Assignment 3: Anne Nombe

People outside of the United States are really different from you and me. No, I did not say "really not that different from you and me", I said, "they are different from you and me".

I guess I'm lucky in the regards that I don't have to step far outside of my house to be in a foreign country. My family largely hails from the DRC down in Africa, and when we have family events such as Thanksgiving dinners and such, I am immersed in a culture that I do not experience (to an extreme extent) every day. During these social events, I'm taught time and time again that there are very distinct differences between your average Congolese person and an American-born like me. And even the average Congolese person is different from his fellow average Congolese people, because there are so many different tribes, customs, and languages. 

Interacting with foreigners has taught me more than this, though. Probably the most important thing I've learned is that even though we have our differences, if we don't make an effort to understand them, find some common ground, and have a civil conversation, we stay divided. It's kind of like your stereotypical high school hierarchy in the movies. You don’t see the jocks interacting with the nerds or the goths prancing around with the preps. That's why in those cliché films, no one understands each other. And why the cliché motive is to break social boundaries. And as cliché as this all sounds, if more people followed these clichés in real life, I believe we could build much stronger ties across social classes, races, and ethnicities. 

Rather than admonishing things for being different, embracing other people's cultures and differences gives us a better world view and more compassion for the people around us. I know that I've personally grown more culturally aware by attempting to do such, and I pray that even more people will learn to do the same.