#gradingbatch2

One particular subject I found particularly interesting during my reading was the section on Acculturation, specifically the pitfalls of acculturation. This is because I believe that people who are or aren’t acculturating  are treated differently depending on who they are. This Identity denial is a raging problem right now in society, typically directed towards non-white individuals who do not fit into the stereotype of what a person from that area looks or acts like. This rampant stereotyping often leads to different forms of discrimination such as systematic disenfranchisement, humiliation and unjust treatment – and that’s just to name a tiny few. This is even more apparent in cultures like the United States, where people from different cultures interact fairly regularly.

The example which I felt best illustrated this was the textbook’s piece on actress Mindy Kaling. I love Mindy, I think she is an amazing actress and author and all around fantastic in her field. But in my own white privilege bubble didn’t realize that she was asked different questions in her interviews.  There is also the study which proves that people will alter their presentation of their identity when being given identity-denying prompts.

Personally, I find this incredibly troubling. I love different cultures and try to embrace all of them the best I can. I acknowledge that not everyone I see on the street is going to match me perfectly and it is something I enjoy. I have such a hard time with the idea that people’s identities can be questioned or even denied because they do not fit the mould of what they should look like and sound like.

We all have that friend where you look across the room at each other in a meeting or in class and you both know exactly what the other person is thinking. Usually it’s get me out of here. But there are a lot of other ways people communicate as well, and it all revolves around context.

Context can exist in a variety of ways, and the way context is presented varies depending on which culture you find yourself in. For example, in Western society if you ask someone if you can sit next to them and they hesitate and very reluctantly go “I guess so” you would probably still sit next to them, as they said it was okay. However, in East Asian culture, if you were to have the same interaction with someone, you would be very unlikely to sit down. This is because Western culture is considered to be a low-context cultures, where what you say tends to be what you mean and no further interpretation is really needed. However, in countries like Japan, reading between the lines is a necessity, body language and nonverbal communication tend to be relied on much more than the actual words being spoken. These nonverbal cues are essential in all cultures, not just East Asian.

I always like to consider myself as being very self-aware. There a several aspects of who I am as a person that I am not necessarily a fan of, and other aspects I love about myself. For example, I am aware that I often will spread myself too thin helping other people and end up suffering myself, either academically, financially, emotionally, etc. I have a hard time saying no and this is something I am aware of and have to constantly check myself for. Other things, I don’t have a clue about until someone lets me know, because I’m not aware that I do it even though I should be – like how I obnoxiously interrupt people when I get excited in a conversation, because that is very annoying to other people.

Up until this class however, I was unaware that self-awareness was split into two components, subjective self-awareness and objective self-awareness. Subjective self-awareness occurs when we are very much focused on the outside world, this means we are not very aware of ourselves because our energy is focused outward (Heine, pg. 237). In contrast, objective self-awareness occurs when we are very aware of ourselves and how we may present to others and how they evaluate us (Heine, pg. 237). These go hand in hand with the different views of self. Independent being more subjective and interdependent being more objective. This is also influenced heavily by culture

A fantastic example of this is in the textbook, when students from America and students from Hong Kong were given to evaluations. On one evaluation they graded exceptionally well and on the other not as well. They were then asked to evaluate themselves. The American students graded themselves well regardless of the score they got back. Contrastingly, the students from Hong Kong scored themselves higher when they were evaluated higher by others (Heine, pg. 237-238). This is because Eastern cultures, specifically Asia, have more interdependent cultures and rely more on the perspectives and opinions of others to build up their self-awareness. It brought to my mind the amount of times my friends and I have walked out of exams feeling very good about how we did, only to get the grade back and see that was not the case.

One thing that really interested me while I was reading was the section in our textbook about the different parenting styles. While I had heard the term “Tiger Mom” before on TV and friends joking about it, I did not fully understand the extent of the parenting style until I read the different types of parenting styles. After reading them, I was able to understand why my own mother is uncomfortable of the idea of being called a “Tiger mom” even in a joking manner.

Tiger Moms follow the far more authoritarian parenting style, this is defined as a style that involves “high demands on children, with strict rules and little open dialogue between parent and child.” (Heine pg. 181). Children who grow up in this environment are often on strict schedules and receive little to know warmth or responsiveness from their parents, this causes them to constantly strive for acknowledgement from their parents, leading to successful futures as they study and practice extra-curriculars excessively, of course, all of these activities have been pre-approved by parents.

There is a downside to this parenting style though, children who grow up in this type of environment can grow into rebellious teenagers, feeling suffocated and trapped under their parents. This is found particularly in Western culture, where authoritative is preferred.

Authoritative parenting is defined as a “child-centered approach in which parents hold high expectations of the maturity of their children, try to understand their child’s feelings and teach them how to regulate those feelings” (Heine 181). This style allows children to develop independently, while still having the warmth and boundaries set by their parents. In Western cultures, children who grow up in these environments often excel in school and become very self-sufficient adults.

After reading the example given in the text about Amy Chua and how she defines herself as a tiger mom, I can now understand why my mom doesn’t like to be called a Tiger Mom, as she is has an authoritative parenting style and probably disagrees on some of the practices of authoritarian parenting on a fundamental level.