My Understanding of The Meaning of Ethnocentrism

When coming across the term Ethnocentrism, we tend to not fully understand what it means. Ethnocentrism is when you or another individual judge another person’s culture by the values and standards of that person’s culture, these individuals are known as ethnocentric individuals. In today’s world often many people don’t seem realize when they have seen or encountered a situation like this. I believe it happens everywhere and anywhere. We humans are now more exposed to many of the different people that belong to more than one race and or background being that we as a community is growing and will only continue to do so. Ethnocentrism starts from peoples Language to their Values that have separated people into different groups.

Growing up, I myself have seen many forms of Ethnocentrism and even encountered an ethnocentric individual and continue to do so till this day. Back in Grade school, many individuals, including myself, were taught and introduced to the different cultures, customs, values and behavior of only the people around us. Because of this, whenever we encountered someone from another culture, we fail to understand that they are very different from us.

Moving from state to state throughout my childhood, I was always around many different races. Being a Mexican individual means having many different fun and exciting traditions. But to others it was often seen as “weird”. During the time of me living in Kansas I was really different compared to the other kids that attended the same school I did. As any other new kid, I sat alone during recess and three kids decided to join me. As soon as I introduced myself these kids immediately asked where I was from and what race I was. There was a little boy who was named Juri, he suddenly started making false judgements on the “Mexican Culture”. By Mexican culture I mean the different Languages of Mexico, the religions of Mexico, the Values of us Mexican People and Mexican arts. This little boy began asking me why I was eating the school lunch if it wasn’t “Mexican Food”. But one thing that stood out was him describing how he does not celebrate holidays that we Mexicans celebrate. Celebrating Christmas was not in the books for him, he saw it as “dumb” and “not important” so he would judge others for celebrating the birth of Jesus. He even began to try explaining to us why we shouldn’t celebrate the events we celebrate because of how his culture sees it.

Many kids often felt offended and even began to question their race. Being this young I never thought I would remember a situation like this. I never fully understood why. But as I grow up I seem to realize what I have actually encountered throughout my life and to me I strongly believe this was an early example of what this Ethnocentrism is. Ethnocentrism can most definitely cause negative consequences which is why we deal with the problems we deal with today and will continue arising throughout the years.