What's the Problem with Ethnocentrism?

Ethnic refers to cultural and centrism refers to the central point...so basically ethnocentrism refers to judging other groups from cultural point of view.

Ethnocentrism leads misunderstanding to others. We falsely distort what is meaningful and functional to other people through our own tinted glasses. People see ways in terms of life experience, not through their content. Some people don't understand that their ways have their own meanings and functions in life, just like our ways have meaning for us.

The bent of this is that "we don't understand that we do not understand". We aren't aware that we can develop more understanding about how others experience life.

At the best, people simply continue unawareness. Yet, this can have consequences within our own interpersonal relationship. This is an unintentionally offending others, generating ill-feelings and even set up situations that harm others. It is easy not to see the life concerns, particularly minorities and disadvantaged. Their inabilites to deal with life situations.

We may have positive intentions from our own point of view in helping other groups deal with situations, but how do they see the problem?

At any given behaviour, we need to keep in mind that there are meanings and they are often very deep in one's subconcious. Some of us aren't aware that we are being ethnocentric. There's one thing that we should keep in mind that there are many ways in which human beings can experience life. Perhaps no one can ever have a complete understanding of another people, without fully experiencing everything that others experience, However, it doesn't mean we don't fully develop understanding to interact successfully with others.

When we encounter people from other ethnic bakgrounds, we have an opportunity to learn "new ways" of seeing and experiencing life which never existed. Yes, they do exist. If only we can look at life in a complementary perspective instead of as an inherent conflict on the negative side, there are possibilities that we are lessening the problems of ethnocentrism. This is actually leading people to make false assumptions about others' ways based on limited experience. We are ethnocentric when we use our cultural norms to make generalizations about other culture and customs. Without concious awareness a generalization is made and culture is used as a universal yardstick. It influences communication between human beings.

"Ethnocentrism" is leading us to make pre-mature judgements. Others tend to evaluate immediately and assess based on an individual experience. Well, everyone is ethnocentric by nature, that can't be avoided nor it can be willed away by a well meaning
attitude. If you say you aren't, but rather you're open minded and tolerant that is misleading.

"EVERYONE IS ETHNOCENTRIC AND THERE'S NO WAY IT CAN BE AVOIDED, BUT IT CAN BE LESSENED"