In "Making The Case For Teaching Our Boys To ... 'Bring Me Home A Black Girl,'" Audrey Edwards attempts to deflect the criticism that her attitude is racist. She claims that there is quite a difference between being "racist" and "ethnocentric." (Actually, she puts the distinction in the mouth of a source, Gwendolyn Goldsby Grant, on this matter—a good strategy to put some distance between oneself and a potentially damaging comment.) So there are two "what is it?" questions here: Is ethnocentrism racist? Is Edwards' attitude pure ethnocentrism?
Racism goes beyond simply recognizing racial differences. Informally, at least, it is not too difficult to make some harmless generalizations about race: Africans have dark skin; Asians are often less hairy than Europeans, and so forth. None of this means much, and nobody ever got too upset about the assertion that few Asians or Africans are naturally blond. There always seems to be something deeper in racism: a claim that in the categories that count—intelligence, dignity, and basic humanity—race determines who has "got it" and who hasn't. Much like the schoolyard bully, the racist makes claims to appear superior by denigrating those "lower beings." Adolph Hitler gives us the paradigm: "If I can send the flower of the German nation into the hell of war without the smallest pity for the shedding of precious German blood, then surely I have the right to remove millions of an inferior race that breeds like vermin." He gives us both sides of racism, the "flower of the German nation" with its "precious German blood" and below these wonderful Germans, the "inferior race that breeds like vermin." Note the comparison: Germans are flowers and the others are rats, mice, and cockroaches. Friedrich Otto Hertz, a sociologist and historian who left Germany and settled in England in 1938, adds, "At the heart of racism is the religious assertion that God made a creative mistake when He brought some people into being."
There we have a basic definition of racism: We're good, and you're a mistake. We're flowers and you're cockroaches. Most of the racist manifestations you can think of probably derive from this frame of mind. Flowers and cockroaches shouldn't use the same water fountain. We don't belong in the same end of the bus. During the 1930's, railroads in the South had "Jim Crow cars"—minimal coaches with wooden benches for black riders. Why should they deserve the plush seats reserved for the whites if they are some lower form of life anyhow? The whole emphasis of the racist formula "separate but equal" was on the separate part. And the point of that was that lower forms were being separated from higher.
How does ethnocentrism fit into this definition? To begin with, the concept of ethnic group is very fuzzy, but usually refers to a shared culture, language, or religion ("Ethnic group"). The "centric" part is probably going to cause trouble. Galileo had to contend with thinkers who supported the geocentric model of the universe (everything revolves around the earth). Nearly everyone has had an egocentric roommate or coworker (everything revolves around me). Putting all this together, an ethnocentric point of view says everything tends to revolve around my culture, language, or religion.
To some extent, we all are ethnocentric. Jokes abound concerning tourists who go to foreign countries and yearn for "normal" food. It's not surprising when a down-home country type (such as my uncle) listens to Beethoven and wonders when we will get to hear some "good" music. No matter what I do about it, I'm probably going to always be white, male, Midwestern, and somewhat true to my religion and upbringing. There is a very thin line, though, between "I'm judging the whole world according to my culture," and "Your culture falls short because it isn't like mine." There's another thin line between "Your music and food aren't as good as mine" and "You aren't as good as I am." Stepping over that line is the move from "ethnocentric" to "racist."
In Edwards' article, Grant makes the point that "to want to be with people who share your values, religion and culture is very normal" (342). So far, so good. Even when nobody is forcing anybody, immigrants will tend to settle near folks like themselves. Most American cities have an Italian section, a Polish section, and so forth. When my brother-in-law, a good German Catholic, announced that he was marrying a good Catholic girl, there was a family uproar. The girl was Italian. Never mind that both families had been in the USA for at least two or three generations. Normal is "we want to be with people we understand."
Leaving aside the question of whether culture and skin color are equivalent, much of Edwards' article is focused on affirming the value of being black. This is the point of her comments about the beauty of black women. This is the point of reinforcing the self-image of black children. Substitute "Hispanic" or "Asian" for "Black" in these statements, and you get pretty much the same message: "we're good and we need to believe in ourselves." Nothing blameworthy about that.
Then there's Valerie Williams: "I want to have grandchildren who look like me [...] I don't want to be sitting around the dinner table at Thanksgiving feeling I have to bite my tongue" (Edwards 344). Why would she bite her tongue? She would be looking at the offspring of her good black son and a white woman who feels "superior to a former slave." Williams assumes (and Edwards quotes her with approval) that all white people are racists. Because racism is an attitude that puts one in the same villainous category as Hitler and the Ku Klux Klan, obviously there is something wrong with all those terrible white women. It is not an attitude of a few oddballs, either. "[T]here's not a White person in America who doesn't feel superior to a former slave," says Williams (Edwards 344). It's a racial characteristic of whites. Something really terrible is wrong with white people, all of them.
We get the feeling from Williams (and Edwards) that when wealth passes out of the hands of the black entrepreneur who originally earned it and gets laid at the feet of white women, something bigger than a sharing of community property has happened. Those white women do not deserve it. There is the intimation that a white woman would never think of marrying a wealthy black man for any reason except to get his money.
So where does this leave us? Is ethnocentricity a variety of racism? Probably not, in its pure form. Learning about the heroes of one's own cultural heritage, celebrating one's own cuisine, participating in one's own religious observances, and wanting to feel comfortable with a spouse who is generally from the same culture are all very normal. Wikipedia's root definition, though, strikes at the heart of the problem:
Ethnocentrism is the tendency to look at the world primarily from the perspective of one's own culture. Ethnocentrism often entails the belief that one's own race or ethnic group is the most important and/or that some or all aspects of its culture are superior to those of other group. ("Ethnocentrism")
It's much too easy to slip from "we're pretty good" to "there's something wrong with you," which is the root of racism, and Audrey Edwards (with those disparaging comments about white women) steps over the line. Her form of ethnocentrism really is racism.
Edwards, Audrey. "Making the Case for Teaching Our Boys to ... 'Bring Me Home a Black Girl.'" 75 Arguments: An Anthology. Alan Ainsworth, ed. Boston: McGraw, 2008. 340-44.
"Ethnic group." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 9 Mar 2008, 18:25 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 11 Mar 2008 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ethnic_group&oldid=197044792>.
"Ethnocentrism." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 10 Mar 2008, 05:13 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 11 Mar 2008 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ethnocentrism&oldid=197168631>.
Hertz, Friedrich Otto. "Friedrich Otto Hertz quotes." Find the famous quotes you need, ThinkExist.com Quotations. ThinkExist. 10 Mar 2008 <http://thinkexist.com/quotes/friedrich_otto_hertz/>.
Hitler, Adolph. "Adoph Hitler quotes." Find the famous quotes you need, ThinkExist.com Quotations. ThinkExist. 10 Mar 2008 <http://thinkexist.com/quotation/if_i_can_send_the_flower_of_the_german_nation/198051.html>.
