What does it mean to be ethnocentric?

Answer 1

Ethnocentricity is the tendency to look at the world primarily from the perspective of one's own ethnic culture. People often feel ethnocentric while experiencing what some call culture shock.

Various researchers study ethnocentricism as it pertains to their specialized fields. This article covers anthropology, political science and especially sociology.

This term was coined by William Graham Sumner, a social evolutionist and professor of Political and Social Science at Yale University. He defined it as the viewpoint that “one’s own group is the center of everything,” against which all other groups are judged. Ethnocentrism often entails the belief that one's own race or ethnic group is the most important and/or that some or all aspects of its culture are superior to those of other groups. Within this ideology, individuals will judge other groups in relation to their own particular ethnic group or culture, especially with concern to language, behaviour, customs, and religion. These ethnic distinctions and sub-divisions serve to define each ethnicity's unique cultural identity.

Anthropologists such as Franz Boas and Bronislaw Malinowski argued that any human science had to transcend the ethnocentrism of the scientist. Both urged anthropologists to conduct ethnographic fieldwork in order to overcome their ethnocentrism. Boas developed the principle of cultural relativism and Malinowski developed the theory of functionalism as tools for developing non-ethnocentric studies of different societies. The books The Sexual Life of Savages, by Malinowski, Patterns of Culture by Ruth Benedict and Coming of Age in Samoa by Margaret Mead (two of Boas's students) are classic examples of anti-ethnocentric anthropology.

Answer 2

thinking that your ethnicity is somehow superior, and not wanting to mix with people from other ethnicities,.
it can also have an exacerbated pride on its history (or supposed history) and it might involve a common religion.

Answer 3

It's not hating other races (racism), it's more like being so focused on your own race that you can barely see anybody else.

Answer 4

You prefer your own race, you see them as better.