Ever since the beginnings of colonization of America, Europeans and European Americans have held themselves above all other races. The expansion of America by taking land and resources away from Native peoples was justified by Manifest Destiny. Manifest Destiny was the mentality that God wanted people to travel and urbanize the west so that the United States would stretch from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific. This meant that God wanted White people to travel across North America and take away the land from the Native Americans. Through ethnocentrism the White race is usually shown representing basic humanity while all other races are subject to classification.
In the book, America on Film by Benshoff and Griffin, ethnocentrism is defined as, “regarding one's own ethnic group as better than another.” People can't help but compare people against what they already know, but this can lead to negative actions if these comparisons are used as defining features. Ethnocentrism usually is the result of common ignorance to a group of people that are different and appear strange. This can then lead to racism where the judgments against people are turned into actions. Benshoff and Griffin describe racism as being, “the belief that human beings can be meaningfully categorized into racial groups and designated into superior or inferior based on the basis of those characteristics.”
Directly in line with the idea of ethnocentrism, many European Americans usually equate their race as being humanity. According to Richard Dyer, “This assumption that white people are just people, which is not far off saying that whites are people whereas other colors are something else.” Dyer goes on to say that the White race usually is not defined as a race in the same ways thats Blacks and Asians are described and characterized. Because media, and film in particular, are designed for White audiences, European Americans take for granted that they categorize and characterize other minority races while regarding their own as just the human race. Also because so much is targeted at the White audiences, there is little reflection of how this impacts European communities and other racial communities. 
These images provide examples of how the white race, humanity, is bringing technology of the modern world to minority groups.
In the first image, Harbelly's Hogan, a white woman is providing medicine to a group of Native Americans. While at first, the image seems to be showing the introduction of modern medicine to an aboriginal type of people, another message is also evident. The image consists of group of Native Americans, one is sick and is lying down, and a white woman who is presumably a doctor or a nurse. The fact that a white person has to be introduced in order to help the Native American community suggests the idea of Manifest Destiny and the assimilation of Native Americans in America. These people need the help of whites in order to survive in modern times. The fact that these people have been self reliant for thousands of years before Columbus came to the western hemisphere is apparently irrelevant. Another theme is this picture is that a white person is giving a Native American medicine when many Native American populations were killed off from diseases from the first waves of European colonization.
The second image, Refrigerator, a white woman is presenting a refrigerator to a couple of Native Americans. This picture is also showing how white people are coming to modernize Native American groups. The woman in the picture has a huge smile on her face and is showing off an ice tray and wonders of a what a refrigerator can do. Obviously, ice cubs are extremely necessary to a group of people who have lived off the land for thousands of years. The Native Americans in this photo are still wearing their traditional clothes showing that they haven't assimilated that much into western European American culture. The smile on the womans face shows how America made so many promises to Native Americans but it is obvious that they were treated disrespect in countless ways.
These images show how Manifest Destiny and ethnocentrism holds the white race above all others. The white race is hardly ever considered a separate racial category because so much is aimed at the white audience that there is little self reflection. These images show how European Americans feel the need that they need to help the unfortunate, but really they are hurting them in the long run.
Works Cited
Benshoff, Harry and Sean Griffin. “What is Race?” America on Film. ed. Blackwell. 2008. 49- 52.
Dyer, Richard. “On the Matter of Whiteness.”
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