Orientalism

Just as Edward Said states, orientalism is a very complicated concept that has developed over so many generations and therefore cannot be fixed easily. We see orientalism in film, books, and the way media portrays certain events. Because we have all of this media surrounding us that is governed by orientalist views, it is hard for us to step out of this orientalist mindset even if we are aware that we are in this mindset. I believe it all stems from ignorance and the lack of a need to ask the questions "is this a true representation?" or "am I missing very important information?" or even "am I making assumptions?". I have had many moments where people will come up to me assuming my ethnicity. Most often is the assumption that I am Chinese, that I am a foreigner, or that my family is not very fluent in English. Although I don't think that this is exactly representative of orientalism, I do think that there is a similar problem in that people act on their assumptions without considering that they may be mistaken. I think that even this sort of small misunderstanding and small mistakes feed into the idea of orientalism. People make assumptions based on the little information that they have and I think that that is what is at the core of orientalism. If only people would inform themselves, they would not be making the same mistakes over and over again and eventually we could try to correct the mistakes made by orientalist views.