Abegail Jean M.

Tangara
BSIE 3-1
Purposive Communication
201810468
Activity 2
One minority member in the United States points out: “My White friends don’t mean to offend me, but
they do. How am I supposed to feel when we say, ‘I think of you as just like me.” They never say they
think of themselves as just like me. What they mean is that I seem white enough” (Houston & Wood.
1996)

What cultural undertone is embedded in the sentence?

Communication is a human means of changing information with one another, but sometimes it
can also cause conflict to one another especially when they are from different cultures. Because every
culture has their own ways or styles of doing communications.

The cultural undertone that is embedded in the sentence is about their racial status. When his
white friends told him “‘I think of you as just like me”, his white friends are just trying to imply that they
accept him disregarding of his race. But in his perspective, he doesn’t feel the belongingness because the
racial division is still present in their sentence.

There are so many types of cultures around the world, and their styles of communication can be
different with one another. There are cultures that give importance to honest confrontations but there are
cultures that see confrontations as a form of insult. So, it is important that we study the different forms of
communication and cultures of other countries so that we can understand each other’s differences.