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Burbocentrism

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Suburban Virginia

The word one needs here is 'burbocentrism': like Eurocentrism, but centered immovably and unthinkingly on the beliefs, values, assumptions and limited experience of the American white-flight suburb. . . . perhaps the major feature of burbocentrism is that although it is insistently 'multicultural', its multiculturalism has nothing to do with culture: nothing to do, that is, with the idea that different societies may organize themselves in completely different ways. It is, instead, a way of taking in the modern American demographic mix, Asian and African American as well as Europeans, and having everyone assimilate to the same culture, with only as much residual difference as enables everyone to celebrate Saint Patrick's Day or relish black-eyed peas. The mark of burbocentric culture is the lip-service paid to relativism together with a genuine inability to imagine its results. Shippey 1996, 35