| I think you're missing the forest through the trees, I'm going go guess (I could be wrong) that you haven't lived in another country, because if you did, you'd have drawn upon that experience instead of the one you've described. Go and move to Thailand for 4 years. You will probably meet lovely people, be enamoured with all the different 'everything' and probably be in 'awe' for 2-ish years which is how long it takes to get over that 'new' aspect of being somewhere. Everyone will treat you well - but - essentially as an outsider your entire time there. While you might have local friends will also likely seek out other ex-pat (if you're English speaking, it'll be from other English nations, not just where you are from) as do the vast majority of the migrants there (ie Chinese will seek out Chinese there) - why? Because you have a lot in common. For the same reason, the vast majority of XYZ culture people, when moving to a new country, chose that XYZ sub-culture when they arrive. Obviously, this is not entirely universal, but it's by far more common than not. FYI I'm literally writing this to you from an English part of the world, but in a tiny community of mostly all native French speakers. They move here for reasons aforementioned. I think what's really interesting about this is the amount of intellectual hoop-jumping that people do to find an excuse - anything - do deny realities which may be uncomfortable to them. 1) People generally prefer their own cultures. 2) People may have stereotypes of misconceptions of other cultures, but generally don't outright disregard those people. Especially on an individual basis, most people are nice. 3) More people are actively interested in other cultures, than actively antagonist with other cultures, by a wide ratio, with most people being generally ambivalent. 4) Though Xenophobes do exist, so do Xenocentrists, i.e. those who think everything in another culture is 'legitimate, honourable, even spiritual' while the local culture is not. You can see this in the West among those who defend utterly barbaric practices in other cultures (that would never, ever be tolerated 'at home') under the guise of some kind of cultural premise. For example, I remember a David Cameron interview where he was defending the Taliban, i.e. a progressive human rights campaigner glossing over the deeply disturbing and violent practices of groups in that part of the world. It's far to easy for all of us to trivialize broad aspects of foreign culture, that's nothing new, but to do it in a way that diminishes horrifying elements I think is evidence of Xenocentrism. Edit: ** big caveat of course this dynamic changes a bit when you have some kind of hyper-nationalist leader, or maybe an issue with migration, in which tensions are inflamed etc. etc.. |