Impact of History and Cultural Diversity-Free-Samples for Students

Questions: 1.Investigate your cultural origins, the length of time your family has been present in Australia, and your cultural beliefs, values, attitudes and experiences. 2.Document your experience of discrimination, racism, prejudice, and cultural privilege and dominance in your own history and analyse the influence of this experience on your identity and assumptions. Answers: 1.We can define culture as a complex association of traditions, values, behaviours, beliefs, and material objects. Our cultures are often shared by shared by a large group of people and we pass down the cultures from one generation to the next. Commonalities in social backgrounds such as common religion, language, traditions and origin also lead to classification or differentiation of people (Forehand Kotchick, 2016). I was born and brought up in Australia. My parents belong to different cultures. My mother is from Lebanon, which is bounded on the east and north by Syria. My mothers birth place contains equal proportion of Muslim and Christian population. She is proficient in Arabic. She follows the Beirut accent, which is highly regarded in her community. Owing to her upper middle class family status, she was equally proficient in English. She relocated to Australia during the late 1980s to pursue higher education, following which she met my father. My mother used to live with her family in an apartment in Beirut, a densely populated area. There was an omnipresence of patriarchal religion in her community and women were generally expected to nurture and care for the family (Cleveland, Laroche Hallab, 2013). However, she was one of those who broke the traditional boundaries and reached Australia to pursue higher education. On the other hand, my father is from Egypt. He belongs to the larger population of Arabic speaking Sunni Muslims. There were few Christian minorities in his homeland who were generally Catholic or Protestants. He lived in Upper Egypt and is extremely proficient in English. My father had also learnt French as a foreign language during his high school days. He shifted to Australia after 1982, after receiving a job. Showing accordance to his cultural traditions, he is always considered to have more power in the household than my mother and is responsible for making the major decisions. My parents got married after they met each other in Australia. Their religious beliefs are similar. Both of them were practicing Sunni Muslims. The ethnic backgrounds of my parents have built in us the central belief of oneness of God. We are monotheistic and consider Koran to be the word of God. Our cultural background has inculcated in us the belief that souls exist before birth and after death. Althoug h polygamy is legal among our community, my parents are strictly against it and hold it as a social stigma. However, they are not conservative. Furthermore, the domestic units in my fathers culture regarded marriage as historically patrilocal where the bride had to move to the household of her husband. However, my parents established a new place of residence in Australia after getting married. They have been living in Western Sydney for more than 25 years. Our religion advocates for the division of property of a dead person among his heirs and surviving spouse. Although, male heirs are usually preferred over females in receiving shares that are twice as large, my father does not believe in this custom and has mentioned that we all siblings are equally inheritors of his belongings (Krishna-Hensel, 2016). Thus, I can state that I and my sister have not been raised by conservative parents. They are usually moderates. My cultural background believes in modest dressing in public and all female members of our family wear a head scarf to cover the hair and ears. My parents helped in enhancing our literacy levels by teaching us Engl ish as the first language. English is the language we speak at home. They often communicate with our relatives in Arabic. Although, I and my sisters are able to understand the language well, we tend to make a lot of mistakes while speaking it and need to work upon improving our mother tongue. In addition, they generally follow the principles of peaceful parenting (Coates, 2015). On most occasions they allow me to do what I intend to, but only when they are convinced enough that my demands are justifiable. They do not succumb to the give-in style of parenting and set limits with empathy. This gave me an opportunity to evaluate my wrong demands and helps me to manage self-behaviour. They have helped in defining age-appropriate boundaries for me and have inculcated in me the habit of knowing my own limitations. They trust me completely and are certain of the fact that a parent-child relationship always hinges on mutual trust. They believe that I am well aware of my personal boundaries and am responsible enough to take ownership of my own feelings. They have adopted a mini-democracy system at our home where we siblings are allowed to voice or opinion our thoughts on a particular matter. Middle Eastern parenting values generally emphasize on setting restrictions, permissivenes s and strict discipline among children at an early age. Moreover, this culture generally relies on placing high demands over the children and keep girls under heavy scrutiny (Khurshid, 2015). Unlike this authoritarian parenting style of the culture to which my parents belong, they have always focused on interdependence and have built a healthy and trusting relationship among the family members. Sitting down for dinner together strengthens our family bonding and provides a sense of security and belonging. It helps me to relieve my stress and also assists in adoption of healthy food choices. We usually follow a month of fasting for the Ramadan and also celebrate the Ester and Christmas season with our neighbours and friends. I have been taught to show signs of respect to seniors and use special terms to address them. My parents have adopted the practice of allowing personal and psychological space to us siblings, which immensely helps us in dealing with challenges and enhancing our thinking and physical capacities. Their moderate supervision on our activities have made it easier to talk to them about situations that require help. 2.My parents admitted me to a private Islamic school in our community. I did not face any kind of racial or religious discrimination during my schooling years. However, I did face avoidance from my peers at University for wearing the head-scarf or hijab. The human rights of all nations outline the rules that it is the birth right of all women to practise their religion (Butler Tavits, 2017). Women are always entitled with the prerogative of not being harassed due to perceptions that are related to their religion, ethnicity or nationality (Schachner, Noack, Van de Vijver Eckstein, 2016). Public facilities, education and places of employment are the three major areas where women are discriminated for wearing hijabs. Further, majority of my classmates who were non-Muslims did not approach me during group activities, which were a part of our curriculum. Such religion-based discrimination resulted in inequalities. This created a personal dissatisfaction and I sat at the rear of the clas sroom during tutorials. Discrimination often leads to absenteeism, loss of attachment, lack of motivation and commitment among the people belonging to various cultural, racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds. This made me select my class times based on the presence of my friends as they would always help in relieving my awkwardness of not knowing the other classmates who isolated me. I often used to be called names and that created a huge mental stress. Strong evidences suggest the association between race-based discrimination and mental health disorders such as depression and anxiety and ill health (Benner Graham, 2013). Presently, I work at a medical practice located in Liverpool. The place represents the multicultural Australian heritage and as seen a recent upsurge in the number of Syrian refuges due to government resettlement programs. In order to engage in effective conversations with them, I had to rework on my Arabic language skills. This created as a major problem as I was only able to communicate in broken Arabic. Consequently, I faced the wrath and disdain from the Arabic-speaking refugees, who were displeasured with my language speaking inabilities. People are most often comfortable in communicating in their own language and face difficulties in learning new languages (Almutairi, McCarthy Gardner, 2015). Different cultures have various ways of assigning meanings to the words. This creates misunderstandings among people at the workplace who belong to different linguistic backgrounds. These cultural differences become common source of conflict and result in workplace issues and disagreements (Crawford, Candlin Roger, 2017). Effective communication therefore became difficult. In order to avoid miscommunication with the patients, I strictly adopted a professional approach and tried to prevent disagreements. I also relied on non-verbal communications to understand their problems (Romero, Edwards, Fryberg Ordua, 2014). I had been brought up to be a non-conflict person and usually agreed to others thoughts in order to appease them. However, of late I have become quite submissive when tense situations arise even at home. This recent change of my behavior can be attributed to the fact that I dread taking care of aggressive patients. My position in the workplace requires me to maintain utmost composure when a patient explodes or yells at the services. Further, I need to understand the issues being faced by the patient that leads to such an aggressive behavior. My family traditions, cultures and attitudes that have been inculcated during my growing up years have probably instilled this trait in my personality. It is imperative for social workers to have a sound knowledge of the cultures of the clients (Messarra, 2014). Competence should be demonstrated in the provisions of care-giving services, which identifies the cultures that are sensitive to the existence of the clients. Regardless of ethnic, racial, socioeconomic, or religious differences, collaborative relationships should be established in a workplace (Velliaris Pierce, 2017). Cultural competence in a workforce therefore involved a set of congruent attitudes, behaviors, and policies, which come together in the form of a system that leads to effective work outputs cross-cultural situations. A sound understanding of the diverse cultures, traditions, values, and history is not just related to political correctness (Pieterse, Van Knippenberg Van Dierendonck, 2013). It is integral for the elimination of health-care disparities and high quality patient care (Brice, Chu Brice, 2017). Cultural diversities usually shape the perceptions, experiences, and decisions of person in relation to the environment. Such diversity influence the response of the people involved to external stimuli (medical services and preventive interventions in this case). In addition, cultural humility forms the heart of awareness related to prejudices, biases, and privileges. It is often egalitarian and collaborative. A self examination of such biases and prejudices is crucial for the development of an effective workplace (Wang, De Graaff Nijkamp, 2016). The positive aspects of cultural diversity help in analyzing matter from different perspectives (Vangen Winchester, 2014). To summarise, I can state that exploring cultural competency, understanding the role of language and respecting the religious or traditional views of a person belonging to a particular background will help in fostering a work culture, which promotes respect for difference. References Almutairi, A. F., McCarthy, A., Gardner, G. E. (2015). Understanding cultural competence in a multicultural nursing workforce: registered nurses experience in Saudi Arabia.Journal of Transcultural Nursing,26(1), 16-23. https://doi.org/10.1177/1043659614523992 Benner, A. D., Graham, S. (2013). 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