Wendell Pierce's Uncloaking Hidden Culture

Uncloaking Hidden Culture Wendell Pierce elucidated, “Culture is the intersection of people and life itself. It’s how we deal with life, love, death, birth, disappointment… all of that is expressed in culture.” Culture is a term containing so much significance and depth, and altogether is dear to countless people. However, with this depth, the act of defining culture is intricate and has surely fallen under debate determining what factors are essential in making a culture a culture. Some cultures we recognize instantly, such as the Latina or English community, but culture hides in places one would not think to look. One of these places where culture should be uncloaked is in the cancer community. In order to find culture in these depths,

These factors include the continuation of culture, socialization, race and ethnicity, identity, and provision of a way of life. Cultural continuity is in result of “control” existing members of a culture has to incur socialization on newcomers of the culture, or the next generation (Patten 739); that being said, socialization is a “broad range of different formative processes that work, in one way or another, to shape the beliefs and values of the persons who are subject to them… [and] occurs through participation in particular institutions and through exposure to particular practices and forms of social behavior” (Patten 740). Through cultural continuity the culture rebirths through the next generation to ensure its survival and this process is done through socialization, or the practice of the existing members of a certain culture teaching the newcomers their ways and customs. These factors- cultural continuity and socialization- are vital processes that a culture needs to exist. The next two factors- race and ethnicity and identity- are not so vital, but still can influence a culture. Patten describes race and ethnicity as something that may have started a culture, but soon will dwindle away (744). The flawless and constant interaction that occurs in today’s world mixes race and ethnicity too regularly for this

This community includes various individuals from patients to medical staff and from loved ones to religious leaders. Christopher Hitchens brings the world of cancer to life in his article titled “Topic of Cancer” published in Vanity Fair. He begins by describing his passage to the new world as a “firm deportation…taking me from the country of the well across the stark frontier that marks off the land of malady” (Hithcens), and within this new world Hitchens found a complex system that was hidden from his “well” eyes. The system, developed through centuries, included its own tongue, dubbed “Tumorville tongue”, encouraging people, talented doctors, and shallow humor (Hitchens). This hidden culture can also be ensured through the social lineage account. The individuals of the cancer world have definitely shared similar experiences, or socialization, and subjection to the same institutions, as the definition of culture entails. Moreover, this culture has been around for centuries, signaling cultural continuity, which is vital for a culture to survive and even be considered a culture. The culture itself gets passed on through doctors and the patients themselves, and this action coincides perfectly with Patten’s account. Ethnicity and race are not present in this culture due to constant interaction of different races. Cancer does not choose a specific race to infiltrate. Although ethnicity are not quite factors in this