Oppressor's Price

The dominant culture pays the price for alterist views of "exotic" cultures - a dull self-image.

Check out my article "Black 'wedding". It is good to see in this article the way Aboriginal society was complex, ordered, constructed - unlike the portrayals of savage stoneage nomads we are enculturated to believe in. However, a word of caution. I believe it is equally damaging to marvel at Aboriginal culture as some kind of exotic artefact.

All cultures are exotic. Ballet, to me, is exotic. New Year's eve is an exotic ceremony, if viewed from the outside, ethnically. So called "mainstream" people live within incredibly diverse cultural and sub-cultural groups with intricate rituals and traditions that go unnoticed from day to day because, from the inside, they just seem "normal".

Alterity discourses position us to believe our own cultures are bland, and others are exotic. However, "Exotic" cultures, while valued as objects, are seldom a source of real social power.

So dominant cultural people are indoctrinated to view foreign cultures as inferior, but at the same time to depise their own cultures as dull and lifeless. Truly, oppression is as dehumanising for the oppressor as it is for the oppressed.