Cross-Cultural Communication - Essay Example

In today’s world of cultural diversity, emotions like empathy can really help more than sympathy in improving cross-cultural communication between the native people and foreigners in any place. Bennette (11) says that the communication strategy which is most suitable in context of cultural diversity, is empathy which literally helps people from diverse backgrounds understand and respect each other’s feelings and values. It is suggested that empathy works more magic than sympathy in ensuring successful cross-cultural communication because this makes an individual actually participate in others’ sorrows, rather than merely imagining him/herself in the depressed person’s position.

This sort of an empathic attitude really helps in incorporating the necessary element of understanding in cross-cultural communication. Cultural empathy phenomenally aids in communication because in this way, one really seeks to learn and comprehend what viewpoints other person’s culture presents about myriad issues, and this results in a very strong connection between two culturally diverse people. In a story “A Town Called Rosewood” written by (Carnes, Tauss, and Blackmun), it is mentioned how race and other such stereotypes mattered greatly in the destruction of a whole town called Rosewood and how its population got homeless and scattered as a result of the horrendous massacre initiated by the biased white people back in 1923.

the uncontrollable mess all started when a black man falsely accused and this gave the white neighbors an unjustified chance to crackdown on the town mostly occupied by the less influential black people. Following are two letters addressed to each of the two groups, the native residents of Rosewood and their more influential white neighbors in an effort to inform each party about the values and cultural norms