Ethnic identities are based on culture, family culture, company culture, religious culture, society culture, age-gap culture.

In the most different cultures, you find out that the person says, “In my family we play soccer every afternoon”; “In this company, we do not ever wear black ties”; “In the Judaism we celebrate Hanukah”; “In my country ‘mi casa es tu casa’ is an expression for welcoming a new friend”.

Even more, in the case of many great parents, a quite good number are incapable of dealing with the Internet and what all of it entails. Our generation was raised during an age of continuous technological changes; we are used to changing, changing, changing, and to accepting new gadgets. Understanding our parents may be very difficult for our siblings because we do not grasp the enormity of such differences.

There are other ways to understand this, the variations are almost infinite for, in every Civilization, there are many cultures; and in every culture, there exist many sub-cultures.

The ethnic identity means that the person knows what he is and what he is not, what to do, how he is supposed to act after certain not always written ritual. He feels a member of a very exclusive club, his family, his society, his generation.

The codes that form the ethnic identity are crystallized in customs.

Many times even feelings are ruled by the ethnic identity.

Of course, you are not a member of the club; you are just a guest.

When trying to understand the other, that is, a person’s ethnic identity as alien to our own, we need to see the logic behind his actions that comes from the cultural data, being this the source of his actions. We need to grasp his tongue and the peculiar ways in which he uses the words and his body language, but that alone would never be enough. We need to understand the logical thinking, the inner works of his mind in terms of why the person has certain emotions and feels such and such way.

In Mexico, there are more than 52 ethnic languages, which is a way to classify the cultures, and therefore, ethnic identities. Such identities are based on common experiences that might be hidden to the current mainstream culture. Languages are not enough, though.

As an example, a Spanish speaking member of the “Mexicanidad”, a group dedicated to understanding, preserving and that continues creating the pre-Hispanic Aztec culture, gets very angry at the sole mention of Giordano Bruno because ‘he is dressed as an inquisitor’. You might say, ‘well, that happened a long time ago, the Inquisition burned Indians in Mexico 400 years ago’; but for that person his ethnic identity has been molded by something that occurred so many years ago; it is felt like right now, though. The person who is talking to him might not grasp or accept this simple fact, the person comes from another culture.

When a person cannot understand another person’s reaction to certain activities or gestures or words, he must ask the person, very tactfully of course, to explain away what is going on. Many times, the person will feel overwhelmed for the obviousness of the situation, for him it is so evident that perhaps he has never put it in words.

An ethnic identity is taken for granted by every one of us. It is like breathing, action that we feel at once only when it gets hindered.

Love affairs, marriage, funerals, amusements, laughter might have some differences that we do not distinguish very easily at first sight. Amazingly, many times, even the most common human everyday relationships are alien to us, when dealing with a person from a different ethnic identity.

The main rule is, learn the ritual, learn the language, be sincere, be open, try to be friendly, but above all, be extremely polite, extremely courteous; be yourself, talk to people, try to find what you have in common with the person; pay attention to them when they speak, look for the right custom at the right time.

Be respectful.

It is not easy, we are so immersed in our own ethnic identity that it is not that simple to take the other’s viewpoint in and play the game with the person, in order to communicate smoothly. However, it is worth trying, for the mutual relationships between human beings produce an expansion of Humanity.