How do we see the others? Do we see everything through glasses?

We all look through different glasses As we have seen, persons´s identity or an identity of a group of people can not be summed up in just one label. But very often we tend to concentrate on limited or particular aspect – we look through our glasses, the shades of which are made of our prejudice, stereotypes, ethnocentrism, complexes, limited knowledge ……

Social relations and power This is because the responses of different human groups to each other are the product of a complicated system of social relations and power.

Put our glasses away To be able to put our “glasses” away, we need to be aware and examine our stereotypes, prejudice, ethnocentrism, complexes and the way we learn about, discover and interact with new cultures.

Stereotypes Stereotypes consist basically in shared beliefs or thoughts about a particular human group. A stereotype is an ensemble of characteristics which sums up a human group usually in terms of behaviour, habits, etc…. The objective of stereotypes is to simplify reality: “They are like that …”

Prejudice A prejudice is a judgement we make about another person or other people without really knowing them. Prejudices can be negative or positive in character. Prejudices are learned as part of our socialisation process and they are very difficult to modify or get rid of. Therefore it is very important that we are aware of them.

Ethnocentrism Our judgements, evaluations and justifications are influenced strongly by our ethnic origin, our belonging to a nation or a group of people. This means that we believe, that our culture is - the right one others are somehow “not normal”. We feel that our values and ways of living are universal, the correct one for all people.

Ethnocentric glasses More contact with other cultures might only reinforce our prejudice and stereotypes. It does not necessarily mean that all different cultures are negative. They may seem attractive or exotic for us, but we only “observe” from distance and at the end reject.