Journalism 2 Class luis jennifer mason robert forrest casey caitlin sarah mason lia alexandra luis natalie

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Broken Mirrors

One of the reasons that it is so important for people of different cultures to interact with one another is that different cultures capture different pieces of truth. When you learn to see yourself and your own culture through the eyes of someone from another culture, it's like looking in a broken mirror. The other culture reflects certain fragments of truth back to you that you wouldn't see otherwise. Meanwhile, you hold other pieces of the mirror, and you reflect your own truth back to them. Together, the two cultures hold a much more complete reflection of the true picture than they do apart. For example, in Latino culture, a huge emphasis is placed on family, or community. In White America, our old people get carted away to nursing homes while our kids are raised on television and our adults are sucked up into the rat-race. Latinos are much less likely to let that happen. They sacrifice a heck of a lot to make sure that the family stays intact, which is why you see huge extended families living together much of the time. Kids don't worry too much about getting out of the house. Instead, they stay home and take care of their parents and grandparents. However, American Individualism does have it's merits. In White America, a kid can be whatever they want to be without worrying about family honor or anything like that. That level of freedom is not found as much in more community-oriented societies. So... community is important, but so is the individual. Truth is a very nuanced sort of thing, and is seldom a matter of "either-or." It is almost always a matter of "both-and." Which is why we need each other... all of us hold a different piece of the mirror.

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