3. Ten Aspects of Cultural Diversity

3. The British

A student asked me what made me British and I gave a potted history of the last 2,000 years.
Here is a famous British poet's answer to what makes British people.
His name is Benjamin Zephaniah,

A recipe for 60,000,000 British people - 2,000 years of immigration.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aq13dvtZjP4

3. Ten Aspects of Cultural Diversity 

Ten Aspects of Cultural Diversity

These are the ten aspects of cultural diversity which we are going to concentrate on

in this course.

1.     Race/Ethnicity - more than 5000 ethnic groups in the world today

2.     Language

3.     Religion

4.     Value and belief systems (The Amish)

5.     Disability

6.     Class

7.     Gender

8.     Age

9.    Educational background

1)   Define yourself as an Emirati. Write a short paragraph.

Example – I was born in Abu Dhabi and my nationality is Emirati. To be an Emirati means _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

2)   Download Popplet Lite (free app) from the App Store, and then make a Popplet like the diagram on the board using the ten main aspects of Cultural Diversity.

The world population can be divided into 4 major races, namely white/Caucasian, Mongoloid/Asian, Negroid/Black, and Australoid. This is based on a racial classification made by Carleton S. Coon in 1962.

There is no universally accepted classification for “race”, however, and its use has been under fire over the last few decades. The United Nations, in a 1950 statement, opted to “drop the term ‘race’ altogether and speak of “ethnic groups”. In this case, there are more than 5,000 ethnic groups in the world, according to a 1998 study published in the Scientific American.

 http://blog.world-mysteries.com/science/how-many-major-races-are-there-in-the-world/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emirati_people

 Culture, Race & Ethnicity definitions

These concepts are complex and are often confused or thought to mean the same thing – but they do not. Many different definitions of these terms exist, and the following are examples:

Culture

Culture is not about superficial group differences or just a way to label a group of people.

·         It is an abstract concept.

·         It is diverse, dynamic and ever-changing.

·         It is the shared system of learned and shared values, beliefs and rules of conduct that make people behave in a certain way.

·         It is the standard for perceiving, believing, evaluating and acting.

·         Not everyone knows everything about their own culture.

Race

The term ‘race’ is not appropriate when applied to national, religious, geographic, linguistic or ethnic groups. Race does not relate to mental characteristics such as intelligence, personality or character.

·         Race is a term applied to people purely because of the way they look.

·         It is considered by many to be predominantly a social construct.

·         It is difficult to say a person belongs to a specific race because there are so many variations such as skin colour.

·         All human groups belong to the same species (Homosapiens).

Ethnicity

Ethnicity is a sense of peoplehood, when people feel close because of sharing a similarity. It is when you share the same things, for example:

·         physical characteristics such as skin colour or bloodline,

·         linguistic characteristics such as language or dialect,

·         behavioural or cultural characteristics such as religion or customs or

·         environmental characteristics such as living in the same area or sharing the same place of origin.

Culture, Race & Ethnicity questions

1.     How does culture define who a person is?

2.     What is your culture?

3.     Is this the same as your ethnicity?

4.     What is a common belief about race and how is it untrue?

5.     Identify some stereotypes you know of about a particular group of people.

6.     List some of your values, beliefs and customs (3 of each).

7.     What are some of the things from your culture that you are proud of?

8.     What are some of the things about your culture that you don’t like?

9.     How would you describe Emirati culture?

10.  What are some cultural issues in the UAE  today?

The observable aspects of culture such as food, clothing, celebrations, religion and language are only part of a person’s cultural heritage. These things make up how you live and what makes you accepted in society.