From In the Shadow of No Towers by Art Spiegelman
It is perhaps strange and perhaps not so strange that this breed of racism goes unchallenged in many (most? all?) countries.
Some obvious comments we all enjoy making are on the subjects of the choice of president, the gung-ho foreign policy, globalisation, insincere cheerfulness, apparent arrogance/ignorance, bible-bashing... These obvious comments do, of course, have obvious roots which we can all remember with self-righteousness in our own heads.
I at least dislike, if not despise, all of the above but there are surely a couple of important points to bear in mind:
1. Not all Americans reflect all of these criticisms in their everyday lives. Obviously. In fact, I haven't met one American whose life reflects any of these aspects significantly. Just as we would hope to avoid judging Muslims, Scots, Germans, etc. on the grounds of their countries' actions, perhaps we should think twice before doing so to Americans.
2. There are some understandable reasons behind the stuff we like to criticise. Look at Britain in the first few hundred years of being an established country and power. (When I say understandable, I do not mean correct!)
This might be a silly thing to get on my soap box about - America doesn't really need defending: it's quite big. It is just that this racism seems to have been over-looked and I'm a bit concerned about the impact that this might have have on our pure and tolerant hearts and minds (!) and about the negativity Americans may have aimed at them through no fault of their own.
Done.
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Anti-Americanism
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
PS Apologies to people from America who are not from the US. I know that I should have been saying US citizens (or something) rather than Americans but it sounded too silly.
Before I traveled in California I had prejudices about what I thought was insincere cheerfullness and the whole "Have a nice day" thing. What I found when I went there was that the cheerfulness was in fact genuine as was their interest in people. It might not be true everywhere, but it does seem to be a part of their culture, especially in Northern California. I guess for every nation there are some national characteristics that get generalised and exagerated, but that often holds some truth. The English do talk about the weather a lot and compared to Americans our teeth are bad etc. I don't think people are so much anti Americans as anti the Bush administration. In terms of being anti the people themselves I think there is more prejudice against the French. But I may be wrong.
I agree that people are more anti the Bush administration than Americans themselves. I know that Abbey had quite a hard time getting people to take her for who she really is though. And I seem to be party to a lot of anti-American (rather than anti-Bush) conversations. Perhaps it's because my generation have only really experienced America under Bush's rule.
You have to differentiate the ordinary citizens from those in power. Most of us have only good experiences of individuals from the US we have met, although there are obviously unpleasant Americans as there are in any country. The Bush Administration however are in another league altogether. I believe, and so do increasing numbers of Americans, that a significant element within the higher echelons are evil.
Well.
I like Spiderman.
And he's American.
So that should tell you something.
Matt.
Post a Comment