Ethnocentrism

Mary Werner

American Intercontinental University

Sociology

IP #2

July 29, 2013

Abstract:

Ethnocentrism is the propensity to look at the world from the standpoint of one's own culture. Many claim that ethnocentrism occurs in every culture; as luck would have it, ethnocentrism may be something that all cultures have in common. (unknown)

Ethnocentrism is a good thing and a bad thing. It’s great to be proud of your country and your heritage. Ethnocentrism can lead to social assimilation and strong personal group ties. We see a lot of ethnocentrism in the military and in our High Schools where we find racism, hate crimes, and even wars. The worse cases of ethnocentrism would be World War II and the Civil War. People get mad when they see others being ethnocentric and don’t see that they have the same ethnocentrism in themselves. (Sinatra, 2007)

We all have been known to exercise ethnocentrism at least once in our lives, even though we may not see our crimes because they are usually reflected in our ways of thinking. It is nothing more than believing ones culture is better than another. We see this all the time when it comes to race issues. We see in some where ethnocentrism is actually a positive way of thinking.

Let’s discuss the negative side of ethnocentrism. We see it a lot when groups put down other groups or cultures. In my hometown, we see this a lot with the whites, blacks and Mexicans, gangs are a good example of the negative side of ethnocentrism. Gangs believe they are self righteous and better than others, they judge other cultures a lot. One example that comes to mind is when Hitler and his Nazi followers thought they were better than the Jewish, leading to the horrific deaths of approximately six million Jewish people.

We also see the positive side of ethnocentrism where we see in local High Schools that have segregated school assemblies. In each separate assembly, they talked about their average test scores and encouraged them to do...