Cultural Interview Reflection

A cultural conversation is defined as a conversation between two or more entities regarding information about one’s culture, morals, values, and/or homeland. I believe that it is vital for all students, not just Residential Assistants, to be involved in cultural conversations and reflections. It is a very knowledgeable and humbling experience for a person. This semester, I took out the time to converse and interview my good friend Josue Figueroa. Josue Figueroa is currently a Residential Assistant at Clemson University. He is also a first generation student, Emerging Scholar, and Mexican American from a rural place called Estill, South Carolina.
I decided to interview Josue Figueroa because he identifies differently from me. Even though we

I did not want to ask anything offensive, yet I wanted to ask enough questions that would give me enough answers to fulfill the assignment. To add, I thought that our struggles and social perspectives would be similar. During the conversation, I learned a lot about Josue, his culture and how he viewed society at Clemson and the United States as a whole. One thing that shocked me during our conversation was how happy and astound he was about his overall experience at Clemson. He never really felt targeted here nor felt any racial slurs from his peers. For me, that was surprising. After the experience, my true thoughts were everywhere. I realized that though Josue was not dealing oppression deeply here on campus, he was dealing with oppression and targeting from the American Society from figureheads such as Donald Trump. Throughout this conversation with Josue Figueroa, I thought deeply about myself, my values, and how I can contribute to dealing with oppression. Overall, however, my values did not change. In the book we had to read for class, Leadership for a Better World: Understanding the Social Change Model of Leadership Development, I read that values and principles represent the priorities that guide how people live their lives and what they willing to do to reach a certain goal (pg. 304). I believe Josue and I value many of the same things and our perspective of society is