Just a thought..

While watching the film, "Off the Veranda" about Bronislaw Malinowski, I noticed something that catalyzed a series of general thoughts about the study of anthropology as a whole. It was the moment in the film when the narrator said something along the lines of, "Even though he was living amongst the natives, Malinowski did in fact have down time with other white expats living in the village." This was said after the film spent so much time accrediting him for his "off the veranda and into the village" approach on ethnography. My question is, isn't anthropology all about learning about people whose cultures are different then your own in a fair and open minded way? Haven't we progressed from our foolish and outdated ethnocentric roots?  If this is the case, and if Malinowski is really being praised for being so involved and indulged in the lives of those he is studying, then I find it a little embarrassing for anthropologists to not be able to relax around people who are a different color and from a different culture from themselves. The reason that I love to study anthropology is because there is no greater thrill for me than to interact and befriend people from such different backgrounds than my own and I appreciate the way that anthropology has opened my mind and allowed me to do so in an intelligent and amiable way. Furthermore, in refererring to Malinowki's later discovered racist journals, I just wonder what his motives were in studying these people if not for reasons the pure joy and interest in expanding your knowledge and learning from foreign  peoples that share our globe. Perhaps the study of anthropology for some really is just a way to reflect on one's own culture and instill the idea that they belong to a dominant group of human beings.