Orientalism

Being from "the West" automatically gives someone an orientalist mindset because the way our society is built makes people from anywhere but here, who may look slightly different, the "other."  Orientalism comes from European power struggle to gain dominance and remain the powerful force. The West and white people mostly have Eurocentric outlooks on other people and the world at large, this absolutely impacts how we, myself included, view other cultures.  I think that we all could do better, me too, to recognize exactly where these views that we hold came from and work towards unraveling that.  We need to better recognize the true lives and cultures and praise them, not treat them like this completely other thing that should be recognized by two characteristics.  We are all more complex and dynamic than that, and every person and culture should be recognized for that.