I must start this topic by giving a story: One day, I attended a meeting between an African lady whose five children had been taken by the state and the relevant department of the government. The mother was a twenty five year old refugee who had come from a war ravaged country. She left her country when she was thirteen years old by foot. Government soldiers had attacked her village one night, setting fire to huts and killing whoever they could see. Somehow the girl had managed to escape to the bush, where she hid for several days all by herself before she decided she had to go somewhere or she would die. She walked all by herself for three weeks, having to dodge government soldiers on the way, and eating wild berries and fruits or begging for food. Her people were so oppressed and poor that no one in her village had ever attended school. In fact, there was never even a school, hospital/doctor, electricity or piped water in her village. However, while growing up, her mother had told her stories about a great neighboring country which had never been colonized by the white men, and as she told the story, she would point to the direction that country was. Those lessons proved lifesaving for the girl, for she forged forward, towards the direction her mother her pointed to, hoping to arrive there and find refuge.  It took her three weeks, but she finally arrived, her feet blistered, emaciated by hunger and thirst. She was taken to a refugee camp, and after five years there, she finally was flown to the United States as a refugee. In the refugee camp, she met a few people from her village, who told her that her mother, father and siblings, had all been killed by the soldiers.

The reasons why the children had been seized from her were that her house was always filthy, and she would leave her children alone. In an effort to help her to get her kids back, she was given someone who was to go to her house and help learn how to cook nutritious meals, and learn how to parent her children. At this particular meeting, this housekeeping help reported that she had gone to the house and found the lady cooking “African food” which the children said they did not like, and she was carrying the smallest child on her back “dangerously” with a sling!  The longer the children stayed with the foster parents, the the less they spoke their language, and the more they loved junk food. Disposition of the case: parental rights terminated! Are immigrants supposed to abandon their own culture? We have been on a frolic for too long, let’s get back on track: What exactly is “ethnocentrism” and “cultural imperialism”?  

The horse himself, anti-imperialist and American, William Graham Sumner (ironically, Sumner himself was an ethnocentric person. Sumner did not want America to be colonized by the Spaniards, but he seemed oblivious to the fact that Americans had themselves colonized Native Americans. I guess imperialists do not want to be colonized!), coined the word “ethnocentric” and defined it as “the view of things in which one’s own group is the center of everything, and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it”. To the ethnocentric individual, the world revolves not around the sun, but around his own group! The measure of what is good or bad, appropriate or inappropriate, moral or immoral, average or not average is the ethnocentric individual’s own culture.  Imperialism has been defined as “”the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationship, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination.” Cultural imperialism is simply the cultural aspects of domination and subordination. Cultural imperialism includes ethnocentrism, but is way broader than ethnocentrism.

Let us look at an example at ethnocentric behavior: There are two children. One grew up and lives in a big city in the United States, while the other was born, bred and still lives in a remote African village.  The American kid first saw a machine when he was in his mother’s womb, when the doctor was giving his mother a scan. He has always been surrounded by cars, computers, the internet and other electronics. He goes to the movie theater, and knows almost all children’s movies released after his birth. The African kid has been herding his father’s livestock since he was three years old. He is an avid hunter, and can smell the scent of animals better than a dog; when he sees tracks of animals, he can tell how old they are, what animal made them and how old they are. He knows all the trees in the bush, and can tell poisonous from non-poisonous plants. A researcher, who is doing a research on intelligence, decides to test the two kids by giving them questions which include the following:  What was the name of the princess in the Shrek movie; what are the colors in the Microsoft logo; what do you like about an MP3 player?; what is your favorite TV show and why?; and what are the ingredients of macaroni cheese (I do not know an American kid who does not love “mac-and-cheese)? I see one child being unable to answer any of the questions, and being classified as having a low IQ. Ethnocentrism is a very dangerous practice. 

Ethnocentrism leads the ones that are practicing it to feel proud. It can lead to misunderstandings of other people’s culture because those practicing it simply use their own culture to measure other people and fail to take time to understand other people’s cultures. Extreme forms of ethnocentrism lead to racism, which in turn can lead to tragedies like the enslavement of Black people in America, and genocide like the holocaust, the genocide in Rwanda and Burundi. Ethnocentrism can lead to conflict, ethnic cleansing, war and instability in the world.  

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnocentrism

http://www.iupui.edu/~anthkb/ethnocen.htm