Proud to Be an American?

      When Eric and I came to Geneva last summer to house hunt, I asked our relocation expert if the Swiss disliked Americans. She said something along the lines of, "No more than they dislike anyone else." Which was marginally reassuring. As it turns out, I haven't felt a whisper of prejudice from a single Swiss person I have met. Some of them even tell me that my accent is "jolie" -- and I don't think they are completely making fun.
      What I neglected to ask the relo lady was how the rest of the international community feels about Americans.
      A quote from the year 9 geography text used at the kids' British school:

     "Hannah lives in the U.S.A. She likes science and plays the trumpet. She has just been to Mexico on a school trip. She gets $30 a week pocket money. Sometimes, she wants to be an engineer and sometimes, a writer."

      "Joe lives in Ghana. He is the top of his class at Maths. He plays a lot of football with his friends. He'd like to run a business and buy a nice house for his mum, but he hopes to begin with an office job. 50 pounds a month would be great."

      "Julien lives in Bolivia. He's a shoeshine boy. He earns about 6 pence a customer. He lives in the family shack with no running water, but he studies every evening at a special center. He's learning to read and write and use computers."

     "Misha lives in Nepal. She has never been to school. She helps on a farm and collects firewood for the cooking and looks after her brothers and sisters. She has not seen herself in the mirror for years. They once had one, but it got broken." (Geography for Key Stage 3, Oxford University Press, 2009)

     Why, we wonder, is it the Americans who are pulled out as the oblivious, spoiled elite? Where are the equally blessed Brits, French, or Germans?

     In the mock Treaty of Versailles activity in year 9 and 10 history, the deck is stacked so that those on the American team cannot possibly win. In fact, the teacher told the class that the Americans rarely score more than a point or two out of a possible 30.

       And those of you who have Facebook might have already heard the one about how Drew's American football was confiscated at recess because the surveillants (monitors) were afraid that someone would be hurt by the pointy ends. (Okay, that's probabaly not really anti-American sentiment as much as it is just plain silliness.)

       My husband points out that much of this distaste is really the fault of the American media, which often disseminate the worst of American foolishness while overwhelming the indigenous entertainment industry of the countries into which they flow. When all the kids hang out at McDonald's after school, when words like "week end," "super cool," and "snack" are part of every francophone's vocabulary, and when every store one enters is blaring the music of Snoop Dogg and Bruno Mars, it is easy to see how the locals might start to feel a bit threatened. As a monolith of culture, we are perhaps not putting our best foot forward.

           In a display of the best and worst of human nature, the prejudice against Americans in general does not extend to specific Americans with whom one is actually acquainted (that would be us). My lovely friend from Sri Lanka brought us some wine several weeks ago. She mentioned that she had asked the merchant for advice, and told him she was buying it for her American friends. He expressed horror, I'm not sure whether at the fact that she had friends who were American or that she was going to throw his pearls of wine before swine, so to speak. She told me that she had hurriedly assured him: "Oh, they aren't THAT kind of Americans." Similarly, a friend of Luc's told him that he doesn't like American boys, "but you are the exception." Lucas wisely pointed out to the friend that if he knew another American boy, he would probably be an exception, too.
      It is instructively broadening to be on the wrong side of a cultural stereotype. I find the comments people make funny, rather than offensive. This is, first of all, because they often do have a ring of truth and secondly, because I know that I have my parallel prejudices about other countries. In fact, I would say that the only group around here who is more maligned than the Americans is the Swiss. In both cases, some of the vitriol may be fueled by the sense that we just have it too good and someone needs to take us down a peg or two.
       Not everyone has negative impressions of Americans. I asked one friend what she thought of us, and she said, "Oh, they're always so friendly and enthusiastic" (kind of like an overgrown puppy?).

       The one universal truth of international diplomacy that I have discovered is that no matter how much people may dislike our food, our politics, our gas-guzzling cars, or our clothing, one export that I have never yet seen fail to melt a tough international crowd is the all-American homemade chocolate chip cookie.