KARLA PORTER

I’m prepar­ing for a pre­sen­ta­tion in 2 weeks on cul­tural iden­tity. I find I’m com­ing up with ques­tions that make me ques­tion the how impor­tant that iden­tity really is and I’m real­iz­ing how fluid it is depend­ing on the sit­u­a­tion we find our­selves in.

A long time ago, when vil­lages were iso­lated and bor­ders were closed, every­one had so much in com­mon to the point of exclu­siv­ity. It remains that way today in some places like North Korea, remote Ama­zon­ian vil­lages, places on the African con­ti­nent, etc.  But today those places are the minor­ity, and every day the world gets smaller. We eat inter­na­tional cui­sine and dif­fer­ent fam­ily mem­bers have dif­fer­ent reli­gions, habits and val­ues based on edu­ca­tion, social sta­tus and worldliness.

What is cul­ture (yeah, I know the text book def­i­n­i­tion)? I’m ques­tion­ing it.… Is tech­nol­ogy erod­ing cul­ture and if so does it have a pur­pose, and what is it? Is it rel­e­vant? Do we need to belong to a cul­tural “bucket”? Why?

Today, many peo­ple iden­tify with global cit­i­zen and multi-cultural.  They have lit­tle affin­ity for the band of peo­ple who over­threw the piece of land their ances­tors lived on and changed its name, their reli­gion and cui­sine. How many fam­i­lies are blended and reblended to the point of almost indis­tin­guish­able backgrounds?

I asked a few peo­ple today if they were proud of their cul­ture. They all said yes. I fol­lowed up by ask­ing — why? The most com­mon answer I got was because it’s my fam­ily his­tory. I don’t think that’s a log­i­cal answer but it’s what they said.

For how many gen­er­a­tions will Amer­i­cans say they are French, British, Pol­ish, Ital­ian, Irish, Aus­tralian, Latino, etc…? Why is it impor­tant? Is there a cut off after so many gen­er­a­tions when they won’t say it any more?

If some­one you meet at a cof­fee shop asks you “what you are” how do you answer? If you were in Jamaica on vaca­tion and some­one asked you the same ques­tion would your answer be the same or different?

Some peo­ple have a really strong cul­tural iden­tity and oth­ers — like me — have a very diluted or weak one. What about you and if you do, why does it matter?