Blogabroad
by Mary Pinckney Waters

February 6 , 2006 - Perceptions, politics and policies

Many would say that the United States has a bad reputation. This was not an unknown reality to me before coming to Europe, but I didn’t realize the extent of our bad rep until this exchange, and I wouldn’t hesitate to claim that it’s difficult to grasp America’s global standing until traveling abroad and opening your ears and mind a bit.

Politics is always a touchy subject to talk about, and it’s even more difficult to write about in a somewhat unbiased fashion. No single country has all the answers, but from my conversations, I’ve formed the opinion that many Europeans and Americans sometimes see one another from a slanted perspective, not taking efforts to appreciate exceptions to stereotypes and instead merely over-assuming.

A large proportion of my conversations with natives have centered on American politics, particularly U.S. foreign policy. I can’t count how many Germans, upon discovering I’m from the United States, have immediately asked me whether I voted for Bush. Right off the bat. First question. As if it would be impossible for me to belong in the HALF OF THE COUNTRY who had a different opinion.

It’s no secret that many Europeans are at odds with the Bush administration’s policies, but the problem I’ve encountered is that they sometimes fasten these politics onto every American they meet. And it’s not just Bush-worshipping that some Europeans seem to expect; it’s their overall stereotype of Americans: that we’re uneducated, indifferent, egocentric and egotistical.

Upon discovering that I am not a Bush fan or that I can say something halfway intelligent, some Germans’ jaws seem to gain 10 pounds. Part of me thinks I should be happy that I might be breaking a stereotype in someone’s mind, but then the other part of me is always sad that this American cliché exists so strongly in the first place. And then, more importantly, I think about why this stereotype exists.

In light of the topic constantly resurfacing in conversations, I decided to make one of the lessons in my English conversation course about American foreign policy. I thought an Internet forum on the topic might be interesting for the students, so I started surfing. Some of the results were astounding, particularly the following opinions, which illustrate patriotism to a distorted extreme. In class I of course presented multiple viewpoints alongside those below, in an effort to emphasize the manifold of opinions among Americans, but I personally couldn’t keep the following quotations* from a discussion on anti-Americanism from haunting me:

The fact that apparently the whole world hates us doesn't bother me one bit. If it were up to me at this point, I'd rather just put up a giant wall and keep everyone who wants to experience the beauty that America is out. Someone has to be the superpower of the world, a governing nation that watches over the rest of the world. Would you rather have some other country do it?

Shut up. No one hates the U.S. except for stinking Arabs.

I don’t give a **** about who hates the U.S. It doesn’t affect my everyday life one bit. It doesn't matter anyway. The only way it will stop is if every single country in the world united and tried to invade us, and that’s not going to ****** happen. You either have to live to deal with it or move here.

To me, these should represent an exaggerated version of America’s negative stereotype, a version that is too unreasonable to exist in real life. Unfortunately, some Americans apparently do hold opinions to such an extreme, albeit – and thankfully – not all Americans. I have asked myself what factors in U.S. society – other than blind ignorance – could possibly allow such narrow viewpoints to survive.

Perhaps the United States’ isolation, on multiple levels, has contributed, especially geographically. It’s much easier to experience other cultures in Europe, where countries are smaller and closer together. The fact that Europeans grow up in smaller countries means they are raised with the mentality of a multi-player world, of which their homeland is just one player. What kind of mentality are Americans instilled with?

I think another, perhaps underestimated, degree of American isolation is language. So maybe you had a couple years of German in high school and remember how to say “Ich heisse (insert name).” Very cute. But mastering a foreign language is inherently not as critical for English-speakers, as English is the international language. My German peers, on the other hand, say they’ve always been taught that English “doesn’t count as a foreign language” nowadays because everyone can speak it. In order to stand out career-wise, according to their teachers, they must know at least three languages.

As I’ve told Germans that I’m an exchange student, it feels as if half of them have said that they’ve either done an exchange or are planning to. Not quite the response I received in the States when I told my friends I was leaving for a year. I love what I’m doing here, so of course I’m biased, but as an American who has experienced naïve perspectives both inside and outside the United States, I can’t overestimate the value of living in another country. I think exchanges to and from America are especially critical because there are so many other influences on our opinions besides first-hand experience, even though the latter is the most accurate.

*taken from http://www.yahooka.com/forum/printthread.php?t=72564, edited for grammatical errors and profanity

Mary Pinckney Waters welcomes your comments and feedback: marypwaters@yahoo.com