At the beginning of this project, I had many students quickly claim that they did not have a culture or did not see color. These claims align with other research that found members of the White community expressing a similar disconnect with the concept of culture (Grossman & Charmaraman, 2009; Jupp & Slattery, 2010; Lee, 2012; Sleeter, 2012). This positioning occurs because of the homogenous, Eurocentric foundation of our country. People experiencing this disconnect often adopt the mindset that when one is studying culture, one is essentially studying an ethnic (mostly minority) “other,” therefore, this work is not directly relevant to the White community. To push participants past these initial thoughts, I would introduce them to the definition of culture as “the way we do things around here[1].” I questioned them and tried to help them find the traditions, the food, or the speech that set them apart from other people. How participants approached the project after this conversation demonstrated the varying degrees of comfortability these students had toward the topic at hand, and I believe is telling of the previous exposure (or lack thereof) they encountered with this form of self-reflection.

After analyzing the data, I found three emergent themes: family as culture, heritage, and other forms of identity. These themes manifested mostly through participant performances and were reinforced by their narratives. For each theme, I will present two participants’ work and integrate their own words from both their performances and narrative responses.