Binary_Thinking

Binary Thinking Binary Thinking The U.S.A is a country with no original culture. We are a culture made from other cultures. The U.S. inhabits so many races and individuals, yet we are a society based on exclusive or binary thinking. This thought process is the root to our misfortunes and misunderstandings of each other. Oppositional thinking, also known as binary thinking, is a thought system in which an individual uses categories for people that are different than him or her. Binary thinking encourages us to view the world in the form of dichotomy; division into two parts. When thinking exclusively, he or she categorizes “difference” as “otherness” and themselves as the “norm”. This way of thinking doesn’t allow that individual to acquire the knowledge of the “other”. For example: “...think about the content of history courses and how little the work of women, Asian Americans, Latinos, African Americans, Native Americans, gays and lesbians is included. By excluding or marginalizing these groups, do we not communicate that they have no history or that their history is less important and less central to the development of American culture than is the history of white American men'”(Anderson Hill Collins, pg.13) The answer to that thinking, society, history, culture, binary, norm, knowledge, thought, people, hill, exclusionary, based, without, understanding, think, racism, know, exclusively, collins, americans, american, about, world, white, way, variety, system, results, pg, made, individual, inclusively, important, groups, expand