I found this podcast to be really interesting, and first I’d like to talk about the conversation of white culture. I would love to hear other people’s thoughts on this, because it is something I have often thought about. In my opinion, there is more than one type of white culture, because not all white people fall into the same category. Same with black culture, Asian culture, etc. No race falls into a single category. Not every black, white, Asian, Latino, family is the same, and what about all the different countries that all races come from. There are Asians that come from the Philippines, and Asians from India, and their “Asian culture” can’t be put into one category. There can be many types of black culture, white culture, Asian culture, because you can’t put race and ethnicity into the same category. I bring this up because throughout my lifetime, I have heard countless of people say that white people don’t have culture, or that white culture is just stolen culture from every other culture. But I have also had people say to me that I do have culture because I am not American, even though I’m white. In their eyes, American culture isn’t white culture. The people I have met in my life say that white Americans don’t have culture, but if you’re white and from another country, then you do have culture. They’ve said to me, “Oh yea you’re different, you’re not American white,” even though I have lived in America most of my life and have adapted many American cultural things into my life. That’s why I’m curious to know where people draw the line. Even though I am from another country, I am still white, so wouldn’t that be one type of white culture? Maybe I am wrong, but I think within any racial culture, there can be multiple cultures.

I also wanted to discuss the fact that I love the diversity and representation we are beginning to see in Disney, Hollywood, and media. Showing kids of all races and ethnicities that they can be on TV; they can be superheroes and anything they dream of. I think this is incredibly important. When children only see black actors as drug dealers or Latino actresses as maids, this is what conditions our brains to create these implicit biases, snap judgements. It was nice for me to hear in the podcast that there is a way to disrupt these patterns and stereotypes from building in our heads by feeding ourselves new types of television and media. Like the podcast said, exposure is the best way to reduce implicit bias, surrounding ourselves with different music, movies, and people with different thought patterns as us, from different places/cultures, with different experiences. This will help us break down biases, and hopefully as diversity continues to increase on our screens, the next generation of children will be a lot less judgmental and biased.