Intercultural Communication Ethics

This chapter defined intercultural communication as the study of differences and similarities of cultural content and it's influence on persons within and across different cultures. (156)  The aspect of intercultural communication that I found interesting was difference as rhetorical interruption.  An interruption in our sense of routine by a communicative act.  The book states that, "rhetorical interruptions remind us that we are on the outside looking into a culture other than our own.  The irony is that the rhetorical interruption is what permits us to learn; it is the reminder of difference." (164)  These interruptions can be key to reminding us that we are merely onlookers into a world that is much larger than we can generally imagine.  We don't know everything, and things that are common place in our culture are not necessarily in others.  We are also not active participants in everything.   So our routine is interrupted, and even though learning can come from this,  it can also lead to culture shock.  A natural reaction to when the routine fails, and we miss a a cultural background that gave tacit meaning to our communicative lives. (162)
I have experienced these two things when I was on a study abroad trip to Costa Rica in high school.  After traveling around the country to various places within the school group, we went to live with host families for a week at the end of the trip.  My family was welcoming and wonderful!  Every morning I would wake up and walk to the local bakery with the mother, from there we would walk to a neighbor's house a few blocks away and have coffee and bread.  On the third morning, on our walk, someone made a comment about me that I couldn't understand.  They had used the word "negra", which in Spanish is the color black.  I was dumbfounded.  My host mother seemed offended.  In one comment a stranger at the bakery had interrupted both of our sense of routines.  As we left the bakery I questioned the interaction and after an evolving conversation, my host mother explained to me that in their culture the color of skin represents a level of status.  The lighter your skin the higher your status that you are thought to hold and the darker your skin the lower.  This is correlated with slavery and the fact that workers with less education and status are thought to hold outside jobs where they are in the hot sun and their skin gets darker.  I was suddenly experiencing culture shock, for the previous weeks we had been running around soaking up as much sun as possible in this tropical paradise because in our culture it has no such significance.  I was dark, right before I had burnt like a lobster and it had turned into the darkest tan I have ever had.   I apologized because now my host mother had had this interaction and now possible correlation from this person, because of me.
Do you think that not knowing and experiencing situations such as these have an important insight into another culture when traveling and dealing with intercultural communication ethics?