Has anyone found this class to be parallel to many of the issues going on in the world today? Culture was an underlined issues during the 2016 Presidential Election, I do not believe anyone knew to the extent until now. President Donald Trump has been in office for a little over a week and has already signed an executive order to build a wall between the United States and Mexico. Yes, believe it or not, this wall is something he was elected on and with further research on the “Presidential Memorandum Regarding the Mexico City Policy,” it entails the department of homeland security to commence immediate construction of a 1,900-mile long wall along the southern border with Mexico using existing federal funds to get it started. The directive also signaled beefing up the border with an additional 5,000 border protection officers.”
How does this executive order have to do with culture? Well after searching the internet for definitions and examples of culture, this is what I found “the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations: the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group; also – the characteristic features of everyday existence (as diversions or a way of life} shared by people in a place or time the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution or organization – the set of values, conventions, or social practices associated with a particular field, activity, or societal characteristic. Changing the culture of materialism will take time … — Peggy O’Mara
President Trump has used individuals living in Mexico as a scapegoat, creating a generalization about their culture by saying “they are taking all our jobs”, we must stop them from entering our country, he has taken a whole culture and is placing blame for the weaknesses of Americans. Why has culture become such a negative word? Culture use to be described as a person’s “full range of learned human behavior patterns.” Now culture has been seen as something you should not be proud of or talk about in public. Why all of a sudden are “we” ashamed of our languages, traditions and beliefs?
I am making a bold statement here and hopefully will have my foot in my mouth sooner than later but I am ashamed to be an American in this current time in our nation’s history. What type of culture are we showing to our children? Boys freely being able to touch girls, healthcare is for the elite only and anyone who is different than “us” there should be a wall built? Culture use to be a term you could brag and flaunt around, now you hide and never show it to the public. This for me is a sad time in history.
Reference
Bauer, F. (n.d.). Trump Opponents, Shore up Cultural Norms — Don’t Blow them up . Retrieved
January 22, 2017, from http://www.nationalreview.com/
Culture . (n.d.). Retrieved January 20, 2017, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/
Moran, R. T., Abramson, N. R., 7 Moran, S. V. (2014). Managing cultural differences (9th ed.).
New York, NY: Routledge.
Pennsylvania State University (2017). Leadership in a Global Context -Culture, Inclusion.
OLEAD 410. Online course lesson, Penn State World Campus, The Pennsylvania State
University. Retrieved: January 22, 2017, from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/1826457/modules/items/21654081
Rothman, J. (2014, December 26). The Meaning of Culture . The New Yorker .
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