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Essay on Diversity and Ethical Issue
In a rural community, an African American cultural identity is signified via the body as a visual cue and secondarily by the values, norms, behaviors and practices that constitute cultural understanding. Contemporary examples of nonverbal gestures prevalent within the African American community include head nodding, forms of coded handshakes, drumming, dance and other forms of rhythmic expression.
Drumming and dancing are rhythmic gestures geared toward an external expression of communal communication. In fact, music and dance have served as a fundamental means of communication in African society. Alternatively, head nodding and hand shaking are more intimate expressions of communication, an exchange that more typically takes place between two individuals.Certainly drumming and dancing were earlier gestures that were carried over from Africa. Many Africans continued their native music and dance once they reached the New World. (Malone, 1996, p. 40). Drums and the dances that accompanied captured slaves represented the basis of a shared past and a unifying present and sometimes a shared vision of the future.
The small ritual forms of nodding, smiling, and saying hello indicate to others in one’s environment that they are not just objects but are recognized as members of an order of social relations; a pattern of mutual orientation has been established.” (Rothenbuhler, 1998, p. 106).This is precisely the behavior/action that African American are engaged in when they seek each other out, for example on a crowded street, and exchange a initially a glance, followed by a nod of the head, acknowledging each others presence......
