Dear Khoo Khay Jin,
Your message hits "the nail on the head." Squirming out of
complicity for what has happened to the world since the "rise" of the West
is certainly one apt explanation of the current vogue among Westerners of
deploring and pitying "Eurocentric" approaches to modern world history.
As I said in an earlier message, it's a combination of white liberal guilt
and politically correct multiculturalism, which may amount to the same
things in the mouths of whites. So white Western non-Eurocentrism may,
indeed, constitute the epitome of Eurocentrism--in its present
guilt-ridden phase, that is. We have plenty to feel guilty about, but
that does not excuse denying the self-evident facts of modern world
history.
Thank you for your incisive contribution to this debate!
W. Warren Wagar
Binghamton University