I
was born into a Canadian family in Windsor, Ontario. I have four sisters: two
older and two younger. My mother raises us, our dad has been absent since I was
a child. The absence of a second income and parent to assist my mom in raising
five children has created many hardships and struggles. In the result of my
father abandoning our family, my mom was left in a challenging situation. The
circumstances are not ideal, but they truly helped shape my sisters and me to
be who we are today.
My
mom is the hardest working individual I know. She single-handedly raised five
driven and bright daughters while going to full-time school, and working both
full and part-time. My mom tried her best to conceal the financial struggles
when we were children, although, we still left church every Sunday with crates
filled with canned food.
My
family is simply Canadian. My mom’s heritage is German, my dad’s is French, and
all my grandparents were born and raised in Canada. My mom was baptized and
raised Catholic and she raised all my sisters and I born-again Christian. When
I was a young girl, my family would sit at the dinner table every morning for
breakfast and take turns reading scriptures and leading communion. My family
would attend church every Sunday and sometimes even on weekdays. I am not
extremely religious, I don’t attend church weekly, but I try to pray daily. I
support the Christian faith but do not live my life according to all the rules and
beliefs disclosed in the Bible. I use the teachings in the Bible to shape what
I believe is right and wrong.
I grew up in a household with strict rules about what was and was not acceptable. My sisters and I were taught to value manners and respect. My mom holds high expectations for my sisters and I to do our best in our academics and reflect our values in our everyday decisions. I have always worked hard in school and my extracurriculars. I know what I am academically capable of and would never try to achieve less than that. Since I was old enough to get a job, I worked part-time, full-time, and overtime hours in order to afford putting myself through post-secondary schooling. My mom has taught my sisters and I to be self-sufficient and independent. I never had the option to not work while in school, which may have added to my workload but taught me valuable skills like time-management and self-reliance.
Growing
up with little money was a common theme in my neighborhood but never amongst my
school friends. The majority of my friends lived in a gated area called
Southwood Lakes while I lived in a neighborhood immersed in poverty. My house
is a small townhouse that we rent from a co-operative housing board. I have had
to share a bedroom my entire childhood and this summer will be the first time I
have my own room. My sisters and I got along and were always taken care of. My
mom tried to conceal her financial struggles and the neighborhood poverty but I
couldn’t help but acknowledge my observations. My direct neighbors that were on
the other side of my townhouse were drug and alcohol abusers. Their children
would be fed and clothed by teachers at my grade school and my mom would use
the welfare money she had left over to buy them groceries. Their children were
abused and neglected; one of the children would spend 12 hours of the day
zip-tied to a high chair, 2 inches away from a television screen, and would
stay up all night banging her head against the shared wall in the townhouse,
crying. A house across the street from mine blew up when I was around five or
six years old due to illegal formulation and mixing of drugs.
My
mom was aware of our living situation and because of that, worked extra hard to
secure our safety and preserve our innocence. At one point, my mom received
many death threats against her and my sisters and me from people in search of
my dad and money that he owed them. We were never allowed to leave school alone
or walk home alone. There was a photo of my dad in my grade school’s office for
many years so that if he stepped onto school property the school would lock
down into a code red. My mom created many code words while I was in grade
school to indicate it was safe to leave school with an adult other than her; if
she sent her friend to pick us up for example.
While
both my living and family situation has its disadvantages, it also has its advantages.
My friends may have bigger houses, but their neighborhood diversity is limited.
The majority of the families that live in Southwood Lakes are white and of
Italian heritage. Gratefully, my neighborhood is quite culturally diverse with
many Indian, Arab, and Muslim families. This allows me to interact with people
of different cultures than I, without the obstruction of self-made stereotypes
or prejudice. All my neighbors were extremely kind to my family my entire
childhood. One of our Arab neighbors would bring over bags of fresh vegetables
at least 3 times a week from his brother’s farm and expect nothing in return.
Another
one of our neighbors would cook my family traditional meals from their home
country and bring them over for us to try. Being born and raised in a Canadian
family, I was never exposed to such cultural dishes, so I never shied from
trying them. My mom would acknowledge my neighbors as normal people, as they
should be, and never made discriminatory comments about them to cause us to
think any less of them, and this I am grateful for. These interactions with my
neighbors allowed me, at a young age, to see individuals for who they are, not
what language they speak or the colour of their skin.
The
diversity of my neighborhood continued even further in Waterloo. I was continually
meeting people from different origins and cultures. For instance, from just my
4 roommates that I was placed with in residence, one of them was born and
raised Siberian and the other is Indian and raised Hindu. It was very interesting
to go from a high school population being mostly white people, to a university
that had so much more ethnic diversity.
I’m
a very curious person and enjoy learning new things. When it comes to learning about
cultures other than my own, I get very intrigued and have a desire to learn
more. When working on my Hinduism presentation, I asked many of my Indian and
Hindu friends for help to ensure I was on the right track. I enjoyed learning
about my friends’ heritage rather than researching the history of Hinduism. I
learned much more about the religion, its impact on its followers, and my
friends as well. Living in KW provided me with the opportunity to get real, first-hand
knowledge about practicing Hinduism. If I were in my hometown, Windsor, it
would have been difficult to find any friends of Indian descent, and even more
challenging to find someone that was Hindu.
My
roommate expressed to me her favourite Hindu festivals and desserts and even
took me to an Indian bakery to pick out desserts to share with the class. I chose
to do my presentation on Hinduism because I knew little and was interested in
learning a lot. I felt naive talking to my friends about the Hinduism culture,
however, they were more than happy to share all the details and help me better
understand the religion. I was able to ask questions and relate Hinduism to
Christianity and share that with my friends in return. By affiliating certain
religions or cultures with my friends and from being educated by their values and
experiences, I have created a deeper personal connection and understanding with
these religions or cultures as compared to how I would feel about them from
researching online.
In
terms of living and experiencing myself in this diverse society, I’ve been able
to learn a lot more about myself, like how I perceive others around me and how
conscious I am of cultural differences. At the beginning of the term in GC380,
we were given a handout about living inter-faithfully, consisting of various
questions about how we perceived or acted towards people of a different
ethnicity. This handout required me to ask myself questions regarding concerns
I’ve never thought about before, for instance, if I treated people differently
because they were wearing a headscarf or if I was conscious of language
barriers when talking to people that originate from another country. After
completing this exercise, I tried to be more conscious of how I was treating
and communicating with people different than I. In relation to Pellegrino
Riccardi’s Ted talk on cross cultural communication, after completing the
living inter-faithfully handout, I have realized that because I don’t identify
other cultures as accepted and familiar, I become impatient quickly and
sometimes disrespectful when communicating with individuals of a different
ethnicity. I’ve found that when I don’t understand someone due to a language
barrier, instead of getting flustered, I become more conscious of how I’m speaking
to them and work to understand what they are saying then help them better communicate.
Communication is certainly challenging in a diverse society but by being aware of
it, my communication skills have improved.
It
is clear that multicultural living can have both it’s advantages and
disadvantages. From living with other cultures, we are more inclined to learn
much tolerance for other ethnicities and customs, that we may not necessarily
agree with but are able to respect. Additionally, a multicultural society can
offer an individual opportunities to expand their cognitive thinking, gain a
new perspective on a culture, and gain knowledge on various religious practices
or languages. This gained understanding will give an individual an upper hand
in society, in the sense that they can better comprehend politics and world
issues because they understand other cultures. While the advantages are
endless, there are also disadvantages. A multicultural society exposes cultural
differences which may divide its inhabitants. There will always be a cultural
divide when one cultural group thinks their beliefs are superior to another
cultural group; white supremacy would be an example of this and this belief is
still prominent in today’s society. It pains me to witness racial discimination
in the workplace as well as educational centres. For instance, I recently got
hired to work at a supermarket and was training a new hire on cash the other
day who just moved to Canada from India in September. I have never experienced
dealing with difficult customers at this new job, however, every customer that
this Indian employee cashed out were beyond disrespectful and discriminatory in
the way they acted, spoke, and the comments they made. When I would speak to
these customers, they were nothing but kind to me, such observation indicated
to me that they had an issue with a particular individual and had no motives to
be ignorant. Discrimination of employees in minority groups, especially those
who have recently been hired, can result in underperformance due to an
unfamiliar environment with less recognition of their existence and good
work.
Catholic
schools used to be discriminatory in their enrollment process in that they only
allowed Catholic baptized students to enroll but due to a societal advancement,
there is now no religious requirement. This new provision limits racial
discrimination and broadens the educational opportunities for minorities. On
the downside, Quebec has recently worsened racial discrimination with Bill 21
that intends “ to prohibit certain persons from wearing religious symbols while
exercising their functions” (Quebec Government, 2019). To limit racial
discrimination in our society, companies should normalize implementing policies
that promote equality like a duty ot accomodate policy (Canadian Human Rights
Commission).
Although,
we, the individuals of society, can actively achieve an improved inter-faithful
living by being more aware of how we treat and speak to others. Individuals can
identify discrimination when it arises and verbally discourage it. Living in a
society that is multicultural has its advantages, for it provides an
opportunity for individuals to experience various ways of living through the
acquisition of others’ language, custom, behaviour, and art, however, can divide
society due to cultural differences (Olympic College, 2019).
From
interacting with other cultures, we can gain a basic understanding of various customs
and beliefs which can increase one’s cultural sensitivity, thus, helping one
avoid misunderstanding, embarassment, or unintentional discrimination (Lin,
2019). Learning about other cultures can broaden one’s perspective which may
result in greater insight. Cultural awareness can make an individual more
open-minded and it will be easier to respect and accept others’
differences.