Culture-More than a Costume

Written April 29/08

So for a long time I thought about what I would write for this premier blog and I thought about how I could really capture the total essence of “my culture”. Thinking back to grade school I vividly recall teachers holding up flashcards of different traditional and"ethnic" clothing or foods and asking the room of fellow wide-eyed grade-'threers' to identify the cultures in the pictures.
In hindsight a task that appeared to be overly simplistic and straight forward now appears to be far more thought provoking than the answers on the back of the flash cards suggested.

The more I thought about it the more abstract and confusing my thoughts became. I saw my culture as a black woman, I saw my culture as a student, I saw my culture as a community worker, a youth advocate, a global citizen, an entrepreneur, a young person etc etc. I listed and listed and did not see an end in sight. Each time my pen hit paper and i in scripted another juicy aspect of my culture down I thought about how I see myself, how the world sees me and how I want the world to see me.

I came an almost startling conclusion that culture is almost in a sense based and defined solely on perception. The way I might define my culture wouldn’t be the way my mother might define it, a friend, a teacher or even a complete stranger. It then began to beg the question whose perception overrides and overrules whose? and if that is so the case where does my understanding of a true ‘cultural identity’ fit? And if we do have a ‘true identity’ are we then not enforcing the same social labels we as ‘enlightened activist have been working so inexhaustibly to obliterate? I didn't have the answers to these question so I’ll just leave these questions to linger in your thoughts as they have in mine...