Sep

Culture Smart: How Do I Love Thee in French?

by Sheron Long on September 15, 2013

Girl playing daisy love game that varies across different cultures

Looking for answers in the daisy love game

Daisy Love Game in Different Cultures

In the USA, when wondering about the chance of love, people pull petals and alternate outcomes: He loves me. / He loves me not. It’s not that clear-cut in France, where the choices are recited like this:

Il m’aime un peu, He loves me a little,

beaucoup, a lot,

passionnément, passionately,

à la folie, madly,

pas du tout! not at all!

Clearly, different cultures come at the language of love in different ways. Personally, I like the odds in France better—only 20% chance of no love at all!

See how much French you may already know in this post on Bilingual Brain Power. For free French language learning resources, visit Français Interactif and Bonjour de France.

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Image © iStockphoto

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Cultural Diversity/France/Language & Culture/USA

Sep

Cultural Heritage Below the Water Line

by Sheron Long on September 12, 2013

An iceberg above and below the water line, serving as a metaphor for the cultural iceberg in which the visible tip of surface culture belies the "deep culture" vastness hidden below the surface.

Culture is like an iceberg where the visible tip belies the vastness hidden below the surface.

What’s a Cultural Iceberg?

The culture or cultures you grow up in affect your deepest attitudes and beliefs, giving you your sense of what’s good or right, what feels comfortable, what behavior is acceptable, and conversely what’s not. What other people see may be only those things “on the surface”—for example, the way you talk or act, what you eat and how you dress.

That’s why culture is often represented as an iceberg. Ten percent is the “surface culture” that shows above the water line and 90%, known as “deep culture, ” is hidden below.

The Cultural Iceberg, showing aspects of surface culture and deep culture that stem from your cultural heritage. (Image © OIC Books)

The attitudes and beliefs in deep culture affect what shows on the surface.
© OIC Books

The hidden part of the iceberg influences everything you do and yet you may not even realize it. Ask yourself, for example, “Does it feel right when things come in threes or fours?

The Rule of 3

If you are from western cultures, the threes probably have it:

You get three wishes.
The third time’s the charm.
Speeches are written to make three points.
Favorite characters in fairy tales and songs come in threes—the three little pigs, the three blind mice.
Races start with “Get ready. Get set. Go!” Slogans are more memorable to westerners when they’re in threes: “Snap! Crackle! Pop!”

The Significance of 4

To native peoples of the Americas, however, the natural world matters most. There is sacred significance in the Four Directions—North, South, East, and West, and the number four is culturally ingrained:

The medicine wheel used for health and healing is divided into the Four Directions.

Things come in fours, such as the elements of nature (fire, air, water, earth) or aspects of life (spiritual, emotional, intellectual, physical).

Many native legends and creation myths, passed from generation to generation, tell of four brothers or four winds or four ancestors.

In ceremonies, the number four and its multiples figure prominently. For example, historical records and accounts show that, in the initiation ceremony of the Chipeway magicians, candidates entered a lodge of four poles where four stones lay before the fire. They stayed there for four days and participated in four feasts.

Comfort based on certain numbers is just one of countless ways that cultural heritage influences your approach to daily life.

Look into the “deep culture” part of the cultural iceberg above and find some attitudes and beliefs you hold. How do these aspects of your cultural heritage affect what you do “on the surface”? For example:

Consider your concept of time and how it affects when you arrive at appointments and events.
How prompt do you feel you have to be to be considered on time?
Would people from other cultures agree?

Try a few more examples. Did anything make you say, “Oh, I see”?

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Image © iStockphoto

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Cultural Diversity/Cultural Heritage & Traditions/Cultural Symbols

Aug

Marching on Washington and Toward the MLK Dream

by Sheron Long on August 29, 2013

Lincoln Memorial, site of the MLK dream speech and where people spoke up for civil rights during the March on Washington and others began to pay it forward.

When will Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream come true?
© Thinkstock

For All Those Who Spoke Up, Who Will Pay It Forward?

Friends help friends, sometimes in silence but more significantly by speaking up for their dreams.

1963: The March on Washington

Fifty years ago, a crowd of at least 250,000 people gathered at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to raise their voices for jobs and freedom.

Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. About ten minutes into his address, gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, called out:

Tell ’em about the dream, Martin.

And that was the point when King departed from his prepared speech and delivered the words we remember 50 years later:

Martin Luther King, Jr., giving the "I Have a Dream" speech during the March on Washington. (Photo from the National Archives and Records Administration)

King giving his “I Have a Dream” speech, originally titled “Normalcy, Never Again”
(National Archives and Records Administration)

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”

—from video (17:29)

Had Mahalia Jackson not called out to her friend, would the course of history be different? Who knows? But we do know, after her words, Dr. King spoke up about the dream.

This idea of speaking up as a way to thank someone else for speaking up is what’s known as paying it forward. The crowd paid King’s gift forward, too. Many went back to their homes, spoke up tirelessly for civil rights, and caused change.

Changed Lives

The impact of the experience on that sweltering August day in D.C. transformed people, black and white.

Martin Luther King, Jr., who inspired the crowd at the March on Washington to pay it forward.

Martin Luther King, Jr., greets the crowd from the Lincoln Memorial, August 28, 1963.
(National Archives and Records Administration)

Joan Justiss Tynes was 16 then. She reflects:

. . . after that day I understood that there were two Americas and that each of us had to do something to change the laws of this land. . . . my experience at the March on Washington helped me to understand what freedom means and what we have to do to keep the doors of opportunity open.

Through the next 50 years, Tynes participated in more marches. She spoke up, talking to young black Americans about self-esteem and living the dream through education and community involvement.

Joannie Weisberger was 21 and, in her words, felt like “one tiny dot in a beautiful tapestry of humanity.” She did her part, through community advocacy and teaching in Central Harlem. She advocated for students for over 30 years, but says now:

Our work is far from done.

Two views of the National Mall in Washington D.C., the inset by Warren K. Leffler at the 1963 March on Washington and the composite by Jason E. Powell. On this site Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke up for civil rights and inspired people to pay it forward. (With appreciation to the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, U.S. News & World Report Magazine Collection for the historical photo)

Not enough change has come between the dates of these photos taken of the Mall in Washington D.C.
(Inset photo by Warren K. Leffler at the March on Washington on August 28, 1963,
and composite photo by Jason E. Powell on July 10, 2012)

Charles Dumas was a teenager, not yet eligible to vote. He remembers:

I felt called to do my part. The bombing of the Birmingham church a week later and the assassination of President Kennedy a few months after only intensified the tempest that was storming inside me. By late Spring of the following year, 1964, I was in Mississippi, one of the hundreds of civil rights workers, who had come to register people for the Freedom Democratic Party, many of us were jailed for their efforts, some were killed.

For the full text of these reflections and others, visit “I Was There.” For interviews by Michael Fletcher with the leaders and organizers of the 1963 March, visit The Smithsonian.

2013: The 50th Anniversary March on Washington

Many ordinary Americans as well as the leaders and organizers of the 1963 March attended the 50th Anniversary March yesterday and the bell-ringing ceremony by MLKDream50.

From the events, two questions ring loud:

How far have we come in 50 years?
How far do we still need to march to redeem the dream?

Conclusions will differ, but before you answer, take a minute to find your “Oh, I see” moments in this infographic from the Huffington Post.

If one of those moments inspires you to speak up—for justice in law enforcement and courtrooms, for opportunities in classrooms and workplaces, or for fairness and respect among people—you’ll be paying forward a gift from those who spoke up at the two Marches on Washington and the 50 years in between.

♥

The King Center offers a digital archive of over one million documents related to King’s life and is a repository for over 4,000 dreams submitted to the site. Add your own!

The Warren Leffler photograph resides in the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, U.S. News & World Report Magazine Collection.

Comment on this post below, or inspire insight with your own OIC Moment here.

Sheron Long 1 Comment

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