Ethnocentrism

My Irish-American grandfather, born into destitute poverty in a Massachusetts mill town in 1883, once said to me, "Paul, the only difference between bog Irish and lace-curtain Irish is that the lace-curtain Irish have their names painted in fancy letters on their trash barrels." He had grown up under the weight of waning W.A.S.P. oppression of the Irish into the servile class. Despite obstacles, he had achieved personal happiness at a relatively early age by educating himself through reading, writing poetry and extensive travel. He had opened his mind and his heart. He spent his life in service to his commmunity as an avid New Deal Democrat.

His second wife, my grandmother, was born into wealth in a mid-Atlantic city in 1884. Her bourgeois German-Dutch family had relocated from Amsterdam for her father's managerial job under a major American industrialist of the early Golden Age, as it is considered only by those who profited from it. They lived in a large house. They had many servants. From my research, I believe they were Christianized Jews. When my grandmother eloped with my grandfather, her father disowned her outright, because she married outside her ethnic and social class. She left home and never saw it or her family again for the rest of her very long life. About this she was quite stoic. She spoke freely of her childhood privilege and asserted that she did not miss it. She had the life she wanted, the life she chose for love and personal freedom.

I have learned to dislike ethnocentrism from my own experiences of it in those who promote it. I consider it the most un-American of attitudes. I perceive it as a sign of ignorance and closed mind. It is inconsistent with what I see as humanism. It is perfectly clear to me that the ethnocentrism of 20th-century Fascists, White Supremacists, radical Islamists, Mexican reconquistas and radical Zionists is the same. It is based in a deluded belief in genetic superiority. It is a dysfunctional family value, an impedance to progressive social development.

I see a problem in some current social movements. The broad-brush terms of "pluralism" and "multiculturalism" are popular among a certain class of thnkers. The indiscriminate use of these terms tells me that those who employ them have no on-the-ground knowledge of what these terms can mean to the less educated and more narrow-minded. To those who are unwilling or unable to access education, these terms are often perceived as encouragement of ethnocentrism at the expense of social integration. Societies coping with massive migration are struggling with the impact of this entrenched ethnocentrism. It is often seen through the lens of cultural dissonance. However, the reality is that some people wish to impose their culture on whatever new environment they occupy. The attempts at introducing Shariah Law in Canada and other Muslim conclaves outside of Muslim countries are examples of this. The protection of pedophile priests from civil authority in ethnocentric Catholic congregations is another example.

I like the concept of panculturalism as described in an essay on education by Terry Moreland Henderson. I share the perspective that multicultualism, as it seems to be promoted by those who equate it with ethnic cuisine and pretty costumes from a dilettante's perspective, is actually divisive on the ground. I believe that some who promote multiculturalism or pluralism are part of an elite who see themselves as benefiting from the upside of this kind of diversity and immune from its downside, such as the deterioration of public communication, the corrosion of public education and abandonment of shared civic values.

My own humanism has fueled my determination to transcend cultural barriers in my nursing practice and my daily life. As a medical caregiver, I know that cultural differences impede more often than facilitate health promotion and healing when they are based in sexism, religion and ignorance. As a low-income American, who utilizes public transportation and has lived in diverse neighborhoods my whole life, I know that some cultural mores of newcomers to this country are inconsistent with the best of American civic values.

As a humanist, I believe in the use of rational thought and scientific inquiry. There is no room in that perspective for indiscriminate acceptance of any cultural or ethnic behavior. This is as inane, in my opinion, as blind ethnocentrism itself.