Applying Multicultural Psychology to Everyday Life

     Over the course of this semester, I have learned so much in Multicultural Psychology. It’s hard for me to imagine a time when I didn’t relate class content to the real world. But there was a time. On the first day of class Julian asked us to describe our culture. I was at a loss. I didn’t think I had a culture – I thought hmmm, I’m white, I’m not religious, and I don’t know what else influences culture. That was before I learned all about what culture is and what makes up different cultures. So many of the things we do, media we consume, things we read, music we listen to make up culture. There is not a culture-less person on this planet. Culture encompasses so much – ideas, beliefs, social habits, language, religion, clothing, fashion, relationships, food, entertainment, learning. Everything we do and who we do it with influences our own culture.       Some of my biggest take aways from this class include acculturation experiences of immigrants, ...

     I got to see Moulin Rouge! The Musical recently at Broadway at the Eccles and thought it was amazing. A couple days later, I given the opportunity to see the musical again,  and seeing the show again was too good of an offer to pass off. However, I had one more blog post to write and so I decided to watch the musical through a multicultural lens the second time around. I brought a pen and a small notebook and took notes throughout the musical.       Moulin Rouge! The Musical takes place in turn of the century Paris. It tells the story of Christian, a young composer, who falls in love with cabaret actress Satine, who is the star of the Moulin Rouge. However, the club's owner, Harold Zildler has promised Satine to a Duke in exchange for the Duke funding the Moulin Rouge. Through a funny misunderstanding, Zilder agrees to put on a show created by Christian and his artist friends Toulouse-Lautrec and Santiago at the Moulin Rouge starring Sa...

                                                                                 Photo courtesy of HBO     Any time I call my parents at night they're watching The Wire . Any time I am home and the TV is on and it's not football or basketball, it's The Wire . Despite airing in 2002, it's my parent's go-to TV show. One weekend earlier in the semester I went home and my parents were watching The Wire . The Wire is set in Baltimore, Maryland, and explores the relationship between different institutions of the city and its relationship to law enforcement each season. I don't know what season I was watching, but the episode I watched was about illegal drugs and gangs.      So this episode had two gangs fighting over...

       When we learned about morality, religion, and justice my multicultural psychology class, we talked about the controversy in Denmark that sparks international crisis in 2005. A Danish man wanted to write a children's book about the prophet Muhammad, and was looking for a Muslim person to illustrate the book. He couldn't find anyone to illustrate his book because in the Muslim faith while there is no explicit ban on depicting the prophet Muhammad it is considered extremely disrespectful. The Danish author became frustrated and published a cartoon in his local paper depicting the prophet Muhammad with a bomb on his turban. This caused outrage in the Muslim community world wide; riots were held and people died. Despite this, the man behind the cartoon, Kurt Westergaard, the newspaper, and the Danish government did not apologize because Kurt Westergaard was expressing his freedom of speech. My professor asked the class who was morally right - the Muslim community o...

                                                                                            J. Dixon Modeling Game 9 Uniform 2022                                                                                                                          Courtesy of utes_equiptment on instagram     Above is a picture of a University of Utah football player modeling th...

  The Pyramids of Giza. Courtesy of  Ratnakorn Piyasirisorost/Getty Images       I recently helped run a Tuesday Conversation (program for Honor's freshmen in which faculty teach them about a variety of subjects) in which Alicia Cunningham-Bryant talked about mummies, aliens, and pyramids. I remember attending this Tuesday Conversation when I was a freshman and I thought it was super eye opening.  Alicia Cunningham-Bryant is a super cool Egyptologist, that we were fortunate to learn from. She began the conversation by showing the freshmen Steve Martin's King Tut skit on SNL  and getting their thoughts on it. Most students recognized that Steve Martin's King Tut skit was cultural appropriation and a misrepresentation of Egyptian culture. Alicia noted that overall, the field of  Egyptology super racist and problematic as it began with white historians and anthropologists stealing ancient artifacts from the Egyptian people. When thinking about Egypto...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7iQbBbMAFE       Free your mind is an anti-prejudice song released in 1992 by the American female group En Vogue. The song covers the topics of sexism, racism, prejudice, and stereotypes. Despite this song being released 30 years ago, the topics in this song are still extremely relevant today, as many people, especially those with marginalized identities, who have to face sexism, racism, prejudice, and stereotypes every day.   Before analyzing the lyrics of the song, I'm going to go over some definitions. Prejudice is a negative attitude toward another person or group formed in advance of any experience with that person or group. Prejudice can include a cognitive component, which includes assumptions and beliefs about a group, like stereotypes, and a behavioral component which includes negative behaviors, including discrimination and violence. Prejudice based on racial grouping is racism and prejudice based on sex is sexism (Amer...