Cultures

Pat Murphy

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Title: Cultures

Seinfeld and its comedic chops have always been on point. Thus, when it chose to address an issue as sensitive as racial discrimination in the American culture, the way they choose to portray is exactly on point. Not only that but we, being that our country is a melting pot of different cultures that whatever we do is recognized globally. That the way we talk and the way we behave has become the gold standard for just about anything.

The United States is the third largest country in the world. The thing most of us living in the US do not realize is that we have become insensitive to stereotyping people from other countries and cultures because of the actions of a few members of that community. That our choice of words in a certain setting may offend someone, seeing as an immigrant enters the country every 33 seconds and a baby is born 8 seconds in the US CITATION Kim17 \l 1033 (Zimmermann), many of which can be third culture kids. In our naivety, we have failed to realize the fact that the gestures we may use daily might be considered rude in other parts of the world.

We call Muslims terrorists because there is a fraction among them that chooses to kill people from other cultures just as much as they kill their people ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"NmRWITqD","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Gottschalk and Greenberg)","plainCitation":"(Gottschalk and Greenberg)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":218,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/0omESN17/items/TUJ7VKWD"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/0omESN17/items/TUJ7VKWD"],"itemData":{"id":218,"type":"book","title":"Islamophobia: making Muslims the enemy","publisher":"Rowman & Littlefield","ISBN":"0-7425-5286-1","author":[{"family":"Gottschalk","given":"Peter"},{"family":"Greenberg","given":"Gabriel"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2008"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Gottschalk and Greenberg). We call Asians smart because they have the tendency to put in the work and the effort needed to achieve a goal. We believe that every Russian we meet is conspiring against us and every Indian is out to get out jobs ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"Cv6vclIm","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Shih et al.)","plainCitation":"(Shih et al.)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":216,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/0omESN17/items/S3SRMYKN"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/0omESN17/items/S3SRMYKN"],"itemData":{"id":216,"type":"article-journal","title":"Stereotype susceptibility: Identity salience and shifts in quantitative performance","container-title":"Psychological science","page":"80-83","volume":"10","issue":"1","author":[{"family":"Shih","given":"Margaret"},{"family":"Pittinsky","given":"Todd L."},{"family":"Ambady","given":"Nalini"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["1999"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Shih et al.). This deeply impacts our interpersonal communication since the people from other countries, courtesy of media and the United States of the internet, are well aware of the fact of what the loudest among us think of them. This causes them to enter our country with a sense of apprehension, with an inkling of how they would be perceived and treated.

A reasonable, workable solution to this issue is eradicating these stereotypes associated with individuals from a certain culture. We need to raise consciousness about the fact that our everyday speech is filled with racial slurs, which is creating animosity between various segments of our society. We need to regularize social media and bring awareness to the fact that our actions, our words, our behavior may be offensive to someone. Once we are watchful of what we are doing, we may be able to take this divide caused by cultural discrimination, one step at a time.

Works Cited

Gottschalk, Peter, and Gabriel Greenberg. Islamophobia: Making Muslims the Enemy. Rowman & Littlefield, 2008.

Shih, Margaret, et al. “Stereotype Susceptibility: Identity Salience and Shifts in Quantitative Performance.” Psychological Science, vol. 10, no. 1, 1999, pp. 80–83.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Zimmermann, Kim Ann. "American Culture: Traditions and Customs of the United States." Live Science (2017): 3. Document.

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