Ethnocentrism Quotes

In fact I don't think of literature, or music, or any art form as having a nationality. Where you're born is simply an accident of fate. I don't see why I shouldn't be more interested in say, Dickens, than in an author from Barcelona simply because I wasn't born in the UK. I do not have an ethno-centric view of things, much less of literature. Books hold no passports. There's only one true literary tradition: the human.

I would like travelers, especially American travelers, to travel in a way that broadens their perspective, because I think Americans tend to be some of the most ethnocentric people on the planet. It's not just Americans, it's the big countries. It's the biggest countries that tend to be ethnocentric or ugly. There are ugly Russians, ugly Germans, ugly Japanese and ugly Americans. You don't find ugly Belgians or ugly Bulgarians, they're just too small to think the world is their norm.

human societies, at least the more advanced cultures, have rarely offered the individual anything but imperialism, racism, and ethnocentrism for dealing with "other" cultures.

Oxytocin, the luv hormone, makes us more prosocial to Us and worse to everyone else. That’s not generic prosociality. That’s ethnocentrism and xenophobia. In other words, the actions of these neuropeptides depend dramatically on context—who you are, your environment, and who that person is.

Insularity is the foundation of ethnocentrism and intolerance; when you only know of those like yourself, it is easy to imagine that you are alone in the world or alone in being good and right in the world. Exposure to diversity, on the contrary, is the basis for relativism and tolerance; when you are forced to face and accept the Other as real, unavoidable, and ultimately valuable, you cannot help but see yourself and your 'truths' in a new - and trouble - way.

Saying something is 'politically correct' is often a way of dismissing the voices of the oppressed.

The more we claim to discriminate between cultures and customs as good and bad, the more completely do we identify ourselves with those we would condemn. By refusing to consider as human those who seem to us to be the most “savage” or “barbarous” of their representatives, we merely adopt one of their own characteristic attitudes. The barbarian is, first and foremost, the man who believes in barbarism.

Don’t misunderstand me. The terrorist actions of Al-Qaeda were and are unmitigatedly evil. But the astonishing naivety which decreed that America as a whole was a pure, innocent victim, so that the world could be neatly divided up into evil people (particularly Arabs) and good people (particularly Americans and Israelis), and that the latter had a responsibility now to punish the former, is a large-scale example of what I’m talking about - just as it is immature and naive to suggest the mirror image of this view, namely that the western world is guilty in all respects and that all protestors and terrorists are therefore completely justified in what they do. In the same way, to suggest that all who possess guns should be locked up, or (the American mirror-image of this view) that everyone should carry guns so that good people can shoot bad ones before they can get up to their tricks, is simply a failure to think into the depths of what’s going on.

The Kingdom of God wasn't born on the Fourth of July.

Globetrotting destroys ethnocentricity, helping us understand and appreciate other cultures. Rather than fear the diversity on this planet, celebrate it. Among your most prized souvenirs will be the strands of different cultures you choose to knit into your own character. The world is a cultural yarn shop, and Back Door travelers are weaving the ultimate tapestry.

Many a survivor of a plane crash who is or was against cannibalism and had never eaten human flesh once found themselves in a situation where they had to either eat human flesh, or go the way of all flesh.

Every new generation believes its own period to be absolutely superior intellectually - greater than all past cultures yet equal among its modern cultures.

The mentality of who is your uncle—an ethnocentric way of thinking, is one of the leading causes of South Sudan’s internal conflicts.

Multiculturalism" arises as a reaction against Anglo- or Eurocentrism; but at what point does it mutate into an ethnocentrism of its own?

Given that some ethnic groups—especially ones with high levels of ethnocentrism and mobilization—will undoubtedly continue to function as groups far into the foreseeable future, unilateral renunciation of ethnic loyalties by some groups means only their surrender and defeat—the Darwinian dead end of extinction. The future, then, like the past, will inevitably be a Darwinian competition in which ethnicity plays a very large role. The alternative faced by Europeans throughout the Western world is to place themselves in a position of enormous vulnerability in which their destinies will be determined by other peoples, many of whom hold deep historically conditioned hatreds toward them. Europeans' promotion of their own displacement is the ultimate foolishness—an historical mistake of catastrophic proportions.

We have to work extra hard, because we in America are very ethnocentric--we think our culture is superior. Why's that? It's because we've got moon rocks, and nobody else has moon rocks.

Imagine a society’s discovering a vaccine against a deadly disease that has been ravaging its people and continues to ravage people in neighboring societies, where the cause of the disease is incorrectly attributed to improper diet. What would be the judgment on such a society if it withheld its vaccine on the grounds that it would be ethnocentric to try to instruct members of another culture that their medical ideas are incorrect, and to induce them to adopt the effective treatment? If one accepts that one has the good fortune to be in possession of the true religion and thereby has access to the most valuable possible rewards, is one not similarly obligated to spread this blessing to those less fortunate?

The dread of a permanently wicked human nature takes two forms. One is a practical fear: that social reform is a waste of time because human nature is unchangeable. The other is a deeper concern, which grows out of the Romantic belief that what is natural is good. According to the worry, if scientists suggest it is "natural" - part of human nature - to be adulterous, violent, ethnocentric, and selfish, they would be implying that these traits are good, not just unavoidable.

Old measures of health not only have failed to improve significantly but have stayed the same: some have even worsened. Mainstream newspapers and magazines often report disease in an ethnocentric manner that shrouds its true cost among African Americans. For example, despite the heavy emphasis on genetic ailments among blacks, fewer than 0.5 percent of black deaths—that’s less than one death in two hundred—can be attributed to hereditary disorders such as sickle-cell anemia. A closer look at the troubling numbers reveals that blacks are dying not of exotic, incurable, poorly understood illnesses nor of genetic diseases that target only them, but rather from common ailments that are more often prevented and treated among whites than among blacks.

When every ethnic and religious group claims a right to approve or veto anything that is taught in public schools, cultural pluralism becomes ethnocentrism. An evident casualty is the old idea that whatever our ethnic base, we are all Americans together.

Ethnocentrism, xenophobia and nationalism are these days rife in many parts of the world. Government repression of unpopular views is still widespread. False or misleading memories are inculcated. For the defenders of such attitudes, science is disturb­ing. It claims access to truths that are largely independent of ethnic or cultural biases. By its very nature, science transcends national boundaries. Put scientists working in the same field of study together in a room and even if they share no common spoken language, they will find a way to communicate. Science itself is a transnational language. Scientists are naturally cosmo­politan in attitude and are more likely to see through efforts to divide the human family into many small and warring factions. 'There is no national science,' said the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, 'just as there is no national multiplication table.' (Likewise, for many, there is no such thing as a national religion, although the religion of nationalism has millions of adherents.)

Ix who?" "Ix Caut. Your name in this life meant 'Little Snake.'" Bill watched her face change. "It was a term of endearment in the Mayan culture. Sort of." "The same way getting your head impaled on a stick was an honor?" Bill rolled his stone eyes. "Stop being so ethnocentric.That means thinking your own culture is superior to other cultures." "I know what it means," she said, working the band into her dirty hair. "But I'm not being superior. I just don't think having my head stuck on one of these racks would be so great." There was a faint thrumming in the air,like faraway drumbeats. "That's exactly the sort of thing Ix Caut would say! You always were a little bit backward!" "What do you mean?" "See,you-Ix Caut-were born during the Wayeb',which are these five odd days at the end of Mayan year that everyone gets real superstitious about because they don't fit into the calendar. Kind of like leap-year days.It's not exactly lucky to be born during the Wayeb'. So no one was shocked when you grew up to be an old maid.

Indian history is the antidote to the pious ethnocentrism of American exceptionalism, the notion that European Americans are God’s chosen people. Indian history reveals that the United States and its predecessor British colonies have wrought great harm in the world. We must not forget this—not to wallow in our wrongdoing, but to understand and to learn, that we might not wreak harm again.

Beauty has laws, and an appreciation of them is not possessed equally by all. The more primitive and ignorant a race, or class, the less it knows of true beauty. The Indian basket-maker wove beautiful things but they did not know it; give them the cheap and ugly productions of our greedy "market" and they like them better. They may unconsciously produce beauty, but they do not consciously select it.

certain categories of us are more crucial to our identities than the kind of car we drive or the number of dots we can guess on a slide—gender, sexuality, religion, politics, ethnicity, and nationality, for starters. Without feeling attached to groups that give our lives meaning, identity, and purpose, we would suffer the intolerable sensation that we were loose marbles floating in a random universe. Therefore, we will do what it takes to preserve these attachments. Evolutionary psychologists argue that ethnocentrism—the belief that our own culture, nation, or religion is superior to all others—aids survival by strengthening our bonds to our primary social groups and thus increasing our willingness to work, fight, and occasionally die for them. When things are going well, people feel pretty tolerant of other cultures and religions—they even feel pretty tolerant of the other sex!—but when they are angry, anxious, or threatened, the default position is to activate their blind spots.

Certain English geologists produced confusion by embracing continental drift and then drawing up narratives and maps that showed continents moving all over the earth with respect to a fixed and undriftable England.

Indian history is the antidote to the pious ethnocentrism of American exceptionalism, the notion that European Americans are God’s chosen people. Indian history reveals that the United States and its predecessor British colonies have wrought great harm in the world. We must not forget this—not to wallow in our wrongdoing, but to understand and to learn, that we might not wreak harm again. We must temper our national pride with critical self-knowledge, suggests historian Christopher Vecsey: “The study of our contact with Indians, the envisioning of our dark American selves, can instill such a strengthening doubt.”124 History through red eyes offers our children a deeper understanding than comes from encountering the past as a story of inevitable triumph by the good guys. 5.

On various occasions, especially in trying to think of western American history in the context of the worldwide history of colonialism, it has struck me that much of the mental behavior that we sometimes denounce as ethnocentrism and cultural insensitivity actually derives less from our indifference or hostility than from our clumsiness and awkwardness when we leave the comfort of the English language behind... [V]enturing outside the bounds of the English language exercises and stretches our minds in ways that are essential for getting as close as we can to the act of seeing the world from what would otherwise remain unfamiliar and alien perspectives.

The busybody (banned as sexist, demeaning to older women) who lives next door called my daughter a tomboy (banned as sexist) when she climbed the jungle (banned; replaced with "rain forest") gym. Then she had the nerve to call her an egghead and a bookworm (both banned as offensive; replaced with "intellectual") because she read fairy (banned because suggests homosexuality; replace with "elf") tales. I'm tired of the Language Police turning a deaf ear (banned as handicapism) to my complaints. I'm no Pollyanna (banned as sexist) and will not accept any lame (banned as offensive; replace with "walks with a cane") excuses at this time. If Alanis Morrissette can play God (banned) in Dogma (banned as ethnocentric; replace with "Doctrine" or "Belief"), why can't my daughter play stickball (banned as regional or ethnic bias) on boy's night out (banned as sexist)? Why can't she build a snowman (banned, replace with "snow person") without that fanatic (banned as ethnocentric; replace with "believer," "follower," or "adherent") next door telling her she's going to hell (banned; replaced with "heck" or "darn")? Do you really think this is what the Founding Fathers (banned as sexist; replace with "the Founders" or "the Framers") had in mind? That we can't even enjoy our Devil (banned)-ed ham sandwiches in peace? I say put a stop to this cult (banned as ethnocentric) of PC old wives' tales (banned as sexist; replace with "folk wisdom") and extremist (banned as ethnocentric; replace with "believer," "follower," or "adherent") conservative duffers (banned as demeaning to older men). As an heiress (banned as sexist; replace with "heir") to the first amendment, I feel that only a heretic (use with caution when comparing religions) would try to stop American vernacular from flourishing in all its inspirational (banned as patronizing when referring to a person with disabilities) splendor.

Those who protest against “Western ethnocentrism” imagine themselves to owe nothing to the West, since after all they rage furiously against it. But in fact theirs is the most Western perspective of all, more Western than that of their adversaries. Not only is the revolt against ethnocentrism an invention of the West, it cannot be found outside the West.

We have the same dirt under our shoes as they do.

The lesson of history that all human rights are indivisible and that the failure to adhere to this principle jeopardizes the rights of all is particularly applicable here. A built-in hazard of an aggressive ethnocentric movement which disregards the interests of other disadvantaged groups is that it will become parochial and ultimately self-defeating in the face of hostile reactions, dwindling allies, and mounting frustrations...Only a broad movement for human rights can prevent the Black Revolution from becoming isolated and can insure ultimate success.

Early Muslim references to dehumanization were overtly ethnocentric. Almost without exception, the people who are transformed into subhuman creatures—specifically, pigs, apes, and rats—are Jews.

People are prone to ethnocentrism. It is an uncomfortable fact that even when given a guilt-free choice, individuals prefer the company of others of the same race, nation, clan, and religion. They

The antidote to feel-good history is not feel-bad history but honest and inclusive history. If textbook authors feel compelled to give good moral instruction, the way origin myths have always done, they could accomplish this aim by allowing students to learn both the "good" and the "bad" sides of the Pilgrim tale. Conflict would then become part of the story, and students might discover that the knowledge they gain has implication for their lives today. Correctly taught, the issues of the era of the first Thanksgiving could help Americans grow more thoughtful and more tolerant, rather than more ethnocentric.

How could these hierarchical, acquisitive, market-oriented, monotheistic, ethnocentric newcomers have absorbed ideas and customs from the egalitarian, reciprocal, noncapitalistic, pantheistic, ethnocentric natives? The

The final complexity associated with building of a negative character lies in the fact that the image of a subject is often an outcome of parochial, ethnocentric, and orientalist viewpoints. In other words, it can be argued that historical or mythological villains might also have been treated in paradoxical manners. Their negative characteristics would have received much more attention by dominant intellectuals than their positive traits.

Borges's ethnocentric limitation does not detract from his many other admirable qualities, but it is best not to sidestep it when giving a comprehensive appraisal of his work. Certainly, it is a limitation that offers further proof of his humanity because, as has been said over and over again, there is no such thing as absolute perfection in this world, not even in the world of a creative artist like Borges, who comes as close as anyone to achieving it.

Undoubtedly racist is the idea of unipolar globalization. It is based on the fact that Western, especially American, society equates its history and its values to universal law and artifcially tries to con- struct a global society based on these local and historically specific values – democracy, the market, parliamentarianism, capitalism, individualism, human rights, and unlimited technological development. These values are local, and globalization is trying to impose them onto all of humanity as something that is universal and taken for granted. This attempt implicitly argues that the values of all other peoples and cultures are imperfect, underdeveloped, and are subject to modernization and standardization based on the Western model. Globalization is thus nothing more than a globally deployed model of Western European, or, rather, Anglo-Saxon ethnocentrism, which is the purest manifestation of racist ideology.

One of its (civilisations) most powerful weapons has always been 'barbarity': 'we' know that 'we' are civilised by contrasting ourselves with those we deem to be uncivilised, with those who do not -or cannot be trusted to - share our values. Civilisation is a process of exclusion as well as inclusion. The boundary between 'us' and 'them' may be an internal one (for much of world history the idea of a 'civilised woman' has been a contradiction in terms), or an external one, as the word 'barbarian' suggests; it was originally a derogatory and ethnocentric ancient Greek term for foreigners you could not understand, because they spoke in an incomprehensible babble: 'bar-bar-bar ...' The inconvenient truth, of course, is that so-called 'barbarians' may be no more than those with a different view from ourselves of what it is to be civilised, and of what matters in human culture. In the end, one person's barbarity is another person's civilisation.

Humans are uniquely adapted to learn and imitate complex behaviors whose function is difficult to ascertain. One way we do this is by overimitating—imitating behaviors that seem entirely unnecessary (unless you are an overconfident, ethnocentric European colonialist

The popular claim that “real socialism has never been tried” implies that all the Hispanic, Asian, Slavic, and African cultures that did attempted it were not up to the task. It is a form of racial slur that exposes the ethnocentric elitism at the core of Western collectivists.

If you think this ethnocentric stage—with its tendencies toward racism, sexism/patriarchy, misogyny, mega-tribal dominance, oppression, and fundamentalist religion—sounds a bit like hardcore far-Right Republicans, and that it starts to push into recognized Trump territory, you’d be right.

We all come from somewhere. Born, aborted, extradited, fugitive or even enslaved. But much of what we are, belongs to Mother Africa. We need to respect and have esteem, knowledge and curiosity. Then, open your eyes to understand a little more. Do not accept this cultural void created by that ethnocentric feeling!

Her mind raced, scrambling to remember what she could of Aandrisk culture. Complicated family structures. Virtually no concept of personal space. Physically affectionate. Promiscuous. She mentally slapped herself for that. It was a stereotype, one that every Human knew whether they wanted to or not, and it smacked of ethnocentrism. They don’t pair up like we do, she chided herself. It’s not the same thing. Somewhere in her head, Professor Selim was frowning at her. “The very fact that we use the term ‘cold-blooded’ as a synonym for ‘heartless’ should tell you something about the innate bias we primates hold against reptiles,” she pictured him saying. “Do not judge other species by your own social norms.

In most cases, travelling does not really broaden one’s mind; it merely shows or reminds one that one’s mind is narrow.

move from being ego-, family-, and ethno-centric to species-, bio-, and planet-centric.

The Biology of Tribalism concerns pushes and pulls between populations, which primarily occur due to tradeoffs between inbreeding and outbreeding. Ethnocentrism and other tribalistic personality facets have evolved to influence mate choice and encourage “optimal outbreeding.” The book will explore these and other tribalistic political phenomena that impact the evolution of populations, including gender inequality, warfare, and genocide. The Biology of Family Conflict (Parent-Offspring Conflict) is the field of evolutionary theory that explains why the interests of the most closely related individuals do not always align, and thus why different family disciplinary strategies exist. The two opposed disciplinary models are based on egalitarian and hierarchical moralities. These conflicts are linked to the variation in people's tolerance of inequality. The Biology of Altruism and Self-Interest is the area of evolutionary theory that describes how and why people cooperate with and betray one another; this field sheds light on why some people perceive human nature so differently than others.

Indian history is the antidote to the pious ethnocentrism of American exceptionalism, the notion that European Americans are God’s chosen people. Indian history reveals that the United States and its predecessor British colonies have wrought great harm in the world. We must not forget this—not to wallow in our wrongdoing, but to understand and to learn, that we might not wreak harm again. We must temper our national pride with critical self-knowledge, suggests historian Christopher Vecsey: “The study of our contact with Indians, the envisioning of our dark American selves, can instill such a strengthening doubt.”124 History through red eyes offers our children a deeper understanding than comes from encountering the past as a story of inevitable triumph by the good guys.

It is characteristic of the ethnocentrism of anthropology that whereas the rationality of claims by African and other primitive diviners to be able to see what is not visible to the ordinary eye has long seemed to be a proper subject of investigation, the occult powers of our own diviners have been taken for granted. Magic has been regarded as a bizarre phenomenon, the artness of art has not.

local people notice we aren’t there to learn from them but to teach them; we won’t ask questions but will give answers; we aren’t there to be with them but to train them; we won’t build trust but will attempt to transform them; we’re not there to dialogue but to lecture. Paulo Freire, the Brazilian educator, calls this a “subject-object relationship.” Unchecked ethnocentrism turns human beings into objects to be manipulated.

Oxytocin and vasopressin facilitate mother-infant bond formation and monogamous pair-bonding, decrease anxiety and stress, enhance trust and social affiliation, and make people more cooperative and generous. But this comes with a huge caveat—these hormones increase prosociality only toward an Us. When dealing with Thems, they make us more ethnocentric and xenophobic. Oxytocin is not a universal luv hormone. It’s a parochial one.

...the capacity to identify with others is definitely not gained all at once or from the start. The mind has to increase its capacity for inclusiveness through a slow and arduous growth process, and thus this capacity gets a little bigger (moving from egocentric to ethnocentric—from "me" to "us"), then a little bigger (from ethnocentric to worldcentric—from "us" to "all of us"), and a little bigger still (from worldcentric to integral, which starts to include even other species, resulting eventually in a "cosmic consciousness"—from "all of us" to "all of reality).

The antidote to feel-good history is not feel-bad history but honest and inclusive history. If textbook authors feel compelled to give moral instruction, the way origin myths have always done, they could accomplish this aim by allowing students to learn both the “good” and the “bad” sides of the Pilgrim tale. Conflict would then become part of the story, and students might discover that the knowledge they gain has implications for their lives today. Correctly taught, the issues of the era of the first Thanksgiving could help Americans grow more thoughtful and more tolerant, rather than more ethnocentric.

Who are theologians? What kind of self-identity could or should a theologian claim? Should a theologian be a defender or transmitter of Christian _tradition_? What if the _tradition_ itself carries a dark side, implicitly or explicitly, bounded by religious or cultural superiorism, ethnocentrism, homophobism, exclusive nationalism, sexism, racism, and so forth? What kind of _identity_ would then justify my rule as theologian? This question has been lingering in my mind throughout the time I have been working on cosmopolitan theology. it may sound simple, but for me the identity issue has been fundamental.

The reasons that leftists give for hating the West, etc. clearly do not correspond with their real motives. They SAY they hate the West because it is warlike, imperialistic, sexist, ethnocentric and so forth, but where these same faults appear in socialist countries or in primitive cultures, the leftist finds excuses for them, or at best he GRUDGINGLY admits that they exist; whereas he ENTHUSIASTICALLY points out (and often greatly exaggerates) these faults where they appear in Western civilization. Thus it is clear that these faults are not the leftist’s real motive for hating America and the West. He hates America and the West because they are strong and successful.

Many feminists in the Western world are afraid that by supporting their fellow sisters, someone might misconstrue that as ethnocentrism or racism. And even worse than just ignoring them, at times Western corporations actively support the very things that these brave women fight against. The 2019 swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated featured a burkini. And most egregious, the poster for the Women's March depicts a woman in hijab. ... How can we fight patriarchy while simultaneously supporting Islamic patriarchy? ... People in Muslim majority countries are just trying to progress their culture in thee same way Western culture have. You have been able to abolish slavery. You have been able to fight for women's equality. We just want to do the same.

Instead of the former divinely appointed aims of the Jewish, Greek, or Roman nations, which ancient historians regarded as representing the progress of humanity, modern history has postulated its own aims- the welfare of the French, German, or English people, or, in its highest abstraction, the welfare and civilization of humanity in general, by which is usually meant that of the peoples occupying a small northwesterly portion of a large continent.

The Frankfurt School’s studies combined Marxist analysis with Freudian psychoanalysis to form the basis of what became known as “Critical Theory” – the destructive criticism of Western culture, including Christianity, capitalism, authority, the family, patriarchy, morality, tradition, sexual restraint, loyalty, patriotism, nationalism, ethno-centrism and conservatism. Critical Theory repeats over and over a mantra of alleged Western evils: racism, sexism, colonialism, nationalism, homophobia, fascism, xenophobia, imperialism and, of course, religious bigotry (only applied to Christianity).

I hate that black people can’t decide what they want to be called. First they were “colored,” then “Negro,” then “black.” After that they became “people of color” and now they’re “African-American.” I say: Pick one! White people aren’t that smart; we can’t follow. I’ll call you ultrasuperduperstar if it makes you happy, but for God’s sake give me a final answer! The back-and-forth is giving me a migraine. And, can I just say that I don’t understand ethnocentricity? For example, where did “African-American” come from? My friend Beverly always says, “I’m African-American.” And I always say, “You’re from Massapequa Park. Exactly where in Africa is that? Is it part of the Serengeti or maybe Kenya adjacent?” Last time I checked Massapequa Park was four stops after Bellmore on the Long Island Railroad. Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans, Polish-Americans, etc., only refer to themselves like that when they want a big parade in their honor, so they can drink in public and get alternate side of the street parking waived. Otherwise they’re plain old Americans. And FYI, no one has ever, in my 239 years on this planet, called me a Hebraic-American. Jew bitch? All the time, but Hebraic-American bitch? Never.

MT: But you are. You are justifying it. RG: I'm trying to show that there's meaning at precisely the point where the nihilistic temptation is strongest today. I'm saying: there's a Revelation, and people are free to do with it what they will. But it too will keep reemerging. It's stronger than them. And, as we have seen, it's even capable of putting mimetic phenomena to work on its behalf, since today everyone is competing to see who is the most “victimized.” Revelation is dangerous. It's the spiritual equivalent of nuclear power. What's most pathetic is the insipidly modernized brand of Christianity that bows down before everything that's most ephemeral in contemporary thought. Christians don't see that they have at their disposal an instrument that is incomparably superior to the whole mishmash of psychoanalysis and sociology that they conscientiously feed themselves. It's the old story of Esau sacrificing his inheritance for a plate of lentils. All the modes of thought that once served to demolish Christianity are being discredited in turn by more “radical” versions of the same critique. There's no need to refute modern thought because, as each new trend one-ups its predecessors, it's liquidating itself at high speed. The students are becoming more and more skeptical, but, and above all in America, the people in power, the department chairs, the “chairpersons,” as they say, are fervent believers. They're often former sixties' radicals who've made the transition to administrative jobs in academia, the media, and the church. For a long time, Christians were protected from this insane downward spiral, and, when they finally dive in, you can recognize them by their naïve modernist faith. They're always one lap behind. They always choose the ships that the rats are in the midst of abandoning. They're hoping to tap into the hordes of people who have deserted their churches. They don't understand that the last thing that can attract the masses is a Christian version of the demagogic laxity in which they're already immersed. Today, it's thought that playing the social game, whether on the individual or the group level, is more indispensable than thinking…it's thought that there are truths that shouldn't be spoken. In America, it's become impossible to be unapologetically Christian, white, or European without running the risk of being accused of “ethnocentrism.” To which I reply that the eulogists of “multiculturalism” place themselves, to the contrary, in the purest of Western traditions. The West is the only civilization ever to have directed such criticisms against itself. The capital of the Incas had a name that I believe meant “the navel of the world.

But it is also true that a society of equal opportunity, without a top 1 percent hoarding the wealth and power, would actually benefit the vast majority of White people much more than racism does. It is not coincidental that slavery kept the vast majority of southern Whites poor. It is not coincidental that more White Americans thrived during the antiracist movements from the 1930s to the early 1970s than ever before or since. It is not coincidental that the racist movements that followed in the late twentieth century paralleled the stagnation or reduction of middle-and low-income Whites’ salaries and their skyrocketing costs of living. Antiracists should stop connecting selfishness to racism, and unselfishness to antiracism. Altruism is wanted, not required. Antiracists do not have to be altruistic. Antiracists do not have to be selfless. Antiracists merely have to have intelligent self-interest, and to stop consuming those racist ideas that have engendered so much unintelligent self-interest over the years. It is in the intelligent self-interest of middle-and upper-income Blacks to challenge the racism affecting the Black poor, knowing they will not be free of the racism that is slowing their socioeconomic rise until poor Blacks are free of racism. It is in the intelligent self-interest of Asians, Native Americans, and Latina/ os to challenge anti-Black racism, knowing they will not be free of racism until Black people are free of racism. It is in the intelligent self-interest of White Americans to challenge racism, knowing they will not be free of sexism, class bias, homophobia, and ethnocentrism until Black people are free of racism. The histories of anti-Asian, anti-Native, and anti-Latina/ o racist ideas; the histories of sexist, elitist, homophobic, and ethnocentric ideas: all sound eerily similar to this history of racist ideas, and feature some of the same defenders of bigotry in America. Supporting these prevailing bigotries is only in the intelligent self-interest of a tiny group of super rich, Protestant, heterosexual, non-immigrant, White, Anglo-Saxon males. Those are the only people who need to be altruistic in order to be antiracist. The rest of us merely need to do the intelligent thing for ourselves.

No centrism based on the temporary historical "glory" of any nation or region should any longer be allowed to distort our universal human understanding of our one world history.

We all come from somewhere. Born, aborted, extradited, fugitive or even enslaved. But much of what we are, belongs to Mother Africa. We need to respect and have esteem, knowledge and curiosity. Then, open your eyes to understand a little more. Do not accept this cultural void created by that ethnocentric feeling!

Anthropologists and other social scientists are generally wary of general definitions of "religion" or "thereligious," for at least three kinds of reasons: the terms of the definition may be ethnocentric; the precise formulation of a definition may wrongly take a superficial resemblance as the index of underlying commonalities; or such a formulationmay obscure certain aspects of the phenomena.

There is no gene for genocide. Ethnocentrism, xenophobia, and our desire for social dominance are tendencies, not triggers that lead to mechanical causation or reflex action.

It is, of course, simply another name for narcissism. Whatever my problems, they do not stem from me. They stem from the Other, who is the Bad Guy always. The real travesty here is that the cases of true oppression—a genuine case of a woman, a gay, a black, an Indian, a white male, getting held back due solely to ethnocentric or group prejudice—those cases lose all their urgency because they are drowned out by a thousand other voices all screaming oppression to explain even the most trivial and often unavoidable disappointments of life. So

ethnocentrism is a fundamental fact of the human condition.

At the first Holocaust memorial commemoration in the Capitol Rotunda, both President Jimmy Carter and Vice President Mondale referred to the ‘eleven million victims.’ Carter also used Wiesenthal’s figures of ‘six million Jews and five million others’ in his Executive Order establishing the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. I have attended Holocaust memorial commemorations in places as diverse as synagogues and army forts where eleven candles were lit. More significant is that strangers have repeatedly taken me and other colleagues to task for ignoring the five million non-Jews. When I explain that this is an invented concept, they become convinced of my ethnocentrism.

As anthropologist Michael Ghiglieri writes: “Xenophobia and ethnocentrism are not just essential ingredients to war. Because they instinctively tell men precisely whom to bond with versus whom to fight against, they are the most dangerously manipulable facets of war psychology that promote genocide. Indeed, genocide itself has become a potent force in human evolution.

The problem was that the advocates of mission were blind to their own ethnocentrism. They confused their middle-class ideals and values with the tenets of Christianity. Their views about morality, respectability, order, efficiency, individualism, professionalism, work, and technological progress, having been baptized long before, were without compunction exported to the ends of the earth. They were, therefore, predisposed not to appreciate the cultures of the people to whom they went—the unity of living and learning; the interdependence between individual, community, culture, and industry; the profundity of folk wisdom; the proprieties of traditional societies—all these were swept aside by a mentality shaped by the Enlightenment which tended to turn people into objects, reshaping the entire world into the image of the West, separating humans from nature and from one another, and “developing” them according to Western standards and suppositions (cf Sundermeier 1986:72–82).

The issue is the ethnocentric history that the New York task force, the Portland Baseline essayists, and other Afrocentric ideologues propose for American children. The issue is the teaching of bad history under whatever ethnic banner. Cn any historian justify the proposition that the five ethnic communities into which the New York state task force wishes to divide the country had equal influence on the development of the United States? Is it a function of schools to teach ethnic and racial pride? When does obsession with differences begin to threaten the idea of an overarching American nationality?

Missionary feminism is instead characterized by a brand of universalism that is ethnocentric, justice monist (beholden to the idea that there is one possible set of gender-just cultural forms) and that is beholden to epistemic habits of idealization and moralism (the reduction of political actions to moral statements) that inure Western culture and Western intervention to criticism.

Westerners often assume that what is universally valuable for women just is (an idealized form of) the Western way of life. In many theoretical discussions, this peculiar narrow and ethnocentric variant of universalism is what is meant by “universalism.

Quoting page 85: The OCR [Office for Civil Rights] in the early 1970s in effect experienced an internal capture shift. The black agenda activists who had dominated the office between 1965 and 1970 were joined and to some extend displaced by a new cadre of Latino activists. Not content with the transitional model of bilingual education, which used native-language instruction as a bridge to English language proficiency, the Latino nationalists called for Spanish-based cultural maintenance programs of indefinite duration. La Raza Unida’s 1967 founding statement captured the Chicano spirit of cultural nationalism and linguistic ethnocentrism: “The time of subjugation, exploitation, and abuse of human rights of La Raza in the United States is hereby ended forever,” the manifesto proclaimed. “[We] affirm the magnificence of La Raza, the greatness of our heritage, our history, our language, our traditions, our contributions to humanity and culture.

In many ways, the language, the sect, and the ethnicity are the IDs in post-U.S. occupation Iraq—the 'new Iraq'.

In order to oppose racism, we have to actually be concerned with oppression writ large. This means drawing critical connections between the plight of people of color and the poor in the United States and the broader struggle for freedom and tolerance on our small planet. It means fighting ethnic and religious bigotry throughout Asia and standing in solidarity with the Roma in Europe as well as African migrants. It means denouncing the immoral violence of anti-Semitism as well as Israel’s immoral destruction of the Palestinian people. It means taking a stand against ethnocentrism and genocide in Rwanda and standing up against antiblack racism in Brazil, Latin America, and the Arab world. As antiracists, we have to cultivate concern and compassion for the suffering marginalized people in our own communities and on the other side of the world.

It is in the intelligent self-interest of White Americans to challenge racism, knowing they will not be free of sexism, class bias, homophobia, and ethnocentrism until Black people are free of racism. The histories of anti-Asian, anti-Native, and anti-Latina/o racist ideas; the histories of sexist, elitist, homophobic, and ethnocentric ideas: all sound eerily similar to this history of racist ideas, and feature some of the same defenders of bigotry in America.

we saw self-identity, needs, and moral response go from physiocentric to biocentric to egocentric to ethnocentric to worldcentric, the platform for all higher and truly spiritual developments.

ethnocentrism—the tendency to evaluate the customs of other groups according to one’s own cultural standards.

Almost in reaction against such globalization, many people are responding with increasing nationalism, sometimes with almost frightening ethnocentrism. Christians are not immune to these sweeping currents of thought. They, too, can be caught up in flag-waving nationalism that puts the interests of my nation or my class or my race or my tribe or my heritage above the demands of the kingdom of God.

Early in 2014, I read On Genetic Interests, Family, Ethnicity, and Humanity in an Age of Mass Migration, by Frank Salter. Reading this book, in combination with books and articles on the history of Canadian multiculturalism, I realised that multiculturalism was an asymmetrical system in which Europeans, and only Europeans, were expected to celebrate other cultures, feel guilty about their own ethnic identity, and behave as universal altruists; while at the same time non-Europeans inside the European homelands were being encouraged to practice their in-group ethnic interests. It became obvious that multiculturalism was not simply about ‘understanding’ different cultures but about accepting mass immigration into European lands. The dissemination of multiculturalism in academia was an effort, as Salter saw it, ‘to break down or neutralise ethnocentric responses to diversity’ among Europeans through ‘diversity education’ and ‘by breaking down the correspondence between national and ethnic identity.’[1] The more this correspondence was diluted, both through the ideology of cultural Marxism and the actual effectuation of racial interbreeding in the West, the more difficult it would be to identify Western civilisation.

Computer models have demonstrated that once 25% of a group adhere to a counter-cultural viewpoint, such as ethnocentrism currently is, and become ‘activists’ in fervently advocating it, these activists gradually tip the opinion of the entire group towards their own (Centola et al., 2018). At this critical mass, they can disrupt the transmission of and faith in the majority view to such an extent that more and more people begin to change sides, tipping the opinion of the majority to that of the minority

And as we have observed (Hammond & Axelrod, 2006), based on computer models, all else controlled for, the more ethnocentric group will always triumph.

Though we cannot expect to be able to think like they thought, or read their minds, or penetrate very deeply into so much that is opaque to us in their culture, we can begin to see that there are other ways of thinking besides our own and begin to identify some of the ways in which we have been presumptuously ethnocentric.

There is no issue that is more important to baby boom and post baby boom believers than the question of gender and racial equality. The Christian church, which should have led the fight against discrimination, is now being forced to update its thinking with regard to providing women and minorities equal opportunities for participation and leadership in the community of faith. Even within conservative and evangelical churches there is a new groundswell of support, particularly among young believers, for the church to rid itself and society of sexism, racism and all other forms of ethnocentricity.

Many say that it is ethnocentric to claim that our religion is superior to others. Yet isn't that very statement ethnocentric? Most non-Western cultures have no problem saying that their culture and religion is best. The idea that it is wrong to do so is deeply rooted in Western traditions of self-criticism and individualism. To charge others with the "sin" of ethnocentrism is really a way of saying, "Our culture's approach to other cultures is superior to yours.

More specific material relating to the bourgeois state will be found in subsequent volumes. This approach is of a piece with Marx’s. One must remember that most of the states that Marx had occasion to discuss were not capitalist states—as yet—even in Europe, let alone throughout the rest of the world. From the standpoint of theory this is a good thing, since no phenomenon can be thoroughly understood if only one specimen or type is available for examination. The literature of Marxism and marxology is unfortunately full of statements about Marx’s views which actually apply only to capitalism and the bourgeois era, and which require at least considerable qualification as soon as the focus is widened to include most of the world and world history. It is a form of ethnocentrism.

The very concept of "ethnocentrism," which is used like a sledge-hammer to disparage the West, is a Western invention.

Firstly, the usual procedures of science do not guarantee absolute truth and knowledge because they have been established by an entity vitiated by inaccuracy and error, which is the human being himself. Secondly, if there really were an objective science applied to the infallible deciphering of reality, parti-pris, ethnocentrism, prejudice and the vested interests of the scientists themselves would

black man living in Austin, I can say being black means to be a warrior. Because every day is a battle. We internalize so much on our journeys to defeat and combat the “isms”—classism, ethnocentrism, lookism, jingoism, racism, sexism. As black as we are and as beautiful as we are, we are warriors.

To put it somewhat differently, but making the same point, should we distinguish between ethnocentrism and racism?

universal features shared by all musics. The very word ‘universal’ should put us on our guard: as the postcolonial scholar Homi Bhabha says, ‘universalism…masks ethnocentric norms, values, and interests’.

The mythic god is the god of a particular peoples—it is sociocentric and ethnocentric, not postconventional and worldcentric

developing in symbiosis with colonialism and nationalism, modern racism reached its apogee in the last century, when the combination of fascism and anti-Semitism had an exterminatory epilogue in Nazi Germany. Once this abscess had been burst, after the Second World War – as we saw in the first chapter – anti-Semitism underwent a decline, while racism metamorphosed, abandoning its hierarchical and ‘racialist’ orientation (in the old model of Gobineau, Chamberlain, Vacher de Lapouge or Lombroso) and becoming differentialist and culturalist. In other words, it slipped from ‘racial science’ into ethnocentrism.

Although one may instinctively expect the ‘anti-Semitic’ work of poets like Pound and Eliot to deter the attentions of Jewish literary scholars, the reality is quite different. Indeed, in the mirror image of Menand’s claim, it actually appears that it is Jews who have the obsession with Pound. Pound, perhaps more than any other poet, has exerted an attractive influence over a large swathe of Jewish scholars, all of whom have been pulled magnetically towards him by a burning zeal to deconstruct his work, life, and legacy. This juxtaposition of hatred with attraction is subtly expressed in Anthony Julius’s T.S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism and Literary Form, in the course of which Julius writes that Jews reading Eliot’s poetry are both “appalled and impressed.” These academic activists are appalled because they perceive an unjustified critique upon their ethnic group, and they perceive this critique all the more keenly because of their ethnocentrism. They are impressed because they appreciate, and are threatened by, the talent of their target, often despite themselves. The ‘attraction’ arises from the desire to deconstruct and demean that talent, and thus avenge or assuage the critique.

Racial reformers have customarily requested or demanded that Americans, particularly White Americans, sacrifice their own privileges for the betterment of Black people. And yet, this strategy is based on one of the oldest myths in the modern era, a myth continuously produced and reproduced by racists and antiracists alike: that racism materially benefits the majority of White people, that White people would lose and not gain in the reconstruction of an antiracist America. It has been true that racist policies have benefited White people in general at the expense of Black people (and others) in general. That is the story of racism, of unequal opportunity in a nutshell. But it is also true that a society of equal opportunity, without a top 1 percent hoarding the wealth and power, would actually benefit the vast majority of southern Whites poor. It is not coincidental that slavery kept the vast majority of southern Whites poor. It is not coincidental that more White Americans thrived during the antiracist movements from the 1930s to the 1970s than ever before or since. It is not coincidental that the racist movements that followed in the late twentieth century paralleled the stagnation or reduction of middle and low income Whites’ salaries and their skyrocketing costs of living. Antiracists should stop connecting selfishness to racism, and unselfishness to antiracism. Altruism is wanted, not required. Antiracists do not have to be altruistic. Antiracists do not have to be selfless. Antiracists merely have to have intelligent self-interest, and to stop consuming those racist ideas that have engendered so much unintelligent self-interest over the years. It is in the intelligent self-interest of middle and upper income Blacks to challenge the racism affecting the Black poor, knowing they will not be free of the racism that is slowing their socioeconomic rise until poor blacks are free of racism. It is in the intelligent self-interest of Asians, Native Americans, and Latinos to challenge anti-Black racism, knowing they will not be free of racism until Black people are of racism. It is in the intelligent self-interest of White Americans to challenge racism, knowing they will not be free of sexism, class bias, homophobia, and ethnocentrism until Black people are free from racism. The histories of anti-Asian, anti-Native, and anti-Latino racist ideas; the histories of sexist, elitist, homophobic, and ethnocentric ideas all sound eerily similar to this history of racist ideas, and feature some of the same defenders of bigotry in America. Supporting these prevailing bigotries is only in the intelligent self-interest of a tiny group of super rich, Protestant, heterosexual, non-immigrant, White, Anglo-Saxon males. Those are the only people who need to be altruistic in order to be antiracist. The rest of us merely need to do the intelligent thing for ourselves.

Max Hartshorn, Artem Kaznatcheev and Thomas Shultz (2013) The Evolutionary Dominance of Ethnocentric Cooperation Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation 16 (3) 7 Abstract Recent agent-based computer simulations suggest that ethnocentrism, often thought to rely on complex social cognition and learning, may have arisen through biological evolution. From a random start, ethnocentric strategies dominate other possible strategies (selfish, traitorous, and humanitarian) based on cooperation or non-cooperation with in-group and out-group agents. Here we show that ethnocentrism eventually overcomes its closest competitor, humanitarianism, by exploiting humanitarian cooperation across group boundaries as world population saturates. Selfish and traitorous strategies are self-limiting because such agents do not cooperate with agents sharing the same genes. Traitorous strategies fare even worse than selfish ones because traitors are exploited by ethnocentrics across group boundaries in the same manner as humanitarians are, via unreciprocated cooperation. By tracking evolution across time, we find individual differences between evolving worlds in terms of early humanitarian competition with ethnocentrism, including early stages of humanitarian dominance. Our evidence indicates that such variation, in terms of differences between humanitarian and ethnocentric agents, is normally distributed and due to early, rather than later, stochastic differences in immigrant strategies.

Max Hartshorn, Artem Kaznatcheev and Thomas Shultz (2013) The Evolutionary Dominance of Ethnocentric Cooperation Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation 16 (3) 7 Abstract Recent agent-based computer simulations suggest that ethnocentrism, often thought to rely on complex social cognition and learning, may have arisen through biological evolution. From a random start, ethnocentric strategies dominate other possible strategies (selfish, traitorous, and humanitarian) based on cooperation or non-cooperation with in-group and out-group agents. Here we show that ethnocentrism eventually overcomes its closest competitor, humanitarianism, by exploiting humanitarian cooperation across group boundaries as world population saturates. Selfish and traitorous strategies are self-limiting because such agents do not cooperate with agents sharing the same genes. Traitorous strategies fare even worse than selfish ones because traitors are exploited by ethnocentrics across group boundaries in the same manner as humanitarians are, via unreciprocated cooperation.

THE STRATEGIC CONSEQUENCES OF CHINESE RACISM: A Strategic Asymmetry for the United States Draft Report Submitted 7 January 2013 Project Number: HQ006721370003000 Since our genus Homo first evolved in the Pliocene, humans have favored those who are biologically related. In general, the closer the relationship, the greater the preferential treatment. The vast majority of animals behave in this way, and humans are no different. In a world of scarce resources and many threats, the evolutionary process would select nepotism, thus promoting the survival of the next generation. However, this process is relative. Parents are more willing to provide for their own children than for the children of relatives, or rarely for those of strangers. The essence of an inclusive fitness explanation of ethnocentrism, then, is that individuals generally should be more willing to support, privilege, and sacrifice for their own family, then their more distant kin, their ethnic group, and then others, such as a global community, in decreasing order of importance. ... The in-group/out-group division is also important for explaining ethnocentrism and individual readiness to kill outsiders before in-group members. Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt draws on psychologist Erik Erikson’s concept of “cultural pseudo speciation,” and says that in almost all cultures humans form subgroups usually based on kinship; these “eventually distinguish themselves from others by dialect and other subgroup characteristics and go on to form new cultures.” ... When an individual considers whether to support a larger group, several metrics are available. One of these ... is ethnocentrism, a continuation of one’s willingness to sacrifice for one’s family because of the notion of common kinship. As I discussed above, the ways humans determine their relations with unrelated individuals are complex, but the key factors are physical resemblance, as well as environmental causes like shared culture, history, and language. ... I have shown that in-group/out-group distinctions like ethnocentrism and xenophobia are not quirks of human behavior in certain settings. Instead, they are systematic and consistent behavioral strategies, or traits. They apply to all humans... They are widespread because they increased survival and reproductive success and were thus favored by natural selection over evolutionary history. ... Chinese racism ... is a strategic asset that makes a formidable adversary. ... The government educates the people to be proud of being Han and of China. In turn, the Chinese people are proud and fiercely patriotic as well as ethnocentric, racist, and xenophobic. This aids the government and permits them to maintain high levels of popular support. ...