ethnocentricity

Ethnocentricity

by Bob on July 4, 2007

Ethnocentricity is a way at looking at the world and others. It is a very precise exercise and stipulation. It is cultural and societal. It sometimes is personal. It is sometimes blind. It is sometimes unhappy. It somtimes breaks hearts.

The word itself is rooted in the Greek word, "ethnos", which means a people or nation. Were it as simple as that, it would be hardly something to concern ourselves about. It would be something to study and absorb intellectually.

But ethnocentricity has many flavours, overtones, and connotations.

One presumption is that people all over the world, and maybe in outer space, are different in some tangible and significant way. That there is a profound difference between people in many cultures, even to the point where there is a fence erected to friendliness and love between them.

Another presumption is that it is necessary to preserve the ethnic people themselves and their group from foreigners. Both in a nationhood sense and in a genetic and inter-marriage sense.

The essence of ethnocentrism is to keep other people, stranger and foreigners, out of a particular culture. So it is the oddest form of discrimination amongst annd between human beings in the world.

Perhaps one worries about how children from a mixed inter-cultural marrage will turn out. A Polynesian and Caucasian. An oriental and a Berber from Africa. And Italian and a Mongol. What will their children look like is a concern perhaps. A worry, too. Will the child look odd and unseemly ?

Also we find a kind of ethnocentricity between families and social classes. A familio-centricity, or socio-centricity. People disdain a poor person marrying a rich person. Or a person from a small town marrying a person from a big city.

This is all very complex, especially when young adults are told whom to marry by their parents or what ethnic group to marry. An Asian girl might only be allowed to marry another Asian man as dictated by their parents.

The basis for this in History and Sociology can be seen as firstly, an attempt to keep the group homogenous, and to perhaps keep the marriages in the town or culture so it is not misunderstood. Secondly, there is an inherenet protection mechanism in these cultures which cries out against intermarriage just on a human reflexive principle. People want their children to marry within the group as an automatic response. It's too worrisome to mix people and cultures up is the underlying feeling. People from different cultures will have different customs and expectations of others. In the Orient it is natural to have one's parents living with the married couple, or it was historically, since there is a strong value placed on the coherence of the family unit. In the Occident, it is considered that the married couple will be living outside the family unit and be on their own.

This all makes for some order and disorder.

Then there are arranged marriages by parents for their children, which is a very hard thing for many young people in this modern age. There indeed may be wisdom in this arranged marriage concept. After all, if we look for the perfect mate, we likely will never find one. And the family must multiply and persist, even for the family name.

My contention is that all this is thousands of years old and ingrained in our societies and hard to make exception to. The only exception is the insidious "gloibalisation" process which even affects people from distant lands who all want to look like the latest global image in a fashion magazine or movie star.

My contention is also that love is love and people are people. People from different cultures might vary in certain specific details, but they have mostly all the same hopes, values, and aspirations. Have a good job. Make money. Come home. Eat a good family meal. Have some pleasent diversions. Go to a restful sleep. Have a holiday and vacation. Celebrate festivals. And so on.

Love persists over ethnic boundaries. Regardless of the barrier erected. The heart follows another heart when in love. And always will, despite having to marry otherwise.

We see this in so many stories in literature and in real life. Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and its modern adaptation, "West Side Story".

The heart is unchanged and wins out even if one can't marry one's love and if forced to marry someone else by the ethnocentric directive.

People are people. It's worth repeating. We all have basic instincts, and we all try to follow moral principles. We all love. We all feel apathy sometimes. We all will have a finite life on this planet, as far as we care to societally define being alive, since the definition of alive and dead are very slippery slopes in the absolute.

We are left with a conundrum. Does one marry with one's heart regardless of the ethnic divisions, or must one marry or be in love according to a set of rules devised by our society and nuances ?

One can only hope for barriers to be broken down by love. If we allow it. Which it would seem, sometimes, we just can't make happen, societally and in our families.

One hopes for better.

After all the ancients taught us that man is half rational and half irrational. Perhaps with the irrational side presiding.

The outcome of that can be truly astounding. Especially if we intellectually discount certain theories, like the Triangular Theory of Love and certain sets of Psychometrics !

So it goes.