The cultural racial other - Speech or Presentation Example

The Cultural Racial Other The “cultural racial other” is the misinformation of a racial culture based on the inferences conveyed to people through the mass media: print, television, film, and books.1 This process is what Nel calls “inferential racism.2 The public, unaware of, or limited in knowledge about other cultures, infers their understanding of a culture(s) through their understanding of cultural depictions gained through the media. One of the best examples of mass media forming the image of a culture is Islam and Muslims.

Since the 18th century when Western authors began translating the stories of the One Thousand Nights and One Night (The Arabian Nights)3 Western society, including Americans, began developing an image of Muslims consistent with those created by the translators of Nights. Scheherezade, the young princess who tells the king stories lest she be killed, has become the standard image, in whatever way one is most familiar with that image of her, in considering and thinking of Muslim women. In the movie Sex and the City 2, the character played by Sarah Jessica Parker oozes “Just like Scheherazade,” when she finds out she and her friends are going to travel to Abu Dhabi.

4 Flying carpets, wanton women, and evil magic genies are images that more readily come to the Westerner’s mind than the reality of Muslims and their Islamic faith and culture, which permeates all aspects of their society, politics, and private lives. The images and culture portrayed through Nights is offensive to many Muslims, because it falsely portrays who they are and mires them in a time of antiquity that is long past, not allowing them as a culture and people to participate in the present.

This helps put into perspective the hostility with which the West is perceived by Muslims. A cultural “other” exists in the minds of the Westerner.