How Does Ethnocentricity Cause Conflict?

Ethnocentricity creates conflict. It changes the perspectives people may have for different cultures due to the fact that their culture may not follow or have the same rules or behaviors as your own ethnicity. When a person is ethnocentric, they develop bias opinions of others because they base they judgments on what they know of their own culture. This can make people think that other cultures are doing the wrong thing or not going about in a respectful way. The British came to Australia without knowledge of life there, of Aboriginals living in this secluded place away from the rest of the world. The Aboriginals were mostly nude while the British were fully clothed with their British attire. To the British, they thought that this might have been disrespectful or impolite of the Aboriginals to roam around their island without insecurities. The British used words such as "savagely" or "barbarous" to describe the Aboriginals since they did not cover up and quickly tried to change the Aboriginals into liking being covered and clothed because they thought, from their own culture, that revealing so much of skin was crude. The Aboriginals, on the other hand had no problem with this as this was part of their nature and culture, and it wasn't expected of them to wear clothes especially in the hot weather that Australia had. Once the Aboriginals had realized that the British were trying to lure them into change and lure them away from their own culture, they were offended. They fought back, were defensive, and refused to listen to the British's ideas. The Aboriginals' appearance caught the British's eyes when they first arrived. One of the first thoughts that came to mind was that the Aboriginals were dark-skinned. As you see in the movie, "Rabbit-Proof Fence", children who were born half English, half Aboriginal were taken to a place where they were taught to be more like the British. Mr. Nevel was the protector of these children but used his role as an opportunity for him to seperate the children into whom he thought were cleverer than others according to their skin tone. If a child's skin was lighter than another, Mr. Nevel would bring the child to a better place. Because all the British were white, they thought that this made the Aboriginals "dirty" and "unclean" as their skin was camouflaged in the forests and resembled the earth. The British realized they couldn't "solve" this as it was impossible to change what their skin was like but instead rated the Aboriginals on whether they were superior prior to the others according to their skin tone. The British used words as "inhumane" when they referred to the Aboriginals as if they were monsters who didn't have the right to speak or weren't capable to have feelings, therefore the British thought the Aboriginals wouldn't mind this operation. The Aboriginals protested against this as they felt used by the British which caused even more arguments and disagreements to add to the already existent conflicts. Ethnocentricity causes conflict due to the perceptions people harvest when they judge a culture based on what they know of their own. It is considered a negative trait for anybody to have because it can be negative and offensive to people from a different culture. Everybody has probably been ethnocentric at least once in their lifetime but it's about how much they are and how they can control it in order for them to be respective and acceptant of other people's culture.