The Cause of Ethnocentrism: Why White People and Indian People Always Proud of Their Own Culture?

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The cause of ethnocentrism: Why white people and Indian people always proud of their own culture? Vivien Wei Yang Instructor Susan Chaiton 21st, Feb, 2013 With the development of modern society, traditional culture has undergone a serious extinction. Some traditional festival, traditional customs, traditional language has been ignored by young people day by day. Although old people always believe their own culture is always the best, they do not know how their ethnocentrism influences the development of their culture and the development of other cultures. There are a number of examples of ethnocentrism on the part of white and native people as seen in the novel “I heard the owl call my name”. Before to know how ethnocentrism influences culture, people need to know some information about ethnocentrism. According to the article from Psychology (Carole Wade& Carol Tavris, 2004), ethnocentrism was gave an exact introduction. Wade and Tavris stated that ethnocentrism is universal phenomenons that people believe that their own culture or their own ethnic group always is better than other nation’s. In addition, these people also will show how ethnocentrism influences people’s behavior. The authors of Psychology also stated that ethnocentrism is conditions that decide between groups there will be conflict or harmony, prejudice or understanding. On the other words, ethnocentrism decides the bias to other culture group is positive or negative. (Carole Wade& Carol Tavris, Psychology, 2004) Ethnocentrism is caused by social identity. In Margaret Craven’s novel “I heard the owl call my name”, there are some examples showed the ethnocentrism between white people and Indian people. For example, when Mark, the main characteristic of the novel, first

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