Ethnocriticism

Ethnocriticisim

People of different ethnicities constantly make judgements of each other that are wrong. Just because the way you look might not be the way other people look doesn't mean you can judge them.

When the Europeans migrated to the United States, they never thought about anyone else that might I've there. They just came in and started building. As more and more people came they were able to search out for more land. They ended up bumping into the Native Americans. They began to fight with them because they were scared. They ended up taking whatever land they wanted, without even a second thought to what they were doing to the Indians. Indians were here first and they got pushed out. In the movie "On Deadly Ground", Steven Seagal plays a worker at a oil refinery in Alaska. The oil company called Aegis, is trying to drill where these eskimos live. They are trying to take the land surrounding then and eventually the land that they live on. This instance is just like the past where Americans try to takeover something that is not there's. Whenever a different race thinks about Indians, they usually think that they can just walk over them . Indians have that persona about them because of what happened to them in the past.

Playing basketball for me helps me get away from whatever problems or stress that I'm having in my life. When I was in high school I would go play at Cravens Park. Out of the 50 people that would be there, there would only be about 2 white guys. The white guys would never get to play because of the stereotype that was put on them that they weren't that good at basketball. I went one night and I got picked up by a team just because I was tall. After they saw me play, I was able to get picked up everyday. Breaking down a stereotype barrier feels good. Proving to others that white guys can play helps out the whole ethnocriticism idea because after they make a wrong judgement about somebody, they are more willing to hold off next time a situation like this comes up again. Stereotyping just because someone is a different race is bad because you might be missing out what they have to offer.

Different ethnicities constantly view each other as "different people". Writers use color to make contrasting points in there books. Black is usually referred to as bad. White is usually referred to as good. In stories such as the Lord of the Rings, the Hobbits lived in a wonderful light atmosphere where the sun shines all the time. Mean while the orcs lived by a volcano that was extremely dark setting. We see color as a dividing visual. We are use to contrasting black and white, so it is easy to separate African Americans