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Versus Low-Context Cultures

      Another cultural factor that may impact worldview is the importance of context in personal and societal interactions. US anthropologist Edward T. Hall proposed the initial descriptions of cultures as high or low context in his 1978 book, Beyond Culture. Hall stated that high-context cultures are those in which following the social norms is crucial to the dynamics of the culture. Examples might be Asian cultures such as those of China or Japan, in which social rules are followed strictly, and conformity and hierarchy are valued strongly (Kim, Pan, & Park, 1998). On the other end of the continuum, low-context cultures, such as that of the United States, value individuality and idiographic experiences and have less focus on following a prescribed social structure (see Table 3.2). Consider your reaction to the preceding definitions. It is likely that you had a positive association with one of them and a less positive association with the other. Now think about your country’s value of context. If you are from the United States, a high-context culture might sound stifling and stuffy. If you are from a non-Western culture, however, you may think that the low-context culture sounds too casual and disrespectful of status. This is yet another way in which our culture impacts our worldview.

      Cultural Identity

      Cultural experiences may include aspects of a person’s life that are explicitly related to their cultural identity. These are individual to some extent in terms of the specific details of each experience, but may have common themes across a particular cultural group. For example, an Asian American male adolescent growing up in today’s society will have certain similarities with others of similar race and gender in terms of upbringing, family values, and perhaps views about safety and law enforcement in the United States. Consider this example:

Table 3.2

      I’m biracial—my dad is Asian and my mom is White—and when I was little someone in our apartment complex carved the word chink on the back of our car. I didn’t know what that meant, because I was only around 6 at the time and I had never heard that slur for Chinese people. When my parents explained what had happened and what that meant, I remember being confused at first—we’re Asian, but we’re actually Japanese, not Chinese. But then I remember having a new understanding that some people might think my dad was different in some way and also lump him together with others who looked like him. To me at that time in my life, he was just “Dad” but when I started thinking about it more, I realized that there weren’t many other people who looked like him in our apartment complex. This was the first time I realized people might make decisions about you based on how you looked or what color your skin was. And sometimes people might get mad at you or call you names for that.

      —Morgan, age 43

      In the above example, Morgan is learning to view the world in a certain way. His worldview might now incorporate ideas such as “non-White is different” or “sometimes people treat you differently because of your race” into the rest of his understanding of the world.

      These types of experiences are cumulative in terms of a developing worldview, which then in turn might influence what future understandings, experiences, and interactions one has in the world. Consider the rest of Morgan’s story:

      I think [the experience with my dad being called a name] helped me later to understand what some of my other friends of color experienced in life. When I was a teenager, I remember a Latino friend telling our group that he had been pulled over by a cop for no reason and asked if his car was really his own, and he shared his frustration that he felt he was pulled over because he was dark skinned. Our White friends had a lot of reasons besides this that they thought could be the case, but I already knew things like this happened, and so it was easier for me to just attend to his frustration. We became closer than either of us were with our White friends because of that.

      —Morgan, age 43

      Much research shows that experiencing invalidation from their White peers is one of the most common causes of decrease in interracial friendships as individuals of color grow into adolescence (McCormick, Cappella, Hughes, & Gallagher, 2014; White et al., 2009). You can see here that some of Morgan’s earlier experiences with race and discrimination led him to have as a part of his worldview an acceptance and belief that situations like that above do happen. White individuals may have many fewer interactions with this type of discrimination, and therefore may have a harder time integrating them into their worldview.

      Even when racism is viewed once or twice, the tendency may be to try to paint these experiences as one-offs or unique and situationally based experiences. In recent years, the Black Lives Matter movement has been hotly debated by many different cultural groups, and one of the points of disagreement between African American and non–African American groups has centered around beliefs about the value of Black lives in the United States. In a Pew Research poll regarding the violence that took place after a Black Lives Matter rally in Ferguson, Missouri, 50% of Black people surveyed responded that the police had gone too far in their attempts to quell the demonstration, in comparison to only 27% of White people. Relatedly, 38% of African Americans in this same Pew Research poll stated that the protestors in Ferguson acted reasonably, while only 15% of Whites felt the same.

      Finally, respondents were also asked about their view of the Michael Brown case as raising racial issues. While 80% of African Americans polled endorsed the statement, “This case raises important issues about race,” 47% of White Americans polled endorsed the statement, “Race is getting more attention than it deserves [in the Michael Brown case]” (Pew Research Center, 2014). Here two groups with different cultural worldviews are looking at an event and are starkly divided by their viewpoints (see Figures 3.4 and 3.5).

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      Figure 3.4 Blacks More Likely Than Whites to Say Brown’s Shooting Raises Racial Issues

      Source: Pew Research Center (2014).

      One reason for some of the differences here may be to the point above regarding personal knowledge of discrimination in different racial groups. In a study of children done with over 17,000 kindergarteners, researchers found that 75% of the White parents in this sample had “never” or “almost never” spoken of race to their children. In contrast, many parents of color find themselves in situations like Morgan’s parents above, where due to some experience with racial discrimination, they are in the position of having to talk to their children about race from an early age (Brown, Tanner-Smith, Lesane-Brown, & Ezell, 2007). In fact, in the study by Brown and colleagues, non-White parents were more than three times more likely to have already discussed race in some way with their children. In addition, many parents of color have a necessity to tell their children about certain discrimination and racism that the children may encounter in order to help their children to stay safe. See Spotlight Feature 3.1 for a discussion of “The Talk” that may provide many African American children with their first information about racial relations. More of us can give this “talk” to our children about race in general as well. We will come back to #BlackLivesMatter and other examples of worldview in this and other circumstances in another chapter, but for now it is important to understand that worldview may impact our future relationships with those who are different from us in some way.

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      Figure 3.5 Whites Divided in Views of Police Response to Ferguson Shooting

      Source: Pew Research Center (2014).

      Spotlight Feature 3.1: “The Talk”

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