Response 2

Brandin Reggio

Response 2

            Born and raised in Newark, I am no stranger to different cultures. I am proud to say that I am half Portuguese, a quarter Uruguayan, and a quarter Italian. Both sets of my grandparents came over to the USA from another country and brought many cultural customs and traditions. Both my mother’s and father’s sides of my family have native languages other than English. Unfortunately, I can only speak English fluently. But I can certainly understand Portuguese and Spanish fairly well. In my city, culture is very important and there are many subcultures as well. Just from walking down the block you can notice the diversity of cultures. There are various Portuguese and Italian social clubs and businesses everywhere. The streets are also blooming with stores and shops which are ran by individuals who were not born in this country or “society”, but now they have blended into the USA and have become a part of it. My point here is that the cultural atmosphere in Newark is much more diverse than a town like Westfield or Clark, where the people living there are predominately what one could call “standard Americans”. In my neighborhood of Newark, the nationalities of the inhabitants vary greatly from block to block. On one block the residents might all be African American and another block might be all Portuguese and Brazilian. Because of this, growing up around different cultures and customs became a normal occurrence. However, I can definitely recall a few times in my life when I did experience culture shock, or in other words, felt out of place by another culture.

            One specific time I can remember is recent and fresh in my memory. It all started when I went on a family trip with my girlfriend and her family last summer. The trip was to Kansas…..yes, I said it - Kansas. And this trip consisted of a week of driving across half of the United States, to places which were very different than what I was used to. And, as can be expected from six people being in close corners with others for a week, there was a lot of fighting and arguing. On our journey, we drove through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, and then finally, Kansas. One huge difference that I noticed between New Jersey and the states that I mentioned is that the residents of these states mainly only speak English. The map on page 73 in the text book is proof of the fact that these states greatly differ from New Jersey in which 25% or more residents speak another language at home. In the states that we visited, I felt very much like an outsider. The way in which I dressed and talked were different than the people around me, and the amount of space and farmland was so different from  the cramped apartment buildings and one way streets that I was used to. I admit that I am a bit ethnocentric and I believe that my culture is more normal than others are. I do not intend for that statement to be offensive to other cultures, but it is just what I am used to, especially coming from a family that is so culturally oriented.

At one point on the trip, we made a stop at an Amish cheese market in Ohio. There was a young Amish girl selling fruit; she probably was no older than ten years old and she was dressed in a long dress and bonnet, similar to what the pilgrims wore. In the back of the market there were horses behind a barbed fence, extremely secluded. The people we came across at this cheese shop were very different than myself. They were much more well-mannered than the people I am used to dealing with in New Jersey. One thing I particularly noticed was that the each woman’s dress covered her whole body in order to not reveal anything. My girlfriend was in awe. I felt so different next to these people; I had tattoos and a Jersey accent. I felt like I did not  belong, and the crazy thing about this culture shock is that I did not even have to go outside of the United States or my society to experience it. Instead of traveling to another continent, I experienced culture shock from voyaging a few hundred miles west of where I lived. To be honest, I have more in common with the immigrants in my neighborhood then I did with these Americans from the mid-west. I was so used to different cultures around me, that all along this trip what others consider “American” was actually foreign to me.

            There were definitely many cultural differences that I experienced along my trip, but the Amish cheese shop is the one that stands out the most to me. In my opinion, ethnocentrism was a factor in the way that I looked at these people and the new environments that I encountered. Every time that we passed through another state, I still thought of my subculture and customs as the “norm”. However, I definitely did learn that the rest of America is not like New Jersey. But, I still must say that the ethnocentrism inside me is proud of that. When the word “American” is used, I do not just think of New Jersey, New York and California. Since my trip, I reflect on this term with a much broader meaning. One of the greatest things about this country is all of the thousands of subcultures and I am glad that I got to experience ones that I did not already know on my trip to Kansas.