A Week of Cultural Awareness

I've always found the idea of culture really interesting. My cousins hosted an exchange student from Chile when I was eight and then four others after that, and then my family hosted three students most likely being what this interest comes from. Being exposed to people who found the way I lived fascinating created a question to what life might be like for them back home, they were never that otherworldly, they were my cousins and then my siblings, but they were still so different. The differences in what we were taught in school was always something that stood out a lot. The history we knew about wars and conquests were obviously from very different perspectives, hearing these different sides to the same story changed my perspective of the U.S. very quickly but not in any way that I had thought much of until recently.

Cultural appropriation has been an issue of debate that's been in my circle of interest for about four years now. As I've become aware of it I've started seeing it more and more, and it causes a sort of struggle for me sometimes. I often don't feel like I'm the right person to call someone out on it, I'm a white American and it's not my culture that I think might be being disrespected and I don't really know how a person of that culture feels about it, but on the other hand, I'm also a white American who is a peer to the people who I think are being disrespectful so maybe it's more likely the offender will listen if I'm the one who says something. The balance needed when being an ally is something I'm still working on and that I still have many questions about.

My design thinking class made me think about this a lot this week. Mexico gets a lot of negative press in the U.S. so looking back at the history of the colonization of Mesoamerica is especially upsetting. There are true horrors in the pasts of these places that were colonized and seeing the effects of it still in those countries becomes much more difficult when you know what you're looking at. The culture of Mexico is multi layered, stemming from the Native tribes who lived there and then altered by the conquests of Spain, it can't be an easy thing to learn to balance for those who have history on both sides of the story and I can't begin to understand what that's like or know what to do about it besides try to learn more to become more understanding. When I get to do this in a way that fits into architecture so nicely I feel reassured that I'm pursuing the right major. There's so much more to buildings than just what we see on a glance, I hope to always keep that in the forefront of my mind.