CIM409 Week 2
Cultural Sensitivity
This week I spoke to some colleagues about interculturalism and started to think about possible ideas for a project: The song ‘Africa’ by Toto is a famous example of a wildly popular song written by a Western band that had never been to Africa and was “based on an idealised Africa from teacher’s stories and copies of National Geographic magazine” (The Financial Times, 2024), which features false nostalgia and factual errors. I found it interesting that this song can be a global hit, yet not appeal lyrically to the people of it’s namesake.
Another concept that came up for me this week was dreadlocks, because this subject became confusing to me the more I considered it - as African-Americans have claimed it as belonging to their cultural heritage (Drew, 2023), and yet this hairstyle is extremely popular with the modern Hippie movement, as observed in my current location of Byron Bay, Australia. Although long hair naturally tangles in most humans regardless of cultural heritage, Professor Drew notes that there is a deep connection between dreadlocks and African culture, but that it is ok for other cultures to wear them in a form of “cultural appreciation”, whereby there is understanding of the history and a willingness to learn.
This brings us to this week’s reading by Bennett (1986), which I found incredibly fascinating due to my own life experiences. Bennett proposed a developmental model of six stages for which I will give personal examples:
Denial - when moving to Australia as a refugee in 2011, some people around me denied that the culture would be any different to Zimbabwe, as they are both former colonies of Britain and still have close ties to English culture; it’s the same language, there are similar sports, the education, governmental, judicial, policing, etc. systems are the same
Defense - and then there were situations where I was asked if I lived in a mud hut - as if all people in Africa lived in such ways. Some uneducated Westerners might think that all African people are the same, and must live in poverty, and that Australia is therefore a place of cultural sophistication
Minimization - meeting South African expats in Australia that truly felt that they could empathise with my experiences, minimising the fact that they made the conscious decision to move here. This might not seem like a cultural issue on the surface, but the South Africans generally speak negatively about their lives back home, whereas Zimbabweans recognise that it is only a political issue that has forced them out and not a question of culture.
Acceptance - receiving my Australian Passport in 2018, having gone through the application process for 6 years and proving integration into society, I was now legally Australian. I didn’t feel right calling myself Australian at this point, but I knew I was here to stay.
Adaptation - in the years after moving to Byron Bay, I began to think like an Australian, I began to feel more comfortable socialising with Australians, and warmed to the Australian musical library.
Integration - only just recently, I went back to visit Zimbabwe for the first time since I left: half my life ago! It was both familiar and a cultural shock. The food was the same, but the music was very different from what I remembered. I can still speak some of the local language and was able to joke around and negotiate, but when asked where I was from, the answer was surprising: I caught myself saying I was half Zimbabwean, half Australian, which felt strangely correct. Being in Zimbabwe again was the first time I genuinely felt Australian.
Reference List
Bennett, M. J. (1986). A developmental approach to training for intercultural sensitivity. International Journal of Intercultural Relations 10, 179-196.
Drew, C. (2023, November 29). Are dreadlocks cultural appropriation? (2024). Helpful Professor. https://helpfulprofessor.com/are-dreadlocks-cultural-appropriation/
The Financial Times. (2024, February 17). https://ig.ft.com/life-of-a-song/africa.html
