HereAmIAmMe
Member
- Apr 3, 2013
- 96
- 21
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I'm color blind (or color challenged if you prefer.) I'm talking actual colors here. Red and green to be specific. I noticed it in elementary school when I constantly had to read the labels on crayons to get the colors right.
This is similar to what you could call my "racial vision." I am not very good at identifying people based on a "race." Most of the time someone has to "label" someone as being a particular race for me to know.
And really what difference can "race" make anyways? I mean it's just a wrapper right? Transplant my mind into a body of any kind you like and I would still be me.
Culture on the other hand...
I was dropped into the Philippines with almost no preparation. For the first month I might as well have been on another planet. I could barely understand anyone. The culture was such a shock that I wondered if I would ever be comfortable there. I got used to it eventually. In the end it was as much of a shock returning to the US as it had been going there. I loved the people that i knew in the Philippines. Some of them I hold to be the finest examples of humanity that I will ever encounter. Some aspects of Filipino culture on the other hand still make me cringe. It is common practice, for example, to simply toss trash on the ground in many areas of the Philippines. Its a habit that I find disgusting. It doesn't devalue the people who do it. It is merely a habit that has been developed by living in a specific environment.
When you get used to living a certain way you develop habits that are simply a part of the way you live. It's unavoidable. When you transplant yourself into a different culture and bring those habits with you there will be conflict. Is one culture more valuable than another? That's not for me to say. But when you bring that culture into my neighborhood with all of its differences can I really help it if those differences are hard for me to swallow? And if your culture does have value does not my own culture have value of its own? Am I responsible to change to accommodate your culture? Are you responsible to change to fit in?
As with the Filipinos I can hate an aspect of a culture without hating the people who practice that culture. Is it wrong for me to hate even that much though?
This is similar to what you could call my "racial vision." I am not very good at identifying people based on a "race." Most of the time someone has to "label" someone as being a particular race for me to know.
And really what difference can "race" make anyways? I mean it's just a wrapper right? Transplant my mind into a body of any kind you like and I would still be me.
Culture on the other hand...
I was dropped into the Philippines with almost no preparation. For the first month I might as well have been on another planet. I could barely understand anyone. The culture was such a shock that I wondered if I would ever be comfortable there. I got used to it eventually. In the end it was as much of a shock returning to the US as it had been going there. I loved the people that i knew in the Philippines. Some of them I hold to be the finest examples of humanity that I will ever encounter. Some aspects of Filipino culture on the other hand still make me cringe. It is common practice, for example, to simply toss trash on the ground in many areas of the Philippines. Its a habit that I find disgusting. It doesn't devalue the people who do it. It is merely a habit that has been developed by living in a specific environment.
When you get used to living a certain way you develop habits that are simply a part of the way you live. It's unavoidable. When you transplant yourself into a different culture and bring those habits with you there will be conflict. Is one culture more valuable than another? That's not for me to say. But when you bring that culture into my neighborhood with all of its differences can I really help it if those differences are hard for me to swallow? And if your culture does have value does not my own culture have value of its own? Am I responsible to change to accommodate your culture? Are you responsible to change to fit in?
As with the Filipinos I can hate an aspect of a culture without hating the people who practice that culture. Is it wrong for me to hate even that much though?