Discover how family, ethnicity, community, generation, nationality, and world events shape your identity, influence your communication, and affect your relationships.
Did you know that everyone has a culture? As a matter of fact, you are immersed in multiple cultures, whether you recognize them or not.
I've heard people say, “I don't have a culture. I'm just white.” But did you know that there is even a culture associated with being white in America?
You may not think you have a culture because your cultural experiences and assumptions have not been made visible to you. They may feel so familiar that you mistake them for simply being the way life works.
Culture is like oxygen. We rarely notice it until something changes and we realize how much we depend on it.
Have you ever attended an event where you were vastly outnumbered by people of another racial or ethnic background? Perhaps you noticed different ways of greeting one another, communicating, celebrating, or interacting with people in positions of authority.
You may have thought you were observing someone else's culture. But you were also experiencing something about your own. When the familiar ways of doing things were no longer the norm, you may have become more aware of the cultural assumptions you usually take for granted.
That is one of the gifts of cross-cultural experiences: they help us see not only other people more clearly, but also ourselves.
What Is Culture?
Culture is sometimes defined simply as “the way we do things around here.” That is an oversimplification, but it provides a useful starting point.
Culture includes the ways we dress, the language we speak, the food we eat, and the ways we celebrate. It influences how we communicate verbally and nonverbally, whether we use formal titles or first names, how we understand respect, and how we navigate social hierarchies and relationships.
Culture also influences how we understand time, authority, family responsibilities, conflict, hospitality, faith, and belonging.
Some cultural expectations are taught explicitly. Others are absorbed through observation and experience. We may follow cultural practices for years without ever asking ourselves why we do things a particular way.
Living in a highly individualistic society, we can be tempted to believe we are self-made people. We celebrate independence, personal achievement, and individual choice.
Yet, whether we realize it or not, we are profoundly influenced by the people, communities, institutions, and historical circumstances around us.
We are not simply individuals who happen to live among other people. We are people whose lives have been shaped through relationships and cultural experiences.
Understanding Your Layers of Culture
We live within multiple layers of culture. Each layer influences how we see ourselves, understand the world, communicate with others, and build relationships.
Think of these layers as different colors woven into the fabric of your life. Some are obvious, some are subtle, and some may be nearly invisible until you encounter someone whose experiences are different from yours.
Let's explore some of the most influential cultural layers.
1. YOU: Your Individual Starting Point
You came into this world with a unique combination of genetic traits, inherited characteristics, physical tendencies, and potential abilities.
Perhaps you have a natural aptitude for music, athletics, mathematics, or storytelling. Those abilities may create opportunities, but whether you develop them depends on many other influences, including access to resources, encouragement, education, and personal choices.
You may have the potential to become a musician but decide to pursue writing instead. Or perhaps your family and community provide opportunities to develop a talent you might never have discovered on your own.
Who you become cannot be determined by your genetics alone. Your individual characteristics interact with the experiences and relationships that shape your life.
Even at this first layer, we see that who we are and who we become involve both what we bring into the world and what the world brings to us.
2. FAMILY: Where Many of Our First Cultural Lessons Begin
You were born into, adopted by, or raised within a family system. That family helped form and shape you into the person you are today.
Family influences our language, values, habits, beliefs, and expectations. It teaches us what is considered respectful, how to express affection, how to handle disagreement, and what it means to be responsible.
Family also influences which opportunities we receive. Did someone encourage you to pursue music, attend college, travel, or develop a particular talent? Were you taught to speak up or to remain quiet around adults? Were independence and achievement emphasized, or were cooperation and family obligations given greater priority?
These experiences help establish our earliest understanding of how relationships work.
We often carry these lessons into adulthood without realizing how much they influence our expectations of other people.
3. ETHNICITY: The Cultural Heritage We Carry
Your family may come from one ethnic group or several. Ethnic heritage can include shared ancestry, history, language, traditions, food, religious practices, and a sense of belonging.
Many ethnic communities maintain traditions that are celebrated and passed from one generation to the next. Others have experienced cultural disruption, migration, assimilation, or the loss of ancestral languages and customs.
Many European American families, for example, have gradually lost knowledge of their specific ethnic traditions as generations assimilated into mainstream American society. Some families have retained strong connections to their heritage, while others may know little about the cultural traditions of their ancestors.
Yet cultural influence does not necessarily disappear when its origins are forgotten. Family habits, communication styles, food traditions, and values may continue across generations even when people no longer know where those practices began.
The history of Black Americans provides another important example of cultural resilience. The transatlantic slave trade and slavery in North America forcibly separated many Africans and their descendants from family members, languages, communities, and cultural traditions. Enslavers also imposed systems designed to suppress African identities and control the lives of enslaved people.
Despite these devastating disruptions, African cultural traditions survived, adapted, and contributed to the development of distinctive African American cultural expressions, including music, language, religious traditions, foodways, and community practices.
Black American culture is not simply the result of cultural loss. It also reflects creativity, resistance, resilience, and the development of new traditions under profoundly unjust circumstances.
Our ethnic histories are not all the same. Understanding them helps us appreciate both the cultural resources people inherit and the experiences that have shaped their identities.
4. COMMUNITY AND ORGANIZATIONS: The Cultures That Surround Us
Your neighborhood and community are another layer of cultural influence.
You may live in an affluent neighborhood, a working-class community, or an area experiencing economic hardship. Your neighborhood may be closely monitored by law enforcement, or it may be a gated community with private security. It may welcome newcomers, immigrants, and people from different backgrounds, or it may be resistant to change.
These differences can influence your sense of safety, access to resources, relationships, opportunities, and expectations of the wider world.
Community culture shapes our lives in ways we may not recognize until we spend time in a different environment.
Organizations also have cultures of their own.
You may work for an organization that encourages employees to share ideas directly with leadership. Another organization may expect employees to follow a strict chain of command. Some workplaces reward experimentation and innovation; others prioritize established procedures, consistency, and risk reduction.
How are decisions made? Who is expected to speak? How are disagreements handled? What behaviors are rewarded, and which ones are discouraged?
These are all expressions of organizational culture.
The same is true of professional associations, churches, volunteer groups, gyms, golf clubs, and other organizations to which we belong. Each has its own expectations, practices, and ways of defining membership.
When we move from one organization to another, we may discover that the communication style that made us successful in one setting does not work as well in another.
Recognizing organizational culture can help us adapt, communicate more effectively, and build healthier relationships with people whose expectations differ from our own.
5. GENERATION AND TECHNOLOGY: The World in Which We Learned to Live
Our generation and the technologies available to us have a significant influence on how we communicate, work, and navigate daily life.
I'm a Baby Boomer. When I have a question or want to brainstorm an idea, my first instinct is often to call a friend who has expertise in the subject. If possible, I prefer to talk with a knowledgeable person.
I don't automatically think of Googling the answer.
Younger people may have a very different starting point. They may search online, consult digital communities, watch a video, or ask an artificial intelligence tool before contacting another person.
Neither approach tells us everything about an individual, of course. But generational experiences can influence which approaches feel natural, trustworthy, and efficient.
My parents were raised by people who lived through the Great Depression. That history helped shape my concern about wastefulness. I've noticed that some younger people who have stayed in our home when they needed a safe place have different attitudes toward using and replacing things.
Those differences can reflect generational experiences, economic circumstances, family teachings, and changing expectations—not simply one generation being right and another being wrong.
Technology has also changed the way we access information, maintain friendships, conduct business, and experience the world. My generation learned to navigate much of life before the internet became central to everyday activities. For me, some technologies require more effort than they do for younger people who grew up using them.
I sometimes think of my own experience as analog Baby Boomer-ness. My generation and the technologies we used throughout our lives have helped color the way I think, communicate, and solve problems.
Understanding these generational layers can help us avoid unnecessary frustration and appreciate why people may approach the same situation differently.
6. NATIONALITY: The Culture of the Country That Shaped You
Nationality is another cultural layer that can be difficult to recognize when we have spent most of our lives in one country.
Traveling abroad or living in another country for an extended period can reveal assumptions about our own culture that we never knew we had.
American culture, for example, often celebrates innovation, independence, resilience, and the pursuit of improvement. We tend to admire people who create a better way, cut a new path, or solve problems with new ideas.
In other national contexts, preserving tradition and maintaining established practices may receive greater emphasis. Neither approach is inherently superior. Each reflects cultural values that can be useful in some circumstances and challenging in others.
National cultures can also differ in their approaches to communication, authority, negotiation, and conflict.
Americans may value directness and assertiveness in situations where people from other cultural backgrounds place greater emphasis on indirect communication, preserving harmony, or maintaining relationships. What one person considers honest and efficient, another may experience as unnecessarily confrontational or disrespectful.
The United States also has a long history of relying on military power and coercion in international affairs. That history is part of the national context through which we understand authority, security, and the use of force.
These observations are broad patterns, not rules for every American or every other nationality. Individuals vary, and national cultures contain many different perspectives.
The point is not to label an entire country. It is to recognize that our national experiences can shape what we consider normal, desirable, or appropriate—and that other people may have learned different ways of navigating the world.
7. WORLD EVENTS: History That Shapes Our Perspectives
World events form another layer of cultural influence. The major events of our lifetimes shape our assumptions about safety, opportunity, leadership, relationships, and the future.
Some events affect us directly. Others influence us through the families who raised us, the institutions we participate in, the media we consume, and the stories our societies tell.
For me, several defining events include the Civil Rights Movement, the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the September 11 attacks, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Civil Rights Movement was underway before I was born. Dr. King was assassinated when I was about a year old. Although I was too young to understand these events at the time, their consequences have profoundly influenced my life, my opportunities, and my career.
I recognize that my ability to pursue the career I have had was influenced by the work of civil rights leaders and the sacrifices of Black and Brown people who fought for greater equality.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination in several areas of public life. Title VII of that act also prohibited employment discrimination based on sex, as well as race, color, religion, and national origin. These protections helped expand opportunities for women, including opportunities that were less accessible to my mother and grandmother.
I have experienced significant discrimination in my own life. At the same time, I have benefited from opportunities that earlier generations of women did not have to the same degree.
Both realities matter.
The September 11 attacks reshaped national conversations about security, belonging, religion, and perceptions of people from different backgrounds. The COVID-19 pandemic changed how many of us thought about community, work, isolation, health, and our dependence on one another.
These events have influenced not only my life but also the experiences of people with whom I share relationships. However, we did not all experience them in the same way. Our ages, locations, racial and cultural identities, economic circumstances, and family responsibilities influenced how we understood and responded to them.
World events become part of our cultural layers because they help shape the environments in which we learn, make decisions, and relate to others.
How Your Cultural Layers Shape Your Relationships
Consider all these layers together: your individual characteristics, family, ethnic heritage, community, organizations, generation, technology, nationality, and world events.
You are not shaped by just one of them. They interact with one another throughout your life.
We begin life with individual characteristics and inherited tendencies, but our development continues through relationships, experiences, and cultural environments. Each layer contributes to the ways we understand ourselves and the people around us.
These influences can be thought of as additional coding that shapes how we interpret the world.
This helps explain why two people can witness the same event and come away with very different interpretations. They may have different assumptions about authority, different experiences of discrimination, different family expectations, or different generational perspectives.
Sometimes we assume that a disagreement is simply a difference of opinion. In reality, we may be responding to different cultural expectations that neither person has taken the time to identify.
When we fail to recognize these layers, we may judge another person's behavior through the lens of our own experiences. We might interpret direct communication as rudeness, silence as disinterest, or a different approach to decision-making as incompetence.
When we become more culturally aware, we can pause and ask a better question: What experiences or cultural expectations might help me understand this person's perspective?
This does not mean we must agree with everyone or excuse harmful behavior. It means we become more intentional about understanding before judging, communicating before assuming, and building relationships rather than allowing misunderstandings to divide us.
What Are Your Cultural Layers?
Take a few minutes to reflect on your own cultural influences.
Individual identity: What natural abilities, personal characteristics, or experiences have influenced the person you have become?
Family: What did your family teach you about respect, communication, responsibility, and relationships?
Ethnic heritage: What traditions, stories, or cultural practices have been passed down in your family? What might have been lost or forgotten?
Community and organizations: How have your neighborhood, workplace, faith community, or social groups shaped your expectations?
Generation and technology: How has the time in which you grew up influenced how you communicate, learn, and solve problems?
Nationality: What do you consider normal or uniquely American? How might people from other national backgrounds see things differently?
World events: Which historical events have most influenced your beliefs, opportunities, fears, or hopes?
As you reflect, remember that the goal is not to put yourself or anyone else into a cultural box. It is to recognize the many influences that have helped shape you—and to remain curious about the influences that have shaped others.
The more we understand our own cultural layers, the better equipped we become to understand people whose layers are different from ours.
That understanding can transform the way we communicate, work together, serve our communities, and build lasting relationships.
Continue Exploring Your Cultural Layers
If you want to explore your own cultural influences, strengthen your cultural awareness, or help your organization build healthier relationships across cultural differences, I invite you to explore my books, Loving Our Neighbors: Transformative Relational Communication and 5 Blinders to Seeing Color.
I also offer team-building workshops that help individuals and organizations better understand cultural differences, improve communication, and develop stronger relationships.
Because we cannot fully understand others until we become more aware of ourselves.
The journey toward better relationships begins with understanding the cultural layers that shape us all.
Related reading: “I Don’t See Color”: Why Color-Blind Thinking Can Blind Us to People.