Week 4 – Detroit Community-Engaged Research Program

Week 4

Culture is something that has been especially prevalent in my mind this week, especially after our discussion as a group on Thursday. I feel like it is a word that is thrown around it a lot of different contexts and thus can mean a wide variety of things. As someone who is majoring in cultural anthropology which is essentially the study of human cultures and how they interact with one another, one would think that I would have a better grasp on the word and its meaning. Though the more I seem to study it, the more convoluted the concept becomes. The assumption is that people who are raised in more or less the same manner who typically share similar racial attributes share a type of culture. It can extend to the food you eat, to the way you dress, to your religious beliefs, and who you choose to spend your time with.

As someone who is a large conglomeration of things, I find that I do not fit into this stereotypical idea of what culture is and what it should look like. Upon first sight, most people assume that I am African American and then subsequently assign those cultural expectations to me. However, I did not grow up within that cultural context which serves as a point of confusion for most people. While people assume that I grew up with soul food and Motown music, I was actually eating rice and beans for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and listening to Celia Cruz and Julio Iglesias. I grew up semi Cost Rican within a mostly white affluent suburb. My “culture” is a mix of a lot of different things and sometimes that makes it hard to find a definition of my culture when we are discussing it in larger group settings.

Specifically in the context of Detroit, this means that sometimes I am perceived as having insiders knowledge of the city in which I am a guest for the summer simply based upon my appearance. This isn’t a good or a bad thing, just something that I have noticed. It puts me a sort of unique position where I am somewhere in between the guest volunteers who stop in at Hope House for a day or two and the residents of Detroit, a sort of limbo in ways.

Something else that has struck me throughout the past 4 weeks of working with Voices for Earth Justice is that even though we are in a mostly black neighborhood, it seems as if most of the people who volunteer with us are white people from outside of Detroit, and sometimes, even outside of the state. Granted, I haven’t been here long enough to have more than two volunteer groups, and during the school year there are a lot more opportunities for local schools to have field trips and volunteer days at our site, yet, there is still a striking disparity between the people we attempt to serve, and those who come in to help with that mission. I am interested to see how this phenomenon continues to develop throughout my stay in Detroit and how the DCBRP group develops as well.

 

1 thought on “Week 4”

  1. I really really really was blessed by this post and enjoyed it. I feel you on everything you wrote, whether by life experiences or how you explained it (really well!).

    Thank you for writing this

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