Ethnocentrism and Racism in media.

Stuart Hall’s idea of “White Eye”, which explains that Western media is based on the biased perception when the first colonisers and slave traders engaged the coloured people, who were outside of their own race. Thus, the western media makes the whites superior to other race. Stuart Hall argues that this is a problem in society because the power of media (hegemony) has the ability to neutralise the ‘false fact’ that white race is superior to other race.

Although this is quite problematic, as a psychology major (FTVMS too), I believe the notion of the white eye is, however, justifiable. This is because people tend to think that when they belong to a certain group, they believe they are the superior when compared to the other similar groups because our desire to think well of ourselves (e.g. as rational and moral) extends to the group we identify with.This is called “Ethnocentrism”, which I believe, led to Eurocentrism for Europeans.

So when the slave traders and colonisers first engaged with the coloured people they automatically thought they were superior to them with better culture, heritage and lifestyle. As a result of this, they looked down on the coloured people, as they wanted to believe that they were better than them. In other words, they engaged in in-group-favoring and outgroup-derogating behaviors. As Stuart Hall states, the notion of the white eye is still occurring in today’s media. I believe this is just acting according to ethnocentrism. In other words, since it is the white people who dominate and control the western media, it is normal to see them making superior among other races despite the protest from other races. Therefore, this is just an unavoidable factor. However, my concern is that white race has successfully naturalised that their race is the most superior race by using dominant western media. It has left an impact in the far-eastern media, as they now look up the white race as the ideal race in their own media and look down on the races other than their own and the white.

In the next post, I shall explore the impact that white eyes and Eurocentrism have left in Korean media as an example of my statement.