A prewriting
I've got this great quotation from George Bernard Shaw: "Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it."
The dictionaries aren't much help at this point, and quoting them will simply result in a very short paper. The online Merriam-Webster gives for "Ethnocentric:"
characterized by or based on the attitude that one's own group is superior
My Apple computer's Oxford New American Dictionary gives
evaluating other peoples and cultures according to the standards of one's own culture
I'm also thinking of that "-centric" suffix. Galileo had to deal with the geocentric theory of the solar system (the earth is the center of everything). Many of us have had egocentric coworkers or roommates (I am the center of everything). Following this, "ethnocentric" would be "my ethnos is the center of everything." (Which leaves aside the question whether a race is the same thing as an ethnos.) Is it just that my race is mine? Of course, I think as I do because I am me—I can't easily think as a woman or a child or an Eskimo. In that sense, I'm always going to be egocentric and ethnocentric, but that doesn't appear to be what Williams and Edwards are getting at. Should I take my ethnos to be the standard by which everyone else is judged?
The essential corner gets turned when I move from "we're pretty good" to "there's something wrong with you" (and perhaps around another corner: "you're so substandard that I don't want you around me").
There's a lot of ground to be covered here. Which option?- My grandma's Cornish pasties were really good.
- My grandma's Cornish pasties were the best food in the world.
- Those Finnish pasties just don't measure up.
- Finns don't deserve to even MAKE pasties because theirs are so terrible!
- Don't you dare bring one of those disgusting Finns into my presence.
