Being the "Other"

Flash back to the first day of the tutorial, our first activity was that imagine there is a map of New Zealand in front of you and we have been asked to stand in a position where you think you belong to. I was a bit confused about where I should place myself… Should I place myself “inside of the New Zealand”? or “Outside of the New Zealand”.  For me, I was born in China and came to New Zealand with my family when I was about 10 years old. So I could say I basically grew up and spent my “life” here in New Zealand. 

Been growing up in a foreign country sure is different; it is different in terms of culture, society norms and custom.  Although things are different, I still get along with a lot of people at school, teachers, and the rest of the community. It seems to me that I am pretty comfortable staying here and didn’t felt like a outsider. But on till one day, during school lunch time (while I was in my first year at intermediate), as the lunch time was about to over and I was on my way back to the classroom, this girl from my class who was a white girl had to yelled out “Go back to your country” really loud. There are still several other Asian students in the class, I can see the awkwardness from their facial expression, and from that point, I have been questioning myself, do I really belong here? Even though I think I am, but do the others think in the same way as I do?

According to Richard Dyer, whereas he stated that the White people are been seen as the dominant figure in this world, and this has brought us to the idea of eurocentrism, Eurocentrism is an approach that takes European values, judgments, beliefs and cultures as normal, natural and ideal, in other words, it makes European values central and dismisses others to the periphery. Applying this definition of eurocentrism, it explains quite a lot of racial imbalances in our society today. Could we argue that in a Western world, all the non-white or the non-Europeans are been seen as the “Others”?  This is also bought us to the idea of Projection. According to Freud and Jung, it suggests that we see in the world, use a psychological term and other people are aspects or projections of our own personalities, our own psyche. Projections are aspects of ourselves or our desires that we normally disown or repress. For example, in China, in terms of fashion industry whereas majority of the Chinese market are often take a look at what is the fashion trend in the Europe and then design the cloths that are similar to those trends. This idea shows that eurocentrism is powerful in western society but it is also powerful in the eastern world.

If we reverse the idea of been the “Others” from a western world. if we placing westerner in a eastern society, would there be the idea of “go back to your country”? or is it more towards “admiring” ?