Sirens and Lights

Ok, so this was the inevitable post… not to state the obvious, but, god, people have an incredible incredible dislike for us! While I’m sure the reasons for that and the fact that people feel that way are pretty evident, it’s just amazing when you actually experience it. This has been something I’ve been feeling particularly strongly these last few weeks based on interactions with a wide variety of people, ranging from professional contacts to good friends. More often than not, any extended discussion about my background leads to a discussion on recent American actions and Bush, specifically the stupidity of both of the above. The strength of “American arrogance” is something I’ve always hated about our culture because it is very true…the vast majority of people do have very little regard for the rest of the world, let alone awareness of the events that occur abroad. As most of you know, I’ve been studying French for a while now, but have never quite gotten to true fluency… I do use it very often here, but it’s funny that the inevitable comment by people is, ” You speak French extremely well (:))….for an American (:().” To me, this is a pretty accurate example of how the world sees us…Americans rarely are familiar enough with other cultures to have bothered to learn the language, something which is unheard of in most parts of the world (did you know that bilingualism is actually more common than only speaking one language? I remember being shocked at that fact when I learned in Human Neuropsych, but it’s true). Don’t know how accurate this website is, but these are numbers I found with a quick Google search:
“Percentage of the world’s children raised as bi-lingual speakers 66.0 percent
Percentage of U.S. residents who are bi-lingual 6.3 percent ” -http://www.worldwatch.org/pubs/mag/2001/143/mos/

that’s just raised in the world, not those who learn other languages on their own or through school, which is the more popular way…

As has been told to me several times in the last week or so, it’s not that people dislike individual Americans, just Americans as a whole…not sure if that makes me feel any better, though. On a personal level, it is very frustrating to have to prove my own awareness to people I meet, especially when it affects my contacts and research (i.e. people do not want an American walking in and criticizing their system when we leave so little room for criticism of our own…now, I’m not trying to criticize anything, but that was the impression someone I was talking to had before he got details from me). The other frustrating part is that I don’t know how much people realize that the American government is often very far from what the individual Americans thinks…now, we could criticize democracy in the U.S. (as I’m sure Christian will do when he returns ) or comment that Bush didn’t really win the election (debatable, but a favorite argument of people)…but regardless of the reason, it’s really interesting (and hard) to experience the world’s view on us…

ok, gotta go. i joined the WHO football (soccer) team ;). let’s see what happens….

This entry was posted on Monday, August 18th, 2003 at 5:48 pm and is filed under Geneva. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.