Personal Narrative: Relating To Another Culture

In today’s world, relating to another culture can seem impossible. One might have friends from another culture but being able to see how they live on a day to day bases can be astonishing. For me however, relating to another culture was never really a challenge. Being that my dad was in the army, I had to move around a lot with my family. The places that I’ve been and the people that I’ve meet have shown me that life is never really how it seems. Because of this on February 20th I decided to get together a group of friends and have a discussion. This group was comprised of 5 white people (Jamie, Krista, Wylie, Orville and Justin), my best friends Destinee and Jazzarah who are both mixed, and myself. For the discussion, we collectively watched …show more content…
One topic that was brought up was about the black culture in comparison to the white culture here in the United States. Jazzarah started the conversation by asking why the U.S. school system never thought to add some of the topics discussed in the movie to our history books. Krista answered her question by saying simply that “Knowledge is power.” She went into detail by saying “I mean am I wrong? I know I’m white but isn’t it true that knowledge is power? We all know that the United States has tried its very best to keep black people powerless. And no offense but if the black community as a whole saw this movie, and really understood its contents then we as white people wouldn’t stand a chance.” With that Justin added “Krista is right, after watching this movie even I feel inferior to ya’ll, just imagine what ya’ll could do if ya’ll worked together as a whole. Nothing could possibly stand in your way.” Wylie then added, “What ya’ll are saying is true, and not to be the barer of bad news but I don’t think it’s going to happen. Even after seeing this I do not think that black people have the power to change their situation. As we saw, through years and years of oppression, black people have been left with close to nothing. And through years of public education, ya’ll have been taught about our history not ya’ll’s history. So how could your people possibly grow if they continue to live their lives without even knowing that your history is filled with glorious triumphs and comes with a rich culture that has basically shaped every other culture on this planet?” After that the room was silent. We all knew that Wylie was right and nobody could really argue