Discover Top Posts Tagged with #ethnocentrism

Ahh Jaysus lads here we go again. No Irish need apply to the Ivies or something.

God forbid a Slav do anything near a land-grant school.

Also this is going to be used in antisemitic ways because of course it is.

#trump regime #ethnocentrism #fuck wasps #this has Stephen Miller written all over it #fuck stephen miller #antisemitism

And tbh I think the term "brown" is outdated, racist, ethnocentric, colorist maybe?

"brown" is usually used in reference to Northern Africans, Middle easterner, southern Asians and Latin americans.

But all these people have a diverse set of skin tones. A diverse culture. A diverse set of language. A diverse set of history and lineage.

Speaking as a latino, we are racially diverse, our ancestry usually comes from Spain, Portugal, Africa, and south/central American indigenous people. But there are also Asian heritage and even a good portion of Jewish heritage. In latin america we don't define race or ethnicity or nationality the same way many western nations do. Instead if you were born here to citizens you are said cultural. I have met a Brazilian who's parents were Germans and became citizens he was a Brazil citizen and only identified as Brazil and spoke Portuguese. Is he brown??????? Despite being indistinguishable from a white American as long as you didn't hear him talk and know nothing about his culture.

I am Dominican, do you know that the majority of Dominicans are of African ancestry, usually mulatto and come in a mixture of skin tones. Is my best friend brown even though he is black -passin and half Dominican and half Puerto Rican, he's been called the n-word and has faced anti-black racism?? Am I brown even though I'm white -passin and in my day to day life I rarely face racism unless someone suspects I'm mixed, latino, or knows that I am.

#latino #racism #anti blackness #colorism #ethnocentrism #poc #asian american #latino American #middle eastern #African #text post

"He's started catching fish," said the Senior Wrangler. "That means he'll come over all smug and start asking what plans we've got for making a boat at any minute, you know what he's like."

The Dean looked at some sketches he'd made on a rock.

"How hard can it be to build a boat?" he said. "People with bones in their noses build boats. And we are the end product of thousands of years of enlightenment. Building a boat is not beyond men like us, Senior Wrangler."

"Quite, Dean."

"All we have to do is search this island until we find a book with a title like Practical Boat-Building for Beginners."

"Exactly. It'll be plain sailing after that, Dean. Ahaha."

Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent

thinking about the way race inevitably interferes with Marius and Akasha's relationship is always kind of a trip because Anne Rice seems to have viewed Akasha as a white woman (both considering physical descriptions and while she wasn't racist about Aaliyah playing the role, she also didn't consider book!Akasha a "person of color," which I don't even want to unpack). However, Akasha is a vampire of color, more specifically Iranian [edit: Iraqi] (ntm married to an Egyptian man), and if the iwtv writers know what's good for them will most likely be a woc in the show as well. and then there's Marius, a man whose life is built on Roman ethnic supremacy, and who connects the worst moments of this life to an overturning of these ethnic structures--such as his captivity and forcible transformation at the hands of "barbarian" druids or the sack of rome by "barbarians."* You can see this ethnic paranoia manifesting with shit like his orientalist fears of Constantinople or his really fucked-up talks about the West vs East with Lestat.

so we've got Marius, this man whose entire identity is tied to inbuilt structures of ethnic supremacy, spending literally thousands of years in a toxic mommy-issues relationship with Akasha, a queen from an ethnicity he's historically programmed to look down upon. Marius clearly worships her but he violent denies this worship, battering and temporarily abandoning Bianca during an argument on the subject. besides basic shame about abandoning his proudly held atheism (itself not specifically ethnicity-based consider his lack of belief in Roman gods), it would be logical for these issues to be amplified by his not wanting to admit he's spent most of his immortal life worshipping a woman of "lesser" racial origins, especially one who won't give him the time of day.

Furthermore, she stands in for his own "barbarian" Keltoi mother, reflecting both Marius's own desire for that lost part of himself and his internalized ethnic hatreds. this also ties into his possessiveness of her: Marius's determination not to share Akasha with anyone stems from a mix of justified paranoia about her falling into the wrong hands, a desire to maintain his control over vampire knowledge, his apparent viewing her as an exotic trophy he wants to keep for himself, and his likely self-loathing at falling for such an "exotic" system of faith so completely.

of course of all this comes back to Amadeo, who is in every universe a kind of anti-Akasha (same way show!Antoinette was picked by Lestat for her role as an anti-Louis, meant to fulfill a perceived flaw in the primary partner). Marius seesaws a lot on this, but he originally picks Amadeo as a blank slate to carve into the perfect vampire, as opposed to Akasha whose "blank slate" nature renders her unapproachable and ultimately beyond Marius's control. if we're continuing with my hc about the way race operates in marikasha's relationship, then this would be Marius attempting (subconsciously ofc he's obviously not laying it for himself this explicitly) to find someone of a "lesser ethnicity" to sculpt into a proper vampire; i.e. someone who listens to him and responds to his orders, something Akasha never does. Both versions of Amadeo's fit the bill of a lesser ethnicity in Marius's eyes, although showmadeo's Desi origins are a more explicit representation of this than bookmadeo's Slavic ones. by controlling/creating him, I could easily see Marius trying to correct whatever balance in the ethnic structure he's created by worshipping a vampire woman of color.

moving into show territory (and thus more explicitly headcanon-based), I'm haunted by the line "worshipful mercy" and the apparent contradiction in Marius openly worshipping a brown boy after so long denying his worship for a woman of color. But of course what Marius is looking for is a solution to his shameful worship of Akasha so consider: Amadeo as an anti-Akasha who can be safely defiled and brutalized, who can be shared with others as Marius would never dare to share Akasha, who can soak up the violence Marius directs at him as Akasha never did.

when I look at shit like the adoration of the shepherds, I see Marius using the work of others (and possibly his own, but using others for this level of "worship" might be more effective) to render Amadeo as pale, pliable, and in service as a greater mythology as Marius quietly wishes he could render Akasha pale, pliable, and in service of (his) greater mythology. in the process, of course, he plants the seeds of internalized racism that are nourished by the CoD and lead to Armand wielding white supremacy against other poc, perpetuating the racial stratification that has shaped Marius's whole life.

I'm hoping that the writers of amc's iwtv are taking all of these possibilities into account when writing Marius/Akasha's relationship, which I personally consider one of the most pivotal bonds of the entire tvc universe and any universe that stems from it. like I said, the racial aspects here were never explicitly Anne's focus, but she was clearly chasing some kind of vibe with Akasha's non-Western origins clashing with Marius's endless fixation on Western philosophy, and I hope we'll finally get the opportunity to confront what that really means in full.

*side note: Marius being traumatized by the sack of Rome, but leaving out shit like the Second Great Temple Burning while discussing Roman history with non-Roman religions and framing the Jews as "antisocial" is probably one of the craziest parts of his book actually. of course he'd be probably be one of those 'they rebelled so we get to destroy their religious institutions types' we're plagued with today...

#interview with the vampire #monsters talks iwtv #monsters reads tvc #marius de romanus #racism #anne rice #ethnocentrism #akasha #marikasha #marimand #amadeo de romanus #armand

Insisting that culture-specific genders from cultures without a traditional gender binary are by definition "nonbinary" is itself an act of binarism that requires the conceptual imposition of the colonial gender binary upon native gender systems. "Binary" "men" and "women" from such cultures are as equally "nonbinary" as their cultures' other genders if their cultures' traditional gender systems are not in fact gender binaries. Using the dichotomous language framework of "binary/nonbinary" for the purpose of differentiating genders that correlate to exclusively and fully "male" and "female" from other genders is therefore inaccurate at best in the context of cultures with gender systems that have more than two established traditional genders to which one can conform.

#binarism #anti-indigeneity #anti-native racism #racism #ethnocentrism #colonialism #cultural relativism #exorsexism #indigenderphobia

The idea that America is some unique evil country is still american exceptionalism. The idea that we are some unique evil fails to do anything but let us flagellate about how evil and terrible and hopeless it is without examining our biases as to why we may believe that or understanding actions that can be taken to lessen the evil that is there.

Like, no, I don’t actually think this is the worst country of all time forever, i think history is complicated and nuanced actually. Like yeah, we did do bad things, as has ever other country. We are still doing bad things we need to push against, as is every other country.

To presume America is uniquely bad not only gives an excuse to not try and push back against evil, but gives an excuse to be blind to the atrocities other countries are committing under the guise of “anything is better then america” like no. Incorrect. I think its horrific that china is doing ethnic cleansings and I hate ICE, two things can be true.

Our evil is not uniquely evil, or some inherent american flaw of ethics not present outside of the states. You cannot blame the entire world’s suffering on one country without an inherent belief about that country being somehow more special and unique and powerful then every other country combined. The states certainly arent blameless for a lot of things, but that doesn’t mean we’re the only thing to blame.

Its still ethnocentric to go “any country not this specific one is incapable of having the power or intelligence to do immoral acts without it being 100% a result of my own country’s actions” you still believe that a a specific country is the center of the world and most powerful figure imaginable.

Doing an inversion of the white savior where every other race is more inherently noble is still racist because it still presumes that white people are inherently capable of a wider range of choices and desires then everyone else who are unintelligent and naive enough to have to be tricked into doing evil!