Week 8: The importance of educating minority professionals

The Indian Country was an integration of various aspects that were discussed in our MC 7019 class. The authors’ intention was to examine how the digital age changed the rich story telling technique in distributing the News among the Native communities. In doing so, the authors, LaPoe and LaPoe II, successfully addressed sensitive issues in the digital age, such as digital divide, stereotyping, and difficulties in researching minorities. LaPoe and LaPoe II concluded the book with an affirmative attitude. They had high hopes for the decrease of digital divide, as there are more attempts to grow and educate young generation of American Indians.

Cultivating culturally competent communicators, journalists and researchers is significant in 1) understanding a certain culture and 2) solving the digital divide as LaPoe and LaPoe II argued. The class discussed two steps of digital divide in the last class period. Providing digital devices can easily solve the first step of digital divide, which limits the access. The second step of digital divide, however, which is related to the level of skills and participation, can only be solved through education.

Culturally competent native professionals can spot out errors from the outside researchers. Stereotypes and lack of understanding of the out-group researchers can result in wrong conclusions. Any researchers who haven’t experienced the culture from inside can make a wrong observation. For instance, Hofstede’s cultural dimension is a widely cited model. It explains the cultural differences with six dimensions. According to the Hofstede dimension, South Korea is defined as feminine society, which members of the society like to cooperate and care for others than to compete. However, from the inside perspective, Korea is one of the most heavily competitive societies. Students go to school at 7 am, and are forced to study until 10pm. The situation doesn’t change after graduation. Employees always work after hours because everyone else is doing the same. Students and workers choose to do more study and work because not doing so would eliminate them from the competition. This is what I experienced and observed as an in-group. Hofstede’s research results, however, which is inconsistent from the eyes of an ingroup researcher, has been cited way over forty thousand times all around the world. Caucasion male has been the dominant leader in every parts of the society. Growing culturally competent professionals would find skewed perspectives in various fields and add perspectives to make a balance.

Culturally competent native researcher can integrate a traditional culture and a new concept or technique, and create an optimal solution for the community. The authors found that the distinctive storytelling of the American Indians still remained even after the young generation transferred to digital media. The example on the book shows that some American Indian journalists had problem publishing on the mainstream media because of the Native storytelling writing style. Without the culturally competent young generation journalists and the digital tools, the only way American Indian Journalists could take to be accepted into the mainstream media was to let go of their distinctive storytelling and write like the mainstream journalists. The preservation of the Native storytelling culture was possible not just by digital media or educated young generation respectably. The combination of the two worked together and found the best way to adapt the traditional culture to the new digital media. Likewise, having skilled minority professionals help keep their cultural characteristics distinct from the mainstream. Culturally competent researchers will help fill the gap between the digital divide and increase the speed of process by educating more generations after them.