Eurocentrism includes only the European history but that 's about it, it excludes minority history and essentially guides society to see minority history as irrelevant. The American youth see Natives as people who might’ve been wronged in the past but hold no more representation or existence. This silences Natives and they become a thing of the past, despite the fact that they are still fighting for what they believe in. This mutes them from history from the past but they are being erased from history that is being written right now. Knowing this information it discusses how learning this eurocentric textbooks could impact minority students due to them not knowing their history they 'll believe that white people are more superior than other in that case.
This was imperialist since the goal was to spread their belief. Secondly, Europeans just split up Africa and India for themselves. European countries competed for Africa. In India, the British drove out the French and the Dutch. This was imperialist since they just wanted land.
He also argued that scholarly writing from America and Europe presented inaccurate, misleading and stereotyped cultural representations of the East. Said believed these biased perceptions hindered a true understanding of Middle Eastern and East Asian culture. The Westerner tried to cross the line between what they know and what they have never seen it before (University of Cambridge, n.d.). The distinction erupts the word ‘Orientalism’ and separates human into two groups. Today the effect of Orientalism can be identified in any society as it continues to shape attitudes, images, and knowledge.
Orientalism and the study of the Middle East and North Africa The Middle East is a term called by the westerns . They called the area between the East and The West the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) . The Westerns tried over years to study the orient and to show how the people in the Middle Eastern countries a very primitive live and they do not have civilization. also they westerns tried to influence the Middle East and North Africa to spread their culture and achieve their imperialistic goals . Also they tried to show that Muslims who live in the Middle East are terrorists .
Said, in his book, drastically altered the term and its connotation. He re-appropriated it suggesting that the elite society of Europe used this contrast between the West and the East to reinforce its own ideas of superiority. This narrative allowed it to carry out barbaric practices and justify them in the facade of necessary measures to bring cultural stability. According to Said, Orientalism came to effective use for the empire during the period of European Enlightenment and Arab colonization. Europe could justify its heinous acts in the colonial era owing to a self-serving history in which the Occident construed the Orient as radically distinct, oppressive and inferior, laying grounds for the need of rescue by the West.
Even in todays globalized world we cannot ignore its influence. It’s the west which tries to portray the east always as “a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences” (Said, p.1). They are usually portrayed as cruel, sensual, and lazy, corrupted, and driven by instinctive emotions ‘and so on. Through this representation of the orient the west tries to produce a kind of inferior picture of the east. They do this so that they can continue their imperial agenda under the veil of civilizing the ‘others’.William shakespeare’s The Tempest and Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe portray this notion of the inferior other or the orient through the characters of Caliban and Friday and their relationship with their colonial
Those explores are therefore responsible for setting the tone and relationship between the East and the West. Said argues that these early images seemed to occasion what came after them that being administrative control and political control of the East. No effort was made to understand the cultural divide between West and the East, this lack of understanding made Westerners believe that their own way of life was simply better than that of the East and therefore it should be taught to Easterners. Many Eastern countries became colonies of the West and then this idea increased. Said believes that many current Orientalists maintain most of these views.
Both thrive on the vision of East Asia illegitimately gaining power within the West. As is the case in America, the news and magazines continue to stereotype East Asians and East Asian Americans, destined to succeed, as they receive their strength from their background in ancient civilizations (Chen, 150-51). Furthermore, the media creates a clear Us vs. Them dichotomy, by portraying East Asian Americans as deviating outsiders, instead of Americans of one of America’s extensive heritages (Hartlep, xv-xvi). Alternatively, a new manner of approaching East Asia is uprising, promoted by East Asian export of their media to the West.
The Production of Masculine Privilege Through Patriarchy and Hegemonic Masculinity The invisible privilege, power and oppression of hegemonic masculinity or masculinities across societies continue to maintain gender inequalities (Kimmel, 2010). Cornell and Messerschmidt (2005) first identified hegemonic masculinity to describe how specific traits, such as white, middle-class and heterosexual, are the valued norms and identities in Western society. Hegemonic masculinity is a form of hegemony that allows men, including subordinate men as a group, to gain more power, control and resources than women (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005). Masculinised privilege is invisibly ubiquitous in that women and subordinate men construct identities and gender
Since the writers only had Western readers in their minds, who reaped so many benefits from Imperialism, they did not bother offering a critical view. Said proposes a ‘contrapuntal reading’ of the texts, which means to keep an open mind in regards to the hidden agenda, what is happening in the background, of a text. It is extremely important to remember the facets that the author excluded from his text, since back than the other side of Imperialism was ‘unknown’. We have to remember that most of those texts are not based on actual experience, but merely impressions of other texts and reports about colonies, and most of the times simplifications of the truth. Said uses the book Heart of Darkness from Joseph Conrad as a primary example.