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Running head: CULTURALLY SKILLED COMMUNICATOR

INTEGRATED ASSIGNMENT 1

What Does it Take to be a Culturally Skilled Communicator?

Canada is flooded with a wide range of immigrant and indigenous people, who carries

with them, an array of interesting cultures. We come in contact with people every day, be it in

school, social gatherings, place of worship , to name a few. What that means is that,

communication has to take place some way or the other. It is a very important tool in our life

because it gives us the capacity to grasp, analyze or understand a concept or situation correctly. It

can either be verbal or non verbal. A verbal example would be speaking to someone or a group.

On the other hand, a non verbal example would be someone shaking his feet while waiting to be

seen by the doctor. It could mean that he is nervous, as well as, it could mean that it’s just a

habit. Often times, though, we fail to understand what is being communicated. This tends to

happen when we allow assumption or misinterpretation to jump the board, and sadly the purpose

of the communication process is lost. Nevertheless, I certainly believe that a good

communication ties in with having a good understanding of culture.

Culture is everywhere and there is no one definition. It’s in the way we speak, the way

we dress (identity) and the way we socialize. It’s in our values, beliefs and practices. It’s in the

media, in our fashion; it’s insanely diverse. So the reality hauls us to the brink, what is culture?

And how do I communicate with a multicultural society? One researcher stated that “…culture is

a configuration of learned behaviors and results of behavior whose component elements are
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shared and transmitted by the members of a particular society” (Linton, 1945, p. 32). The mere

fact that we communicate with different kinds of people every day means that we communicate

with people of various countries, background, beliefs and practices every day. This is called

intercultutral communication.

A culturally-skilled worker is significant in intercultural communication. So how can one

be culturally skilled? If you’re open-minded, it is powerful in tackling the difficulty of

communication. Being open-minded simply means you have made room for self-awareness.

When you wear that hat of self-awareness, you’re being true to yourself, admitting your rights or

wrongs and also accepting critical, reflective and supportive feedback from others. This plays an

important role in the professional world, but it is not limited to other social niche. It serves as a

foundation for mitigating prejudice, discrimination, racism and stereotyping in our social spaces.

The two photos attached to this writing embrace multi-culture. Photograph 1 highlights a

contestant in the African Gala from Congo, proudly showing off ‘the best of the Congolese’

dress. On the other hand, Photograph 2 depicts a Caribbean-featured doll. In my opinion, the

intention of these photos is to highlight identity and embrace one’s culture. The model in photo

1, as well as, the doll in photo 2, suggests that one can be different, and one has the right to

identify him or herself with the culture that they’re rooted in. “I just want to keep the culture

going, keep it alive…we lose the culture with children who were born and grew up here who

after a while don’t like the idea of music and the food” (Roberts, 2017, p. 19).

As a Caribbean woman of African descent, I am proud to say that, learning about my

culture has, indeed, sharpened my self-awareness. After learning about the horrors of slavery and

the unimaginable evils of colonization and colonialism and seeing how they have affected and

still affect people of African ancestry, I have attained a level of self worth and awareness from
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learning about my history, our history. The greatness that African civilizations had once

achieved with great advancements in literature, engineering, mathematics, astrology, architecture

etc., has given me a new lease on my self-awareness and made me proud to be who I am

and have opened my eyes to love myself even more. Growing up, the society around us, have

always been giving us melanin skin people labels. Labels that diminish us, that erode us from

society. We were never told how beautiful and talented we are. The stereotyping that “being

black is evil” has created an ugly portrait of the black race, hence, why I grew up seeing black

women and black men bleaching their skin just so the world will no longer see them as black. All

this because of what our people went through. It is through knowing our history that one

becomes self aware. Going forward, it is this self awareness that will mould me psychologically

and emotionally to be the proud self-loving person, deserving of my ancestry.

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Reference

Linton, R. (1945). The Cultural Background of Personality.

New York, p. 32

Roberts, C. (2017, August). Jennifer’s Caribbean Design Caribbean Theme Dolls: Our Legacy

News, p. 19.
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Appendices

Photogragh 1
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Photograph 2