Cultural Differences and Diversity

In the modern world, culture has been regarded as the prism by which people judge their environment, thus determining what is right or wrong, correct or improper, fair or considered odd. According to (Belfield), we feel the cultural shock as we immerse ourselves in a new culture. Furthermore, cultural diversity enables one to identify, comprehend, and appreciate the various cultures we encounter. The significance of this paper is to help us learn the right ways to integrate into a new society.
My grandparents were a well-educated family who lived in the area. My mother and her siblings were brought up in this environment by their parents. Whenever it was summer, my grandparents used to take my mother and her siblings to Texas to visit their uncle. People living in the city are by far much more educated, prosperous, and very thrifty. The city provides a serene environment to live, but it is filled with a lot of noise from traffic and the high number of residents. My mother was very anxious to visit their uncle Charles in Texas as this was a perfect chance to break from the usual. There were lots of activities on the farm such as horse riding, chasing chickens, drawing water from the wells and picking of fruits like strawberries.

One evening during the Easter holidays, my dad came home and announced that we were to visit Uncle Charley and Aunt Dora from Virginia. I was very happy to hear of the information. Eventually, this was a chance to break the monotony that the city had to offer. The day came, and my dad drove us to the farm. From the look of things, it seemed that the people were poor; even the roof threatened to cave in. The house had a broken window, there was no grass along the paths just but few weeds growing through a couple of tires thrown around the house. I could not understand why people living here were so poor since in the city the only poor people were those who either could not speak English or couldn’t find good jobs. The environment here was very different from what was present in my hometown.

On the farm, things seemed very different from the city. For example, Aunt Dora had a wall-mounted magneto telephone that she used to call her neighbor informing her to come and get her wandering cows. While preparing for lunch, Aunt Dora picked some vegetables from the kitchen garden and had us wash our hands under the pump in the backyard. Eating and enjoying fresh food was a rare occasion for us in the city.

Clearly, gratitude and kindness are virtues usually taken for granted. Evidently, people living in the farms are full of a charitable behavior and character as compared to those residing in the city. For instance, in my case, I would grow up, go to college and get a good degree. After completing college, I would have the chance to choose whatever I deemed necessary with my life; the choice of who to marry, where to live and even how to live my life. On the other hand, people from the farm do not have much choice. For example, neither Uncle Charles nor Aunt Dora finished high school because they were needed on the farm, which they never left.

Without a doubt, it is clear that one should not judge people based on their culture. The most important thing is to appreciate and respect the differences between the two cultures. Cultural diversity influences how each one of us can contribute positively towards the larger society. Clearly, cultural diversity is the only thing that we have in common.

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Work Cited

Belfield, Lisa D. “Cultural Diversity in the United States – Kaplan University”. Kaplan University. N.p., 2017. Web. 26 Mar. 2017.