{"id":6470,"date":"2021-07-26T03:56:00","date_gmt":"2021-07-26T03:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=6470"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:34:39","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:34:39","slug":"6470","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=6470","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Cultures are like human beings &#8211; On one level they have tons of similarities, but what keeps things interesting is that each one has a\u00a0 unique set of strengths and weaknesses and personality quirks.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I put Maxiane on the spot over lunch one day this past week. I asked, &#8220;I know you spent significant time around Americans while growing up in Haiti, but now that you&#8217;ve spent seven months immersed in American culture, what do you like most about it and what do you like least about it? Speak freely &#8211; I can take it.&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She didn&#8217;t really have to think long. She started with the positive: &#8220;The thing I like is how organized things are here.&#8221; She was talking about everything from events at her college to traffic laws.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And the downside? &#8220;Americans make a big deal out of <i>everything<\/i>!&#8221; Here she had in mind our tendency to take offense and get up in arms at even the smallest of slights. She also could not believe how lightly words like &#8220;racist&#8221; get thrown around.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I told her I agreed completely and that it struck me as a relatively recent development. Or at least it has grown significantly worse in the last decade or so.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cultures are like human beings &#8211; On one level they have tons of similarities, but what keeps things interesting is that each one has a\u00a0 unique set of strengths and weaknesses and personality quirks. I put Maxiane on the spot over lunch one day this past week. I asked, &#8220;I know you spent significant time [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6470"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6471,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6470\/revisions\/6471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}