Hannah's blog for multicultural psych!

    Recently I came across a podcast called the i'm fine podcast on youtube and the video that caught my attention was really amazing and once again opened my eyes to the significance of culture. This episode was interviewing a man named Moses Brings Plenty, who also starred in the TV series Yellowstone. Mo is from the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, and is dedicated to authentic indigenous representation and the preservation of Native traditions. He is an actor, a cultural adviser, and advocate, but most of all he is a proud Lakota. In this episode he shares many amazing traditions and stories but something that caught my attention the most was the sacred symbolism behind his braids. He went on to explain how significant a braid is to the Lakota people because in their culture women are the next best thing to god. The reason why they understand and believe that is because females have the great gift to give life, So the men wear their hair in two separate braids to h...

      Language is one of the coolest and most powerful tools we have in all cultures around the world.  Language shapes the way we think, express emotions, how we relate to others and so much more. It carries shared history and social identity in many ways. In one of our very first classes you taught us how humor is something that looks different between cultures and I remember thinking that was so cool and that had never crossed my mind prior. Another thing that caught my attention was when we watched that video about how language shapes so much of a person and culture, and the example i'm thinking about is when it talked about how in some cultures they don't have words that represent the future, and I could barely wrap my head around the thought of that but the more it was explained to me, the more it made sense to me. Just by not having specific words to separate the present and the future completely changes the way people live, like when we talked about saving mo...

      Gender stereotypes have a huge impact on how people view themselves and others. From an early age people are exposed to these messages about expectations related to gender and we know that young boys are often encouraged to be tough, assertive, and independent, while girls are expected to be polite, nurturing, and in touch with their emotions. I don't think these are inherently bad by themselves but these expectations can become problematic when they start to limit how we are able to express ourselves later in life. A good example of this would be boys expressing sadness and being told to "man up" which inherently teaches them that vulnerability is bad or a sign of weakness which can then lead to harmful thoughts and feelings because they feel they can't share how they are feeling and bottle it up until they can't take it anymore. When it comes to girls, we know that when put into positions of power or leadership they are often labeled "bossy" or w...

     Something that I have found interesting to think about the last couple weeks relates to my experience with whiteness and how my life has benefited from it and also ways it would maybe be different if I were raised with my mom's puerto rican culture at all. My mom was adopted at birth and has never been in contact with her biological parents, but her biological mom was full Puerto Rican and her biological dad was White. My mom was adopted to two white parents who are amazing people, but she has never discovered her biracial culture and that is something I have been thinking about since being in this class. I have thought about what my life life would look like and how different it would be if my puerto rican side was more evident, looks wise but also culture wise. My mom doesn't know anything about her puerto rican culture, although she looks the part. She has some of the curliest hair i've ever seen and I know that is something she would cry and cry and cry about gro...

     Jade and I went to the Utah cultural celebration center to celebrate Día De Los Muertos and had so much fun. There was so much to learn from and take note of as we were walking around looking at everything. Right off the bat I could feel and see how this is a collectivistic culture, they are all in it for each other and want to benefit the people around them with all that they do. Family is everything to them and I saw that through the time and energy they put into celebrating their loved ones who have passed on before them. It was so inspiring to me to be able to see first hand and close up what it looks like to come from a collectivistic culture other than my own, especially in a society where people value individualism. One of the first things I noticed was white parents bringing their biracial children this event to try and give them an opportunity to connect to their culture and give them a place to feel seen and confident in who they are. I thought that was so ...

     Recently in class I learned about code switching and was instantly intrigued. I learned that 80%-90% of black people speak AAVE. In one of the videos we watched in class one man said "To live in the ghetto you have to speak like you're in the ghetto." and at that point I was able to recognize how language is so important in culture, and that when black people use AAVE they are expressing themselves in a way that they feel seen and heard in that certain environment and with certain people, but also expressing themselves in the way that their audience will understand, appreciate, and connect with. That can look different depending on what environment they're in too, and this is where code switching comes into play. They have to transition between the different English's depending on whether they are at home, school, work, with friends, family, ect.. I didn't realize initially that code switching was something that had to be taught, something that parents te...