Perspectives on Diversity and Culture

I began a lengthy conversation with my friend regarding culture and diversity. I chose to speak with her about it because she is culturally different from me. She defined culture and diversity as an individual’s differences in terms of background, family, religion and morals. I asked her if she felt the culture and diversity are the same thing and she said she thought they were very similar except she thought that culture comes from the family. I had a brief conversation with my brother-in-law about the same topic and of course, he wasn’t as intrigued by the conversation, but he told me culture is about a group of people interested in similar things and that diversity is about ones differences. My sister thought that culture is a group of ideas, traditions, beliefs, customs and morals. She said that families can all have their own culture as well as certain social classes. She defined diversity as the differences among each person. Overall, I was impressed that everyone I spoke with felt that diversity is about ones differences and culture is about similarities. I was also pleasantly surprised that they understood that culture can come from the family. This is something I didn’t put much thought into prior to this course. I explained to my sister that what she described is what we are discussing in my class, she explained that she discussed the same topic in her master’s program a few years back.