maternal grandfather’s background. His grandparents traveled from Netherlands and settled in West Michigan. I know my grandpa was also raised in a Christian home and I know that he enlisted in the army but was never called to war. My grandpa is currently alive, he attends church twice a week with my Grandma. He works for Family Fare as a produce manager, he has 2 home businesses. One of which is taxidermy and the other is breeding bunnies to supply to pet stores. He likes to stay busy.
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So as you can imagine it was easy to discriminate against people who were not a part of my life. My dad holds a lot of racism, as does all my grandparents. Due to my mother not much of that wore off on me, but it still had an impact. One that I am still fighting. But the more I am exposed to people of other races and cultures the better I am at defeating those biases and false opinions. Western Michigan University has helped me a lot with this. I use to fear Arabs and now I am perfectly fine with them. That sounds terrible, but I had never known an Arab before. All I had seen was Osama Binladen, Saddam Hussein, and 9/11 on T.V. Like I said I lived in a very republican community where I never heard anything good about an Arab. So I was just learning from the people around