My Thoughts on Culture – Detroit Community-Engaged Research Program

My Thoughts on Culture

Growing up, I didn’t really feel a strong connection to any particular culture. There didn’t seem to be anything interesting or distinctive to me about any of what we did. I think I was very isolated from any feeling of community; as a family we never grew to be extremely close, I never really completely warmed up to my church (getting up early is a struggle), and I have never felt any sort of special connection to any culture.

I feel my background makes me both very interested and very sensitive to people with different backgrounds and the situations I might encounter because of them. I think this is why I like to learn languages, and it has made my experience so far at DHDC very interesting. I work in an office with almost all Mexicans (at least one Colombian and one Puerto Rican, an African American man, and probably somebody from some other Latin American country work with me). It is really cool to experience the mixture of Spanish and English, Mexican and “American” culture right here inside Detroit. I work in a community that is both very American and very Mexican. It is interesting to talk to my co-workers about the world cup; many of them don’t care at all about soccer, as they were raised here and they never got into it, while others are passionate about it. Some of them identify strongly with America and others with Mexico, which makes for some fun joking around the office.

The cultural differences that we have has actually played a large part in determining what I do in my work; I originally wanted to do some sort of phone survey, but I learned that calling a bunch of Latina women at their home phones about a workshop they participated in would go very poorly. Their husbands would get mad or they would just make an excuse, according to the experience of my co-workers. I quickly learned that as someone coming in from outside of the community, very clearly a “gringo”, I wouldn’t be accepted quickly by residents. However, I have learned that through being open and sharing meaningful experiences with people, I can create relationships with our clients and be able to make a meaningful impact (given time and effort, of course).

I would also like to talk about my company culture. I feel like non-profits and businesses should be open to suggestions and ideas from everyone and encourage collaboration both inside the organization and with other organizations. However, in DHDC I really think that there are a lot of problems in that area. There are a lot of office politics and the extreme emphasis on “chain of command” over collaboration is really detrimental, in my opinion. I would like to find a way to help solve this, and I have been conversing with some co-workers about it, but it is quite overwhelming for them. Hopefully in the coming weeks I can either meet alone or with other people with the director about it, in order to provide my perspective on the situation.

My workplace has an abundance of culture on several different levels. Some levels are amazing and really fun to experience whereas others are frustrating, but all of them are good for me to experience, and I am glad that I am getting that experience now before I get a real full-time job.

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