Biological and cultural diversity determine human background and heritage, cultural preferences and uniqueness. Culture is that unique characteristic that separates the human from the rest of the world of living things. It is the primary means of human adaptation, the basis for the majority of human thought and behavior. Biological diversity determines a set of genes and color of skin, i.e. biological and physical characteristics. Thesis In spite of visible physical characteristics and racial differences, biological diversity does not necessities a commitment to cultural diversity.
Biological diversity does not necessitate a commitment to cultural diversity because many people lost their values and traditions associated with biological (racial) differences and accepted new national values and morals. For instance, during the first and the second waves of immigration European and Asian immigrants accepted new cultural values and traditions in America. They remembered their ancestry but did not follow cultural and national traditions of their native land. Culture makes all humans basically the same, yet it also makes them different as each human group creates and develops its own version of culture designed to respond to their own particular needs and wants, and because of the choices they make (Smiers 14). Culture is created by people in response to the specific conditions, problems, or limitations that they face in the natural environment, and the socio-cultural ones that they create.
The era of globalization has a great impact on perception and understanding of the concept of race and culture, diversity and origin. Americans have always taken pride in their diversity, in their own individual heritages, and in certain ideas that they have assumed were uniquely American. Their “heritage” was something they used to refer to their individual ancestry and linkage to the “old country,” wherever that might have been. Culture was a phenomenon in and of itself, unique, shaping how people lived their lives and yet independent of the people it shaped. When called upon, assumed, or used by Americans, culture has been used to characterize those “other” people, or to identify the differences between the American way of life (culture) and that of other groups of people “somewhere out there” in the world (Smiers 76). Biological diversity does not necessitate a commitment to cultural diversity because while people share culture because they learn it, this extra-somatic phenomenon lay beyond people (Sowel 36). Race could not touch it. Part of culture or of a culture is readily observable, such as rules, ideas, beliefs, and recipes for organizing people and doing things, all of which people can explicitly describe, talk about, explain, or argue about. But there is another part of culture that is not readily observable and must be inferred from the way observable action and talk are organized (George and Yancey i1). Biological diversity does not necessitate a commitment to cultural diversity because individuals are not born with culture; they have to learn it. See questions in the article: “Since my face and my ethnicity are in conflict, how do I express my cultural background? (See 60). Although the biological basis or capacity for culture is obvious, it is not something inherited along with one’s physical characteristics.
In sum, biological diversity does not necessities a commitment to cultural diversity because each generation of humans has to learn culture all over again or it will not survive. Thus, biological and cultural diversity can conflict because of the growing migrations of people, the fragmentations and complexity of the modern nation-state, and increasingly violent conflicts tied to ethnic groups.
Works Cited
See, L. “My Face does not match my race”. Self, Nov, (1999): 60-61.
Smiers, J. Arts Under Pressure: Protecting Cultural Diversity in the Age of Globalisation. Zed Books Ltd, 2003.
Sowel, T. Race and Culture: A World View. Basic Books; New Ed edition 1995.
George, D., Yancey, G. Taking Stock of America’s Attitudes on Cultural Diversity: An Analysis of Public Deliberation on Multiculturalism, Assimilation and Intermarriage. Journal of Comparative Family Studies 35 (2004).