Our culture is like the color of our eyes. We don’t notice it ourselves, but when we are interacting with others, it’s plain for them to see it. How can we find out what our eyes look like? We simply have to gaze into a mirror and it will show us our reflection. To become aware of our cultural bias, we have to reflect on what our own culture.
Every time I hear about culture during some conversations, the word seems to high-brow interests: intellectualism, literature, fine arts, beliefs, customs, and a lot more. As I try to understand what does this word really means, I always end up asking myself what important role it plays in an individual like me. I remember how it all started when almost all my teachers in History asked what culture means, how does it is being acquired or developed through the passing of time and how can one get the grasp of his own cultural identity.
Cultural identity as defined is the identity of a group or an individual, influenced by one’s belonging to a group or another culture. Before one could totally understand his own cultural identity, he has gone first to the three-stage model describing how this identity is acquired formulated by a developmental Psychologist named Jean S. Phinney. The first stage, Unexamined Cultural Identity, is characterized by a lack of exploration of culture and cultural differences – they are rather taken for granted without much critical thinking. This is usually the stage reserved for childhood when cultural ideas provided by parents, the community or the media are easily accepted. A child at this stage tends not to be interested in ethnicity and is generally ready to take on the opinions of others. The second stage of the model is referred to as the Cultural Identity Search and is characterized by the exploration and questioning of culture in order to learn more about it and to understand the implications