Of Ethnocentrism, Nationhood & Progress

In this essay, ethnicity will be defined as a person’s status in terms of his or her cultural, religious or linguistic traditions. This broad definition is endorsed by The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, as well as the Roget’s Thesaurus which groups ethnicity together with lexical items such as an individual’s language, tradition, customs and way of life. Abstracting a meaning from this corpus of definitions, we can conclude that ethnocentrism is one’s fixation on the idea that one’s origin, language, culture and mores are superior to others’, and that by dint of this perceived superiority, one reserves the right to hold other groups and cultures in utter contempt.

By itself, ethnicity can be a source of great strength and progress. For example, the greatness of America lies in the diversity of its ethnicity. The nation itself was founded on the concept of individual freedoms and liberty, and took deliberate pains to attract into her fold men and women of great intellect from all over the world. Along with their wealth and culture, immigrants poured into America with great knowledge, creativity and inventions. Furthermore, every great kingdom worth its name was carved out of diverse ethnic groups that either chose or were coerced to subsume their individual identities under the banner of the common good. Thus, it could be posited that the more diverse and united a society, the more its strength, the more the wealth of its talents, and the more its potential power.

But militating against the fine idea of ethnic diversity is the canker of ethnocentrism-the pseudo-scientific idea that any group can ipso facto be naturally superior to another. The significant difference in skin color and physical appearance between Blacks and Whites could and did lead to notions of White superiority. Using the White skull as a standard, charlatans subjected Blacks to craniometry, and judged our race according to how our skull size compared to that of the Caucasian. Although not acceptable, this was understandable because Whites are so physically different from Blacks, and their scientific and economic successes often lead to false notions of natural superiority. Conversely, our own checkered history in global scientific knowledge, civilization and economic development is a subtle yardsticks covertly used to question our status as co-equals in the global village of ideas and inventions. I can understand, though totally disagree with a White person’s racist attitude against a Black person, but ethnocentrism among Blacks nauseate me.

Biological sciences affirm the notion that all humankind are equal, and that exposure to knowledge and culture accounts for why some are more inclined than others to achieve greatness, power and wealth. Therefore, there is no justification for the notion that some groups are naturally more superior to others. Indeed, if the best representatives of all the races and ethnic groups in the world were subjected to the most extreme suffering and deprivation, their responses would be the same degree of savagery and depravity. Alternatively, if all resources of learning and thinking were made available to people of diverse race and ethnicity, the outcome would be the same degree of skill, talent and achievements. Therefore the defining variable in mental development is “opportunity” which establishes the most legitimate intellectual differentials in the cognitive abilities of groups and individuals.

It is in the context of all this knowledge that Ghana’s first president, soon after independence, deemed it fit and proper to concentrate on the formal school system to boost the African personality and to merge the tribes under one great banner of nationhood . Dr. Kwame Nkrumah’s vision for Ghana was the elevation of the confidence of the African and the unity of the nation and her people. This vision extended beyond Ghana’s borders to include the whole of Africa. What Nkrumah conceived of nationhood made philosophical sense because without knowledge and unity, no country can claim nationhood. If ignorance makes people show greater allegiances to tribes at the expense of the nation, then the survival of the nation is under serious threat. For a country to be a nation, her people will have to subsume ethnicity under the aegis of the national interest. The present conflicts amongst the tribes, though so far verbal, is a testimony that our country comprises nations within the state. In effect, we of this generation have repudiated the concept of nationhood with our ethnic animosity and undermined the very tenets under which the nation was founded.

To buttress this point, let a salient fact be culled into the argument: Members of this forum constitute the cream of the crop in terms of Ghana’s human resources. Undoubtedly, most of us have the highest quality of education. Those who do not still possess enough material wealth to make them the bastion of their families and societies back home.

In short, we are the paragons of the nation-its very core elite. That most of us fan ethnic hatred through insults and calumniation is the mother of all anachronisms. Here we are, the first-borns of privilege, with unparalleled opportunities, regularly victims of the injustices of racism meted out to us by people not of our race.….. One will think that ethnocentrism will be a veritable anathema among people like us who have everything in common except language!. Yet it remains the attitude in chief on this forum. Every topic is seen through the prism of ethnocentrism and transposed to feed the fat ethnic monster. There are clear explanations to the phenomenon of ethnocentrism. Firstly, it is the mantra of non-achieving persons. For example, the Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan attracted desperate individuals trying to bolster their depressive feelings of low esteem through the crude imposition of natural superiority on the system. In other words, ethnic bigots advocate a short-cut to recognition, knowing fully well that their ignorance and laziness will not allow them to compete on a level ground, and that they are doomed to remain at the lowest levels of the society forever unless they make unsubstantiated claims to natural superiority.

Secondly, ethnocentric individuals are psychologically challenged persons with dual-personality syndromes that lie at the root of their hypocrisy, logical incoherence and contradictory existence. Consider that most ethnocentric people are devoutly religious, and yet they substitute the universal teaching of love inherent in all religions for hatred of others. As a result, they create hell for themselves here on earth while looking up in the skies for a future heaven. Consider also that these people, by carrying years of animosity in their hearts, evolve into emotional beasts of burden whose mental development is circumscribed by the inability to adjust to societies or get along with others. As a result of the stress they put on the brain , they forever remain dwarfs in analytical reasoning and creative cognition. Their very existence is a contradiction because while most claim to be patriotic citizens, their attitude towards nationhood is at best nihilist . This is simply because a nation cannot exist without the unity of its discrete groups, and therefore there is no nation to love if one repudiates the very essence of nationhood. Further, if there is no unity, there can be no peace and security or development. It is therefore a paradox for one to talk of being patriotic while remaining ethnocentric.

Another psychological issue with ethnocentric persons is that they tend to be reactive generalists. Their hatred of a tribe may have been triggered by a certain member’s offence against these individuals. Because they are unable or unwilling to admit to the uniqueness of every individual, they react by persecuting whole groups and stereotyping them according to the single isolated experience with one member. To the parochial mind of a typical ethnocentric, one bad example represents the group, and the group represents the one bad example. Thus, the thinking process among ethnocentric individuals is one dimensional, since they are unable to grasp concepts holistically. Because of this, they are easy victims of what I call the transformative power of their enemies. This is a term I coined to describe the situation where individuals, in desperate desire to be vengeful, become carbon copies and puppets in the hands of their enemies. In other words, they are as bad as their enemies because they do exactly what their enemies do; and they are puppets in the hands of their enemies because their enemies control their emotions by triggering their negative behavior.

Ethnocentrism represents the single most absurd national outlook still persisting among Ghanaians. Fifty years after independence, we should be talking about lofty projects and grand ideas. That we are still caught up in the ethnocentric mesh implies that we have not even begun to see ourselves as a nation. The mouths of our best citizens are still dripping with denunciations and calumniations against our fellow Ghanaians. We strain at the gnats in the eyes of our siblings while daily swallowing the great ethnic camel. Wherein lies progress for the people who have not yet begun to see themselves as a people?

Like Kwegyir Aggrey’s eagle, we are busy eating in a hencoop. Overnight, we can soar high and jettison the flotsam and jetsam in our lives- those ethnocentric habits of death eating at the entrails of our being. We are like blind wayfarers on a quest for our destiny’s keystone. Each tribe carries a piece of the secret code that solves the puzzle of our lives. Behind us, the great wasteland of missed opportunities, harboring the earthquakes of yesteryears, the tumultuous upheavals of the days gone by. Before us, the dense evergreen forest of hope. All around us is the vast deceptive mirage. Together, we walk the meandering trajectory to the great oasis, our hands clasped in each others’, our feet in lock-step. We trudge the winding paths in slow motions, each of us a vital link to the other. Thus we complete our existential chain. We work together, dream together, think together, see together, guide each other and inspire one another towards yonder hope wherein lies the progress of our country-one nation, one people, one destiny.

Samuel Adjei Sarfo is a certified English Educationist in the State of Texas. You can reach him at [email protected].

Views expressed by the author(s) do not necessarily reflect those of GhanaHomePage.