Cultural Sensitivity

For the last few weeks I have been working on some cultural sensitivity training. It’s an area that I am somewhat familiar but needed to come to speed on so, as a result, I have been doing some research in this arena.

What are some of our American cultural assumptions? Assumptions that affect the way we look at the rest of the world and the way we interact with the rest of the world?

What are some of our cultural assumptions around the expression of our identity – Does our culture encourage us to express our identity primarily as individuals or as a collective community?

What about around equality? Would our culture suggest that all are equal or would it suggest that some are more equal than others?

How good are we with dealing with ambiguity vs. certainty with our culture? Do we insist on having all the rules and structure in place or can we be comfortable in dealing with the unknown?

Does it ever occur to us that other cultures have completely different assumptions surrounding these issues and how that affects the way we communicate and ability to cooperate with other cultures?

A bit closer to home – what are some of our American cultural assumptions around these issues that are at odds with a Christian culture revealed to us in our New Testaments?