Cross-Cultural Similarities Between Chinese Confucian and African American Culture - Term Paper Example

Cross-Cultural Research Paper: Cross-Cultural Similarities and Differences between Chinese Confucian and African American Culture Institutional Affiliation My Interest in Chinese Confucian Culture My culture of interest is Chinese Confucian. Together with Taoism, Confucian offers guidelines for appropriate behavior of officials and individuals. The origin of this culture was in the Golden-Age prior to the introduction of Christianity. Confucius was based on an ethical system that sought to provide Chinese people with an ethical system aimed at teaching the best way for people to conduct themselves in the society. While searching for a harmonious and just society, Confucian emphasized that each relationship was subject to a set of obligations that must be upheld. Confucian emphasized full loyalty and obedience of the superior by inferiors and the benevolence to inferiors from superiors. The five most emphasized relationships were husband and wife; ruler and the ruled; younger and older brothers; between friends; between parents and inferiors. Today, Confucian affects every element of China, including education, private and public attitudes, government, and etiquette with the aim of involving an audience that was tired of rampant political corruption and the loss of moral grounding in the society as evidenced through emperors, and ordinary citizens, and ended up being a principle culture within the Chinese culture. Other concepts pursued by Confucianism include humanity and sincerity, moral commitment, and the moderate pursuit of all forms of human pleasure. According to Guo (1995), Chinese Confucians embrace ethics and morality, where rites are the norm, and goodness is the core. In addition, Guo (1995) reveals that the culture promotes different viewpoints that are good and evil, and material interests and benevolence, on human character and kindheartedness. Confucians also have strong ethics on traditional ethics and clearly the culture is still upheld despite the slow inheritance and promulgation of modern medical practice in China (Guo, 1995). Based on the findings of Wong (2001) one of the greatest attributes of Chinese national culture is high collectivism, and low individualism. This Confucian collectivism prevails both at home and in the workplace. Like any other collectivism culture, Wong (2001) highlights that Chinese culture influences child growth to the extent that children grow respecting the group that they belong to and not individuals. Wong highlights that the most common groups relating to children are families that form in-group members, and others who form the out-group members. Children remain a part of these groups when they grow up, and expect that these groups would protect them during times of trouble. Consequently, children must show their loyalty to groups throughout their lives, thus upholding the ‘we’ thinking and does not expect to stand on its own at any given point in live. Besides group protection and a sense of belonging, collectivism amongst Chinese Confucians contributes to group learning of everyday life ethics, and other principles such as society stability founded on unequal relationships between people; family as the prototype for any other social organizations; rudimentary treatment of others with benevolence; and virtue based on one’s responsibilities in life (Phuong-Mai, Terlouw, & Pilot, 2005). African American Culture Unlike Chinese Confucianism, African American Culture is founded on capitalism and free markets coupled with modern political organizations. According to Southwest Educational Development Laboratory (1999), African Americans are characterized by a long ancestry history in the United States. However, their position there has been and remains marginal compared to the mainstream cultures. The main differentiating attributes are religious beliefs, level of urbanization, economic status, education, and others. Like the Chinese Confucians, African Americans have the tendency to observe a conscious awareness of group belonging particularly due to their shared historical and political associations with other U.S. culture. Southwest Educational Development Laboratory also reveals that African Americans share relations and world views that are grounded in elements of ancient African cultures, slavery, and Protestantism, subordination, and indenture hood experiences (Nicholson, 2002). However, although not all African Americans acquire the black identity, majority do, and believe in the reference to group functions of an individual’s identity based on blackness. The connection to blackness is also associated to cultural preferences, leisure activities, church affiliation, social networks, artistic tastes, food choices and cooking styles, and organizational membership (Jackson & Richardson, 2014). The African American view or Afrocentric view of life is attributed to cooperation, collective responsibility, interdependence, and group orientation (Hill, 2008). In addition, there is a strong emphasis on Protestantism that upholds collectivity and group culture. Other upheld characteristics amongst African Americans are value for extended families evident in the fact that most families are have a higher likelihood of living with extended family members compared to white households. According to Southwest Educational Development Laboratory (1999), African Americans highly regard spirituality in the cause and healing of diseases including developmental disabilities. It is for this reason that African Americans value seeking community support from churches unlike vising rehabilitation or medical systems. Today, the African American family is under threat of contemporary forces such as poverty, urbanization, recent immigration, and the 20th century’s rural urban migration. According to Acevedo (2003), although African Americans are known for collectivism, they also demonstrate higher levels of individualism compared to their other ethnic groups such as European Americans. Individualism arises from the feeling that collectivism is imposed on them by their society and is less of a conscious individual choice. Consequently, different individuals, especially the younger generations feel that the sense of belonging to the African American group inhibits personal choices of individual members. This causes the individuals to adapt differing degrees of the sense of belonging and while some people demonstrate acceptance of the sense of their ethnic group, they do not embrace group identity. Furthermore, United States is an individualist culture and most young African Americans have been carried away and tend to break from the traditionally observed collectivism of their ethnic group in response to the individualism imposed by the White majority. The most affected, based on research by Coon & Kemmelmeier (2001), are the African Americans who have grown in suburbs or affluent cities, and those shielded by their parents from racism. To them, racism and discrimination are no longer in existence and continue to seek the American Dream. Similarities and Differences Time Orientation Universally, time measurement occurs through clock hands, upon introduction in the industrialization era where workers were called upon to observe discipline for effective integration with machines. Furthermore, the more people become aware of clock-time, the more they feel pressured and the high the anxiety to view time as a utility or an asset that must be saved, spent, made, invested, borrowed, and conserved like money. However, time orientation differs between African Americans and Chinese Confucians. According to Roeckelein (2000), African-Americans are known for their present time orientation. However, this culture differs from one individual to the other and is more evident amongst African Americans of lower economic status. Additionally, their present time orientation does not imply that they forsake the future and the present. It simply apply to their living emphasis that living in the present is more crucial to them unlike yesterday that they can do nothing about, or the future that they can only hope for. Roeckelein (2000) emphasizes that the present time orientation is evident in African american’s everyday live such as ‘I will see you’ rather than ‘I will see you tommorrow’. Although their intention is to imply the future, there do not emphasize it using tommorrow because they believe that the future comes on its own thus never consider being specific about it. As a consequence, Roeckelein (2000) highlights the benefits to include efficient time management that leaves no room for lateness, and also results to conflict with others people whose time management skills are wanting. Furthermore, prensent time orientation is linked to the ignorance on the need to adhere to preventative medication such as that for hypertension, or the drive to complete an antibiotic prescription upon the dissapearance of disease symptoms. For some, time orientiation contributes to delayed visits to the physicians until severe symptoms start distracting their lives and work (Roeckelein, 2000). Confucians, unlike African Americans have past and long-term time orientation. To the Chinese Confucians, events that happened in the past still apply signiticant impact on the thinking of Chinese (Christiansen, Yildiz, Yildiz, & Emel, 2014). Christiansen, Yildiz, Yildiz, & Emel (2014) confirm that in the Chinese culture, past time orientation is inevitable and is highly regarded by most scholars both on land and in the sea. This is understandable considering that civilization in China dates back to about 4,000 years, and becoming the world’s oldest civilization. Today, China holds the worlds oldest records dating to as early as 2000 BC while the Great wall of China was constructed 300 BC. Confucians are firmly glued to the past given their rich borrowing fron Confucius and Lao Tzu, two most influential thinkers, who lived in the 600 century before Christ (Christiansen, Yildiz, Yildiz, & Emel, 2014). Consequently, Chinese people worship their anscestors as a tradition, and perceive themselves as a continuation of history. For this reason, they rarely emphasize on the present time. The past time orientation influences Chinese people in many ways including business where more emphasis is paid to the past, and indivudials and businesses can only prove themselves trustworthy by the passage of time. Like the African Americans, Chinese pay little or no attention to the future as they believe it is short-term. This does not mean that they do not plan ahead but tha they focus more on long term goals and plans, while perceiving time as expensive. Communication Besides time orientation, Chinese Confucians and African Americans differ in terms of communication. According to Roeckelein (2000), African Americans are used to formal titles as a show of respect and for each of establishment of rapport. Common titles include Mr., Miss, or Ms. A common example of title usage is a school where teachers are known by these titles. Given their value for oral communication to pass down information from one generation to the other, African Americans take little consideration of written communication. This translates to more use of guestures, eye contact, emotion, identity orientation, and directiveness during oral communication for elaboration and ease of understanding (Roeckelein, 2000). For identification, African Americans adapt to nomenclature such as culure African Americans, people of color, and Black Americans. Chinese Confucians, completely differ from African Americans in their communication given they value for nonverbal and high context communication style. (Christiansen, Yildiz, Yildiz, & Emel, 2014). High context communication comes from Confucians’ assumption of some knowledge, thus no need to exchange so much information during any given communication. Conversely, most of the Chinese nonverbal communication styles include implied meanings, symbolic language, and indirect statements, as well as some extent of silence. Christiansen, Yildiz, Yildiz, & Emel (2014) confirm that African Americans prolonged history of closeness to families and high regard for interpersonal relationships. This eliminates the need to repeat information that has been there in the past, thus assuming a shared understanding between information sender and recipient. Long-term relations and the great emphasis on social and face harmony contribute to more focus on nonverbal communication as people seek not to offend the other person or the order of events. Furthermore, Chinese Confucians offer straightforward answers to suggestions, and often tend to ask open-ended questions since no one is forced to agree or disagree. It is for this reason that Christiansen, Yildiz, Yildiz, & Emel (2014) term the Confucian communication style involvig too much ambiguity and tact. Physical and Mental Health In terms of physical and mental health, African Americans tend to be over-dependent on family, social communities, and religion for emotional support (Christiansen, Yildiz, Yildiz, & Emel, 2014). This in turn reduces their visits to health care professionals, despite their health conditions dictating so. In addition, where health care professionals are involved, African Americans tend to go for providers that are not aware of their disregard for health care professionals. Although, this group may be blamed for their delayed visits to health care professionals, cultural biases against health care professionals prevent them from accessing care given poor prior experiences characterized by misdiagnosis, poor cultural competence of the healthcare professionals, and inadequate treatment (Guo, 1995). Amongst the Confucians, mental illness is associated with one’s failure to obey the society needs and is a source of shame and guilt to the family (Guo, 1995). When one fails in obedience, they become emotionally disturbed and do not bare minor life stressors. Group relationships African Americans demonstrate a close link between economic adversity and family happiness. For both financial and low income factors, marital relationship is affected either positively or negatively (Smith & Moore, 2000). For instance, there lies a positive relationship between marital happiness and family income. Again, high financial strain levels contribute to low levels of self-reported quality of marital happiness among Africans Americans. Smith and Moore (2000) also affirm that ethnic identification is highly regarded amongst African Americans particularly given their feelings of closeness. However, this interracial diversity negatively impacts on interracial relations through the creation of tensions and social distance permeate relations between native-born and foreign-born blacks. These tensions are not mutually exclusive since most of the foreign born blacks fail to integrate into the larger black community by distinguishing themselves using a different identity primarily in terms of nationality and ethnicity. Smith and Moore (2000) emphasize that even the native-blacks highly resent the foreign-born blacks who hinder their financial advancement opportunities. For instance, foreign-born blacks are deemed to take jobs that rightfully belong to the native blacks only to leave them jobs of low wages. Under such tension, the native African Americans end up frustrated and confused while the foreign-born African Americans buy homes immediately after immigration (Smith & Moore, 2000). Amongst Confucians, group orientation is highly regarded with individuals gaining membership for smooth operation of the society (Phuong-Mai, Terlouw, & Pilot, 2005). This translates to the fact that each member must subject tier own desires for the greater good of the group. Simply said, Confucians do not exist independent of each other, and are instead defined by the association they have to a given group. Furthermore, individual Chinese Confucians are expected to suppress their own individual needs and think in terms of collective responsibility. Group relationship hierarchy starts with one’s family, the community, clan, and their nation. Within their groups, individuals are expected to uphold different levels of relationships with the members (Wong, 2001). For instance, juniors relate differently with elders and parents, while senior relate differently with their children, siblings, and students among others. This implies that while seniors must show concern and benevolence towards their juniors, juniors must demonstrate reverence and service towards seniors. The consistency of this theme is evident till today where most Confucians children demonstrate higher filial duties towards their parents, while parents show great concerned over their children. Filial depicts obedience and respect to parents, and is further used to depict five cardinal relationships such as between subject and ruler, son and father, wife and husband, young and old, and friends. Perceptions and Measures of Intelligence The greatest perception and measures of intelligence amongst Confucians are competitive examinations, and meritocracy. According to Otsuka (1996), Confucius emphasized on the significance of being learned and being a wide reader in all aspects of life. His emphasis included the significance of attaining philosophic principle that entails all scholarship details. Today, education is perceived as an endless process of self-cultivation and self-realization. Furthermore, education is perceived as the process of socialization with the society being viewed a broad process of learning (Otsuka, 1996). For the Chinese Confucian, education is perceived as the only way to define good customs and civilize people, and the only model for great future leaders. Consequently, the focus of education and leadership amongst scholars has made university examination very difficult for those seeking to enter prestigious universities, and beat the competition. William (2009) reveals that amongst African Americans, education is the surest route to underachievement. During the early years of joining school, both white and black children are enthusiastic of achievement only to be distinguished by an irrecoverable gap after 12 years (William, 2009). This is the case given that the more black children remain in school, the more they lag behind and become identified with underachievement and less intelligence. For the African American, education’s view from a traditional perspective presents intelligence as a character that is immutable and a barrier to achievement of any African American child. In addition, underachievement amongst African Americans is based on the schooling culture that presents them as sorting machines where children are classified, tracked, and sorted depending on their needs, capacities, and ethnicities (William, 2009). The Hofstede’s Theory’s Effect on Cultures The Hofstedes cultural dimensions theory best describes the African American and Chinese Confucian culture in this paper. Hofstede, instead of criticizing cross-cultural communication, defined the implication of the culture of a society on the values upheld by the members and the association of those values to the members’ behavior (Acevedo, 2003). The Hofstede’s cross-cultural framework uses a factor analysis structure and is used in different academic fields including research on international management, cross-cultural psychology and communication. This theory critically evaluates the differences between African American and Chinese Confucians cultures on the dimension values. The six main dimensions identified by Hofstede and that allow international comparison of the two cultures are power distance index, individualism and collectivism, masculinity, indulgence and restraint, long-term orientation, and avoidance of uncertainty. When comparing indulgence against restraint, Chinese Confucians are more restraint as they seek to constraint individual desires and impulses more compared to African Americans given their collectivism (Acevedo, 2003). Additionally, Chinese Confucians are more of long-term time oriented compared to African Americans who are more of short-term time oriented with more emphasis on the present unlike the past and future (Roeckelein, 2000). Despite these differences, both cultures believe in distinct masculinity against femininity particularly through their distribution of roles and duties between genders. In both, men are perceived as ambitious, powerful, and competitive while women tend to be associated with life quality and relationships (Jackson & Richardson, 2014). The Hofstede’s Influence On Culture In both African American and Chinese Confucian Cultures, masculinity preference influences identity and personality development in that males are perceived as more preferred children in the family compared to girls (Onsrud, 2007). Onsrud (2007) reveals that while males are associated with heroism assertiveness, and achievement, females are viewed as weak and modest, with higher preference for cooperation and quality of life. Long term orientation amongst Chinese Confucians influences personal and human development by shaping individuals to focus more on the past other than the present. The focus on the past then affects the establishment of relationships (Onsrud, 2007). However, African Americans prefer short-term orientation that pays more attention on the present while the past and the future do not matter. According to Christiansen, Yildiz, Yildiz, & Emel (2014), Confucians are comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty given their preference for non-verbal communication. Consequently, their focus on long-term planning assists them in controlling their future. Conversely, African Americans tend to avoid ambiguity and do not focus on the future but just let it happen. This attitude is more relaxed and it is practice that counts unlike principles. Finally, although African Americans demonstrate strong group relations, individuals tend to feel more compelled to groups, thus exhibit individualism that is the widely practiced American culture (Roeckelein, 2000). In the end, individual blacks only take care of their immediate families and themselves. This is unlike the Confucians where individuals get adapted to the group culture such that the group protects them and they are expected to remain loyal to in exchange. In this society, the ‘we’ culture is stronger than the ‘I’ culture (Christiansen, Yildiz, Yildiz, & Emel, 2014). Hofstede’s Theory’s influence on Culture The judgment of emotion differs from one culture to the other. Amongst African Americans, greater emotional intensity is perceived when evaluating the expression of others (Ching-Sheue, 2012). However, amongst Chinese Confucians, emotions define interpersonal adaptation and associations. For instance, when Confucians come into existence with feelings, they accompany them with emotional responses and these are dominated by feelings that have higher persistency and stability. The four kinds of Confucians emotions are sorrow, anger, delight, and happiness. According to Wyer, Chiu, & Hong (2009), African Americans and Chinese Confucians share in Darwin’s argument that facial expressions are residual acts of more complete behavioural language. Despite differences in culture and race, an almost exact way is used by all cultures in expressing their emotions. In terms of gender and sexual orientation, African American adolescents engage in sexual intercourse at a very high rate while in high school (Ching-Sheue, 2012). In most cases, sex does not involve protection and this accounts to higher risks of infection HIV/AIDS amongst people below the age of 25 (Coon & Kemmelmeier, 2001). Chinese Confucians are known for their oppression of women. This is mostly blamed on Confucianism hierarchy that is dependent of virtue and partly on gender (Christiansen, Yildiz, Yildiz, & Emel, 2014). Wives must obey their husbands, fathers or brothers, and are subjected to female infanticide, second wife marriage, window suicide and obedience to first born sons among others. African Americans males are known for being aggressive and violent compared to their female counterparts. Subjecting women to such violence increases risks of depression especially where violence and sadness keeps recurring in their lives. Depression affects their moods, body, thoughts, and behaviours and affects men as well. However, Bornstein (2014) highlights that amongst Confucians, the levels of aggression and is mostly physical aggression. However, middle childhood involves verbal aggression constituting of insults and threats. Conversely, the strict adherence to social order exposes women to higher rates of depression for those in violent marriages or partners (Bornstein, 2014). Biases influencing the Analysis of the Confucian and African American Culture Biases that may influence my analysis are globalization and westernization particularly for the Chinese culture. Due to westernization, chine Confucian culture of collectivism is being wiped away with individuals preferring to take the perspective of individualism. This may therefore tend to prove some of the findings relating to this culture as fading away. Amongst African Americans, globalization and Westernization erodes off the black culture of collectivism and introduces individualism that could influence the research findings. Conclusion The discussion in this paper evaluates the similarities and differences between African American Culture and the Chinese Confucian. The paper acknowledges that the African American culture is more individualistic than collective as evident in the Chinese culture such that children and adults seek competition and personal interests and not the interests of a group. 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