Nacirema-What it tells us

The essay about the Nacirema describes how cruel and hideous the civilization is. According to the article, people from the civilization often commit cruel acts, believing that it is good for their body. Therefore, members of the society of the Nacirma go through magical procedures in order to protect their bodies from illness. The article states with examples that a certain amount of sadism is involved in this procedure, and that most of the population shows masochistic tendencies. The procedure usually involves harming people in immoral ways, such as poking them with sharp object, and making a hole through their teeth.

Reading this article brought total disgust to me. Therefore, as I was writing the in-class essay, I kept on writing about how cruel and inhumane the culture of Nacirema was. However, I also considered the concept of cultural relativism, and therefore stated that we need to understand this culture. I thought that as we have a ‘superior and civilized’ perspective, we could not truly understand the culture of Nacirema, which I considered to be uncivilized and inferior compared to our modern society.

However, what Mr. Menard told us few days after we wrote the in-class essay brought total shock to me. He told us to read ‘Nacirema’ backwards. It is quite evident that I, like all the other students in my class, was impressed to find out that ‘Nacirema’ was ‘American’ spelled backwards. We couldn’t say a word, and Mr. Menard just kept laughing at us, looking as if he was extremely pleasured.

Everything in the article of ‘Nacirema’ became so clear at that instant. We could easily find out that all the inhumane acts committed by the fictional civilization were just sarcastic parodies of the daily routines of the American culture. For example, the shrine represents the bathroom, and the holy-mouth-men represent dentists. All the features of the civilization of Nacirema that have brought unpleasant emotions to me all proved to be features of American cultures. The only difference is that the culture was observed in a different perspective, a perspective presuming the American culture to be an ancient culture.

As I have read this essay, I unconsciously thought that the culture of Nacirema was full of violence and irony. It is probably because I unconsciously had the prejudice that I was living in a ‘superior’ and ‘civilized’ culture. However, reading this article, which observed America in a different point of view, I started to feel a sense of disgust without an objection. Therefore, I came to a conclusion that my perspective of ‘civilized’ and ‘superior’ was somehow wrong and quite prejudiced.

At the end of the essay, the writer states that it is easy to think of the Nacireman culture to be cruel when we try to observe them in a higher position. Therefore, I believe that from the writer was trying to tell us that we are usually wrongly prejudiced in diverse situations, and that in order to fix this problem, we should try to observe these matters at a different point of view. Furthermore, this essay was written in 1956, which was the time when many incidents related to ‘prejudice’ happened, especially the ones related to racial segregation. For example, in 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery for refusing to give her seat to a white person, which led to Montgomery bus boycott. In the same year, a fourteen year old teenager was killed for not showing respect to a white woman. It was an era when many people suffered from racial prejudice. It was also an era when these issues started to turn into serious social problems. Therefore, it was becoming necessary to get rid of these prejudices. From this evidence, we can conclude that the writer would have wanted to convey the importance of thinking in other points of view to get rid of prejudice. Through his essay about Nacirema, the writer showed to us how our prejudices can block us from making wise decisions, and also the fact that we need to change our points of view to stop those prejudices.