As part of Dialogue Magazine’s Diversity Series, John Sweetman
discusses the positive and negative impact of contemporary mass
media as it relates to influencing group ideals, a child’s true
sense of individuality and identity, imagination of a culture,
and how it can be challenged in the classroom. There is no doubt
that Imperialism and Colonialism are inherently bound up in
ideological and philosophical notions about a cultural (or as
Said suggests, even moral) superiority. Because we in the
“developed West” tend to assume this dominance, or superiority,
it is not unusual for discussions regarding Imperialism and
Colonialism to focus solely on economic and developmental
issues. We are, as Said quotes from Rushdie using an example
from Orwell, “inside the whale”. Issues of wealth and resource
procurement were of course motivating factors in historical
cases of imperial domination. However, it is misleading (even
dangerous) to ignore the more fundamental beliefs that allow one
nation or cultural group to feel