Ethnocentrism

Where are you located?

Is there anyone in the BPO industry based in the Philippines who was not asked by that question?

Surely, everyone was asked by that question no matter how fluent your English is. It is because our accent is different from an American, from the British and from the Indians. Also, there are certain expressions that we used locally which is literally translated to English. This process of literally translating a local language to its English equivalent is known as Filipinism and there are a bunch of them.

There are call centers by which you are allowed to divulge your “generic” location. And there are those by which you are not allowed at all to reveal your location. And when I say “generic” location, you could say, “I am located in the Philippines” but you are not allowed to say the exact address for security reason.

This is where the concept of “Ethnocentrism” will come in. Here is a definition of ethnocentrism lifted from the World Wide Web.

Ethnocentrism is defined as judging another culture solely by the values and standards of one’s own culture. Ethnocentric individuals judge other groups relative to their own ethnic group of culture, especially with concern for language, behavior, customs and religion.

Ethnocentrism leads us to make false assumptions about cultural differences. We are ethnocentric when we use our cultural norms to make generalizations about other peoples' cultures and customs. Such generalizations -- often made without a conscious awareness that we've used our culture as a universal yardstick -- can be way off base and cause us to misjudge other peoples. Ethnocentrism can lead to cultural misinterpretation and it often distorts communication between human beings.

Ethnocentric thinking causes us to make wrong assumptions about other people because ethnocentrism leads us to make premature judgments.

"They" may not be very good at what we are best.

By evaluating "them" by what we are best at, we miss the many other aspects of life that they often handle more competently than we do.

On part of the caller, some of them would say to you, “I don’t want to talk to somebody who doesn’t know how to speak English.”

On our part, some would say on mute mode, “My God! Simple switching off of phone he doesn’t know how to do? How stupid!!

On part of the caller, some might say, “My credit card, you mean” and you will mumble and say “Hindi! Hindi! Hindi! Credit card ng kapit–bahay mo.”

The opposite of Ethnocentrism is Xenocentrism which means preferring ideas and things from other cultures over ideas and things from your own culture. At the heart of xenocentrism is an assumption that other cultures are superior to your own.

Most Filipinos would think that by going to the United States, their life would be better. Koreans come to the Philippines because they think this is where they could learn the English language better. Iranians flock on local universities because they think that the quality of education here is better. The world thinks that Venezuela is the Beauty Queen Factory of the World. These are just examples of Xenocentrism.

Any person in the world has the tendency to execute ethnocentrism. It is pathetic when your point of view is so one sided that you forgot to see the other side of the coin. For us who are in this industry, we do practice ethnocentrism in the same token we become victim of it.

Moderation and freeing your mind from clutter as well as preserving you Christian values is always the key to harmony.