Harmony Day - Culture, Race and Ethnicity
choose on of the concepts of: culture, race or ethnicity. Brainstorm words and phrases associated with the concept.
Culture
Culture is not about superficial group differences or just a way to label a group of people.
The term ‘race’ is not appropriate when applied to national, religious, geographic, linguistic or ethnic groups. Race does not relate to mental characteristics such as intelligence, personality or character.
Ethnicity is a sense of peoplehood, when people feel close because of sharing a similarity. It is when you share the same things, for example:
Questions
Culture is not about superficial group differences or just a way to label a group of people.
- It is an abstract concept.
- It is diverse, dynamic and ever-changing.
- It is the shared system of learned and shared values, beliefs and rules of conduct that make people behave in a certain way.
- It is the standard for perceiving, believing, evaluating and acting.
- Not everyone knows everything about their own culture.
The term ‘race’ is not appropriate when applied to national, religious, geographic, linguistic or ethnic groups. Race does not relate to mental characteristics such as intelligence, personality or character.
- Race is a term applied to people purely because of the way they look.
- It is considered by many to be predominantly a social construct.
- It is difficult to say a person belongs to a specific race because there are so many variations such as skin colour.
- All human groups belong to the same species (Homosapiens).
Ethnicity is a sense of peoplehood, when people feel close because of sharing a similarity. It is when you share the same things, for example:
- physical characteristics such as skin colour or bloodline,
- linguistic characteristics such as language or dialect,
- behavioural or cultural characteristics such as religion or customs or
- environmental characteristics such as living in the same area or sharing the same place of origin.
Questions
- How does culture define who a person is?
- What is your culture?
- Is this the same as your ethnicity?
- What is a common belief about race and how is it untrue?
- Identify some stereotypes you know of about a particular group of people.
- List some of your values, beliefs and customs (3 of each).
- What are some of the things from your culture that you are proud of?
- What are some of the things about your culture that you don’t like?
- How would you describe Australian culture?
- What are some cultural issues in Australia today?