#euro centrism

[menalez]

still find it annoying that westerners on here saw me talk about being dark-skinned, sth i am deemed in my country & have been literally physically abused for in the past, and they were like hmmm this woman is saying she’s a dark-skinned black woman… no… i’m saying i’m dark-skinned, and mixed race. two separate things. black bahrainis & part black bahrainis don’t have a culture of “dark skin black” etc.. ur either dark skinned or ur not, regardless of racial heritage. and there’s no comparison among black bahrainis either bc we view skin colour & heritage as entirely separate things. like even the visibly black bahraini women ive known (who in my experience are all dark-skinned by our standards. not necessarily western or african ones but by bahraini standards) would consider me dark-skinned and we would bond over that experience & understand what that word means. but westerners love to think they know everything about everywhere and place their standards on everyone ever and refuse to actually understand that we also have our own standards ig so to them me talking about being dark-skinned led them to believe that i’m claiming to have the same experience as idk lupita nyong’o. despite me repeatedly vocally differentiating my experiences from dark-skinned black women in places like the US…

i can never even discuss my experiences on here and state what i mean bc they will intentionally misconstrue it to fit their standards instead of just. understanding lol

[bidokja]

hi hello can I get your opinion on smth? if not that's fine and I hope u have a great day but anyways I'm planning to write a weak hero fic but I'm torn between writing the characters with their korean names or the ones that people recognize them by, originally I was planning on using the english ones but I'm not so sure. ty in advance

imo its better to use their actually Korean names. if you're worried about people getting confused, provide an author's note indicating who's who. plus, if you are planning to post it on ao3 or anything, I believe the tag system there ties together both their original Korean and assigned English names, so people will be able to find it regardless.

[arithedingas]

Would it be a stretch to say that the fact that a lot of people seemed to immediately start complaining about Americans when they learned about the international voting be an example of us-centrism?

[poaytree]

My local library's poetry collection drives me up their freaking walls. There is literally 80% of old French poetry mixed with obscure, contemporary French poets I never heard of, then 15% of European Union countries' poetry books (it is marketed as such, with a european flag sticker and everything, the Remainers will be elated to know that as far as my library is concerned the UK is still in the EU), with a prevalence of UK (Cause you know, romantism, Blake, Shelley, Shakespeare) then German, Spanish and Polish books. The remaining 20 european countries have to fight to have even one book. To not even talk about the rest of the world. South America simply doesn't exist. Maya Angelou and Ginsberg represent North America. Asia is down to a handful of haikus books, and Africa and Oceania? Never heard of them.

You've got to understand that this public library is the biggest of a big town. But instead of books (that occupies at most one quarter of their building), they acquire Movies and CDs. Nothing against those, its just that their book collection pales in comparison clearly suffering from the competition.

They sit on a gigantic collection of obscure French poetry collections and not a single recent collection, neither in French, English, or any other language. Where is Time is a Mother, library? Where is Jericho Brown? Kaveh Akbar? Ada Limón? Where is ANY novel poetry book for Muses' sake-

[uwmspeccoll]

Milestone Monday

On this day, September 16 in 1620, English Pilgrims set sail for the English settlement in Virginia from Plymouth, England in the Mayflower. Because of the strong winter seas, however, they never made it that far, and instead made landing at a spot they named after their departure point, Plymouth, in late December -- not the best time to set up shop in New England. They were ill-prepared to fend for themselves, and if it wasn't for the assistance of the indigenous people of the area, the colonists never would have survived.

We commemorate this milestone with a children's book from our Historical Curriculum Collection, We Were There with the Mayflower Pilgrims by Robert N. Webb, illustrations by Charles J. Andres (1913-2008), and historical consultation by George F. Willison (1896-1972), published in New York by Grosset & Dunlap in 1956. While there are many historical accuracies in this book, its rhetoric reflects the Euro-American centrism and ideas of American exceptionalism normalized during the period: "America was a wilderness, filled with savage Indians"; "[The Mayflower Compact was] the first of many important and historical documents which were to guide America to its greatness." And as one might imagine, the relationship between the English settlers and the indigenous population is predictably whitewashed.

View more posts on works from our Historical Curriculum Collection.

View more Milestone Monday posts.

[thatfrenchacademic]

Things I have heard from white cis men in academia, and from them only :

What are even "emerging voices" ?

Are you sure there is any Euro-centrism to push back against, in this discipline?

I mean I've never done it, but I might as well apply for it ! *gets an interview for the job*

I don't think there really is an issue of gender at the Department [gender balance: 80/20]

Writes an article about gender bias - with three other men only.

But why would you put so much effort in that

[elbiotipo]

re: yankee christmas: As a worldbuilding fundamentalist(tm) what are your thoughts on yank worldbuilders' instinctual need to give all their fictional cultures a Generic Winter Holiday that just happens to involve gift-giving

A very good example of what I've said. They do celebrate Christmas and it has become part of their culture, even if secularized. This is understandable and happens everywhere. Here too: a good part of people, even a majority I would say, use Christmas as a excuse to get with family and party. I won't deny that, because that's not my point.

However, since they are now secularized (yeah, let's say), they tried to turn Christmas into something For Everyone. And since acknowledging the holiday they try to make For Everyone is actually a religious holiday is awkward, they tried to make it about something else... oh, how about winter, WE ALL HAVE WINTER DON'T WE?

And so get into the incredibly incoherence of trying to sell that to the rest of the world because You Gotta Sell, to millions of Christians who also celebrate Christmas but live in tropical and subtropical areas and in a whole hemisphere where the Generic Winter Holiday falls in Summer. And this is how you get corporations selling winter shit in Argentina with 40°C outside. And stuff like Life Day in Star Wars.

Which both shows euro(US?)centrism and christian centrism, because if there's something not lacking among cultures, it's festivals. You can do virtually everything with festivals instead of just making Fantasy Christmas.

Imagine if you made a similar holiday but set in the middle of summer. Perhaps some celebration before a period of fasting? Something with lots of music, partying, playing with water, bright outfits and costumes (skimpy ones too) and tropical stuff. And it would be so funny that they tried to do that as a copy-paste in the other hemisphere while they're deep in winter. Just saying.

[betterbemeta]

You know my biggest disapointment with breath of the wild was the Shiekah, they turned the VERY indian inspired group into bland ass ninjas and in the story that most revolves around the shiekah's agency that feels off, i suppose an indian group being servants of a european monarchy sucks but the erasure still leaves a bad taste in my mouth, what do you think?

I've never heard that the Sheikah were inspired by Indian art. Which does not mean it can't be a read-- I just haven't encountered it before. I WILL say that I noticed a LOT of architecture inspired by South Asia and India in Skyward Sword. But the dungeons and ruins in that game are rarely associated with a specific people, only 'the ancient past' and 'the goddess Hylia'. I wish we actually got confirmation that ancient Sheikah were associated with those ruins, rather than the only direct clue to Sheikah culture in that game being a time traveling exposition lady.

We had really few direct depictions of Sheikah architecture and customs before BotW, and in that game the 'ancient' Sheikah features were designed with the Jōmon period, the earliest known Japanese art and culture. The 'modern' Sheikah features were also very Japanese in aesthetic.

This kind of brings me to the point I want to bring up and reply to in your ask, which is that I take slight issue with the idea that Hyrule is a 'European monarchy.' I think it could be easy to read it that way where I live, because we tend to trust the aesthetics of stuff in a story to match up to locations in 'real life.' If we see a guy wielding a 14th century straight longsword we tend to assume the guy, within the bounds of style, is a medieval European dude. We don't expect him to lift his helm visor and reveal he's Japanese.

But for the same reason we look at anime characters and assume that many of them are probably intended to scan as Japanese to a Japanese audience, I think we need to extend that to Legend of Zelda. Even though the Hylian monarchy isn't wearing fashions that look Japanese, their nationalist myth throughout many games is set up to be extremely familiar to the domestic Japanese audience. Link and Zelda may be Blondes but the Sheikah analogs to a 'japan' themed culture are given white hair.

(Somebody else than me might have better insight into Anime Hair Colors.)

I live in the USA, 'the west', so by default narratives about imperialism and orientalism most accessible to me are going to assume whiteness and euro-centrism. But I feel it would be wrong to frame a piece of Japanese media as about whiteness, especially when it's clear that we can see the same type of stuff happen wherever racism and imperialism intersect.

There's only so much detail or nuance I can really have, given that I'm a white person in the anglosphere who's able to take Asian Literature in college, and Use Wikipedia, and Compare mythology, history, and news out of other countries to Video Games.

But yes, with all that said. It does put bad tastes in my mouth. Basically any depiction of entire cultures existing in some way to ensure a monarchy's security will do that, and the recent installment TotK extends to other fantasy races the horrible fate that has always been slapped onto the Sheikah: bound by an oath to serve Hyrule, Zelda and by extension, Link who paradoxically exists to both be the nation's tool but also the inheritor of everything in it.

[cephalopodvictorious]

I have said it before and I will say it again - the culinary arts have hobbled themselves through their euro-centrism in general, and focus on the french standard for pastry specifically

the true future of tasty delights lies in fusion cuisine and inter-cultural cooperation and sharing

[zukriuchen]

fascinating thing about being in the global south and interacting with the online anglosphere is the amount of people who purport to stand with you against US/euro-centrism and imperialist interests, but cannot conceive of anyone other than americans/europeans as actual humans who use the internet

[cherribloods]

"Radical feminists are racist, Euro-centric, and supporters of white supremacy!"

Considering that radical feminism is the reason why women and women of color specifically have rights to vote, own property, and be treated as human beings, there are already blatant errors to be pointed out in that claim. Feel free to Google "second wave feminism".

Now, why would the feminist movement that made such huge leaps of progress into equality and progress towards liberation, be labeled as "racist" of all things? Let's take a look.

I emphasise women of color because intersectionality - in its true form - is a theory about how different axes of oppression (e.g. race and sex) intersect and feed into each other; women of color, for example, black women, are oppressed on the basis of both sex and race. Race causes her to experience oppression such as slavery, if she lived in the past; segregation, closer to the future. Sex causes her to experience oppression such as rape, objectification, and forced servitude; all three of which are still commonly experienced by black women - every woman - today.

This means that the true form of feminism is radical feminism. It recognizes social classes, analyzes them as they are in reality and not as they are in theory, and works towards the goal that it has always had: female liberation. In countries where men have more control over societies, such as Iran and South Korea, feminists cannot afford the weak and defanged feminism of liberals in the Global North. I will keep this as succinct as possible. In plain terms: Western feminism has lost focus and surrendered to the patriarchy because women still do not have class consciousness. It is useless. Spineless. Weak.

Women in the Global South cannot do campaigns for buccal fat removal, nor can they espouse bimboism and choice feminism - they are fighting for their lives and their rights to exist as a human being, in societies where male supremacy is worse than it is in the West, where patriarchy already dominates. Do you think that the South Korean women going against the societal expectations to tolerate a man, and be forced to have children, have any use for a form of "feminism" that cannot even define what a woman is?

To say that radical feminism is racist is to deny reality. I am aware that this is a favorite pastime of TRAs, but women all around the world, women of color, their feminism is radical feminism because there is no other form of feminism that has ever worked. Liberal feminism has brought nothing but AGPs and male predators into female-only spaces.

Brown and black women all around the world fight for reproductive rights, bodily autonomy, and how can they fight a fight when they cannot tell you what the cause is? It is female liberation; female liberation from sex-based oppression caused by males. It is also ridiculous to outright say that radical feminism is racist when radical feminism is one of the only few ideologies and movements that can identify classes in society. It is far more racist to insinuate that a "cisgender" black woman has more in common with a TIM because you think black women are more "masculine". A black woman is a woman - a man in a dress is a man.

There is no Euro-centrism, or racism, or white supremacy in radical feminism. Feminism is inherently incongruent with those beliefs, unless it is the false, tepid, pathetic excuse of "feminism" adopted by the West used to uphold the patriarchy rather than dismantle it. Shameful.

[sneezemonster15]

Thankyou for explaining about Kabuki’s background with homosexuality. People’s prejudice of thinking all Japanese people are ignorant of homosexuality therefore they can’t write about gay romance is annoying. I’ve been reading a collection of modern Japanese literature recently but there’s alot of stories which includes gay romance. Like a Japanese person writing a gay romance with full intention is nothing new at all, it’s tiring that a lot of people doesn’t understand. (This is not exclusive to Japan of course though) People really out there thinking lgbtq+ is a forced western concept or something. The sad thing is even people who ships SNS shows this attitude by saying stuff like “Kishimoto wrote SNS on accident”.

Yeah it's quite sad isn't it? There's a reason why I say people who deny SNS with such insistence, who make a full fledged crusade out of it, are guided by heteronormativity and ingrained homophobic bias, sometimes even without their conscious knowledge. Lack of self awareness and introspection combined with lack of knowledge and instinct inform these beliefs.

How do you counter it? Talk about it. Educate. Inform. A lot of fans, western or not, suffer from these types of biases. For Western fans, euro centrism, which again is such an ingrained thought pattern, plays a major role in their assumptions about eastern or Asian countries, their socio cultural backgrounds and history. There was a time when a large number of academic anthropological papers were discredited because of this same reason. That these western academics would willy nilly judge and measure every other culture that they couldn't relate with, with their own socio politico cultural yardsticks. Which invalidated these research and findings. A hell lot of academic ethical discourse was published on this issue.

It's so easy to project what you think and believe on things that are different from your reality. It's an important issue, a crucial one. In order to understand and judge how other cultures and societies function. It's not to say that one has to agree and approve everything that others believe or do. But what is certainly the most basic requirement is to know. First and foremost. To learn about them grounded in their own reality. To be an impartial spectator. To intervene or not is another matter, which requires deep thought, leading to another set of deeply moral and ethical queries that need to be answered first.

But at least, find out. Learn. Read. It's so easy to find out. Everything is just one click away. This is a fandom. What a great conglomeration, what a great platform to learn and imbibe. In theory. But instead of taking advantage, fans stick to their guns mindlessly. It's sad, yes. SNS who think it's accidental simply don't want to learn how storytelling works. How narrative and visual language work. That storytelling can be implicit and layered. And not everything needs to be said in the exact words that they want to hear. All one needs is an inclination to learn. Like my dude Socrates said - "It's better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied."

[allamericansbitch]

I finally looked at who signed That letter thanking Biden, and it's so much more horrible than I thought. The amount of people who - for years - have proudly flaunted their liberal beliefs, have criticised the government and society for systemic racism, sexism, and homophobia, but celebrate genocide? The USAmerican-/Euro-centrism is blatant and disgusting. Like, I know this isn't about me, I do, but as someone from a part of the world no one cares about (southeast asia), it is profoundly disturbing and upsetting to see. Seth Meyer's signed it, Sara. Laura Dern, Tiffany Hadish, Karlie Kloss just people I can remember. Because oppression on matters of the oppressed live in the intersection of the west and the global north, right?

yeah it was really upsetting to see the list, pretty sure jordan peele signed it too. it's signing your name on a paper that screams ignorance and misinformation.

[alatismeni-theitsa]

I think that the obsession and fascination with Greek, Norse, Celtic etc mythology is the result of Euro-centrism. A lot of people don't value their own heritage and might not even know much about it. I hope that people can reconnect with their own unique cultural background. A lot of people from the US say they don't feel connected to a particular culture or ethnicity, and so they might not fully understand why us Europeans feel so strongly about our history and culture. I just wish they would show some respect and consideration. Listen to the people who belong to that culture! Why is that so hard to understand when we talk about European cultures?

Eurocentrism (and Afrocentrism in certain situations) in the US are distorted notions about foreign continents and are often based on stereotypes created from the colonial times. Hence, Europeans and Africans themselves have often little to do with how they are portrayed in global (aka USian) media. And you are right, many US Americans whose families have been there for hundreds of years, think they have a connection to the continents as if their parents immigrated from there 20 years ago. They really don't listen when the indigenous people of the continents tell them their portrayal is absurd

[burning-bubble-tea]

Just saw a video taking about how the Cherokee nation did not have language for money and it was presented in a pretty neutral manner but people then used the fact they didn’t use money as proof that they were lesser than cultures that do use money and like… reading a fucking book.

Euro centrism is not exactly something to be celebrated, cultures and people loved and lived just fine before colonialism and colonialism brought violence, displacement and genocide. Capitalism is not the only way to live, people have lived without capitalism for thousands of years. And even if you do think one way of thought is “better” than the other, then why did it have to be forced onto people through force to convince them of that? Fuck so called modernity and rationality.

[f0xd13-blog]

Euro centrism is the worst to understand world history because people be center af in recent stuff and are western centered