Cultural Interview Essay

For this assignment, we were tasked with interviewing people from different backgrounds. As a person of Arab descent, I tried to find two people with vastly different ethnic backgrounds. The first person I interviewed was a fellow student from University. The student is a male, and his background is Irish and English. The student is an American, but his grandparents had migrated from Ireland over 80 years ago. The second person I interviewed was my neighbor. My neighbor is an American as well, but he is of Indian descent. Given the diversity of my participants, I wanted to discuss topics that would broach the similarities and differences in each culture. The topics that I chose to discuss for the interviews were romantic relationships, the …show more content…
Arranged marriages are common in Arab culture, so I understood my neighbor’s experience.
When my neighbor was asked about the role of males and females, he stated that in Indian culture, the role of the female is more domestic than that of the male; his response was similar to the response of my first participant in that women were expected to handle domestic duties while males worked. However, my neighbor stated that he usually splits domestic duties with his wife, as they share two children, and they both work …show more content…
My neighbor described the rika ceremony as a time in which the relatives of the bride and groom gave their blessings to both sides of the family, and gifts were bestowed from the groom to the bride. My neighbor stated that he loved his wife very much, and that he still remembered his wedding day. His demeanor was energetic, and I felt that he was sincere throughout the entire interview. The interview took place at my neighbor’s apartment, in his kitchen. I asked my neighbor about family communication, and he stated that family is important in Indian culture. My neighbor further elaborated that sons and daughters are meant to take care of their parents, well until a parent’s retirement age. My neighbor stressed that this was quite different from western culture in which many of his counterparts were putting their parents in retirement homes. I asked my neighbor about his parents, and he stated that his parents were still in India and that his older brothers and sisters were taking care of them. My neighbor elaborated and stated that several of his relatives lived on a large farm with his immediate family, and that there is a great sense of community in which everyone cares for the