Colorblindness and Cultural Interpretation

Week 05: Cultural Paradigms

There’s an adorable couple I follow on YouTube that makes art videos (Doodle Date). They make videos of them drawing together and being ridiculously cute in such a wholesome way. There’s a bit of an interesting quirk about the boyfriend in the couple. Adam is colorblind. He doesn’t perceive colors the same way as most people. He has a lot of trouble with red and green. If he doesn’t have help, either through color names or his girlfriend Steph’s help, his art choices would look quite strange to people with more typical color vision. With outside help, he can adapt to a different view on things he perceives in a certain way. He can make art that looks appealing to perspectives and interpretations different than his own natural ones.

Culture is the same way. We each have ways we see and understand the world. We have cultural paradigms, or frameworks by which we understand and interpret things. Those things can be simple or complicated and vary from culture to culture. For example, is a hug from someone a welcome comfort, an expression of romantic affection, or an invasion of personal space? The answer depends on your paradigms. We develop them as we’re socialized in various environments. People who share similar cultures will have many of the same paradigms. In several Asian cultures, people don’t wear shoes inside the house. Americans view guns very differently than the British, who abhor them being in homes.

As teachers, we need to be aware of cultural paradigms. People can face social difficulties if they’re applying their paradigms to interactions in a different culture. We need to help them learn the new ones to foster positive interactions in the target culture. National Geographic has a clip on YouTube (here) where they followed some young men from Sudan as they transitioned to living in America. They were really struggling to adapt to their new environment and were even having trouble with stores and police. Targeted assistance can ease some of that psychological and social strain.

While we’re teaching people about different paradigms, we should also teach them that they’re subjective constructs. Brother Ivers, a professor at Brigham Young University - Idaho, teaches that “culture creates false needs and false problems.” It’s true! There are few universal cultural paradigms and we can frequently find ones that view things in opposing ways. In one video we watched this week, Delali Bright spoke about the differences in the way she was treated because of her appearance between her country of origin and the United States. In her old country, she was bullied and subjected to all kinds of medical treatments because of her appearance. In the US, she’s treated better socially and is complemented for the exact same attributes. She didn’t change at all. The only thing that changed was the dominant cultural paradigm for beauty of her environment. There was no longer a problem about her appearance

I enjoy learning about cultural paradigms. I find the details of them interesting, like chopstick positioning, the Filipino "mano" gesture, and how people address each other. I look forward to learning more about the other views out in the world as I assist students in navigating the paradigms I’m used to.