Lecture The Study of Intercultural Communication Key Terms

4.10 The Need for Explanations
Finally, intercultural relationships often present the challenge of having to explain things. Intercultural relationships can be more work than in-group relationships and can require more "care and feeding" than do those relationships between people who are very similar. A lot of the work has to do with explaining – explaining to themselves, to each other, and to their respective communities.
First, in some way, consciously or unconsciously, we ask ourselves what it means to be friends with someone who is not like us. Do we become friends out of necessity, or for our job, or because everyone around us is different in some way? Do we become friends because we want to gain an entree into this group for personal benefit or because we feel guilty?
Second, we explain things to each other. This process of ongoing mutual clar­ification is one of the healthiest characteristics of intercultural relationships. It is the process of learning to see from the other's perspective.
People who cross cultural boundaries and form close relationships with individ­uals who are, say, much older or of a different ethnicity often have to explain this to their respective communities. For example, in the film Naturally Native, three Native American sisters have different views on being Indian. The oldest sister, Karen, doesn't understand why her youngest sister can't be more Indian, why she wants to go outside her group to find friends, and why being Indian isn't more important to her. Note that usually the biggest obstacles to boundary-crossing friendships come not from minority communities but from majority communities. This is because those in the majority, such as Whites, have the most to gain by main­taining social inequality and are less likely to initiate boundary-crossing friend­ships. By contrast, minority groups have more to gain.
In intercultural relationships, individuals recognize and respect the differ­ences. In these relationships, we often have to remind ourselves that we can never know exactly what it is to walk in another person's shoes. Furthermore, those in the majority group tend to know less about those in minority groups than vice versa.