Americans discover Tunisia, cont’d
April 24, 2009
In response to this post, a reader writes:
I’ve been to several Muslim countries and have warm receptions in each. I found your site b/c I want to travel to Tunisia next. I do find it sad, and a bit weak that you have a ‘well practiced Canadian mode’ because I think it’s important to be proud of your nationality and by showing people that we Americans are not stereotypical jerks. By lying about where you are from, you are strengthing the stereotypes.
To an extent, my story was hyperbole, as so far in my travels and during my stints in Spain, I’ve never said I was from Canada and I’ve never been in a situation where I thought I might have to, and I think it’s quite possible that I never will. Also, perhaps I should have qualified what I meant by “anti-american sentiment”. I’m not referring to just negative attitudes or the sneer that might appear when someone finds out where I’m from (because that I’ve experienced). I’m referring to the bellicose kind, any situation where I would actually feel that my safety was in jeopardy, especially if I were confronted with a group rather than just one person, and particularly since I am a woman. (And quite small.)
Thanks to my mom for sending me this Bizarro edition!
As I don’t know the reader, I wonder if it wouldn’t boil down to a fundamental difference in views on pride, nationality, and patriotism. While I love where I’m from and in some ways I feel I’m lucky to be from there, historically I’ve not been enthusiastically proud of my country (that has started to change since the 2008 election), nor have I tended to curse it for being a terrible place. I’m not someone who has always felt closely tied to my American nationality, as so many of us came from somewhere else relatively recently — on my mom’s side I’m only the third generation born in the U.S. — and in many ways I believe that being American is more a way of life and a system of political beliefs rather than a nationality. And I don’t think I can say that I’ve ever been a super-patriot. Actually I’m an expatriate, which, while I wouldn’t agree with them, some Americans equate with being anti-American. There are definitely situations in which I would be willing to die for my country, but more so because that implies many lives rather than caring specifically about American lives, and there are lots of others where I can tell you that I don’t love being an American so much that I wouldn’t pretend to be from somewhere else if it meant saving a life… The fact that I’ve even seriously thought about my Canada idea — and the fact that I’m not the only American I know who has one — says much more than the idea itself.
I do believe it’s good, when abroad, to try to represent your country and your country’s people as best you can. In fact, it’s my job. My gig here with the Spanish government is twofold: to help the students and teachers learn English and to be a cultural ambassador. And while I understand that my reader doesn’t like the idea of hiding one’s nationality, I have difficulty seeing how not showing pride in being American, if confronted with anti-American hostility, would perpetuate our stereotypes. The worst of our stereotypes say that we’re arrogant, gluttonous, uneducated imperialists, not spineless, self-loathing apologists. I can’t say if a foreign America-hater would consider it weak or not, but I can’t imagine it playing worse than an American tourist displaying pride in his or her nationality when it would be dangerous or inappropriate to do so, or being aloof and boastful without regard to the environment. Indeed, I do not agree that it’s important to be proud of your nationality. I think it’s ideal to be able to be proud of your nationality, but saying it’s important to be proud of it is presuming an inherent obligation to your nationality and country, and to a fault.
Still, I’ve been pondering my reader’s comments and his/her words did sting. There have been times, while contemplating lying about where I’m from, when I have felt the guilt of a perfidious expat betraying who I am. But I’m not convinced that lying about your country of birth can be likened to recanting your religious faith or something in which you fiercely believe in the face of persecution… Am I wrong? Right? Thoughts?
Here — enjoy another one of my pictures from Tunisia!
Entry Filed under: Europe, beliefs, pictures, politics, prejudice/discrimination, reality, religion, stereotypes. Tags: 2008 Election, Africa, Africa pictures, Americans, Americans travelling, anti-american, beliefs, Canada, culture, expat, expatriate, identity, Muslim countries, nationality, North Africa, North Africa pictures, patriotism, pride, religion, Spain, stereotypes, teaching English, travel, travel safety, travelling, Tunisia, Tunisia pictures, United States.
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1. Hayley Roberts | April 29, 2009 at 4:31 PM
Agreed–nations are just imagined communities and I’m not sure it means anything, in my reality at least, to be an American or any other nationality.
2. don | May 25, 2009 at 2:11 PM
One of the enduring differences between self-described American conservatives and liberals can be summed up in the old jingoist phrase, “My country, right or wrong.” It is an article of faith among conservatives that a true patriot rarely, if ever, criticizes the United States, especially with respect to foreign policy. No national action, no matter how morally reprehensible or self-destructive, should impel any American citizen to openly criticize our nation. By contrast, a large percentage of classic late 20th-century liberals passionately believe that criticism of the government is almost a patriotic duty when egregious wrongs are being committed by the national government either at home or abroad. Ignoring those wrongs is morally no different from encouraging them.
To many conservatives, openly criticizing one’s country is a sign of singular weakness and moral decay. To liberals, always cheering one’s country regardless of circumstance is a sure sign of acquiescence to brutality and oppression. I think these opposite reactions are deeply rooted in the different psychological needs of typical conservatives and liberals.
Conservatives generally intensely desire one thing above all else from others: respect. However, without the moderating effects of societal counterbalances, what the unconstrained conservative drive for respect very frequently engenders is not respect, but hatred and fear.
Liberals generally intensely desire a very different thing: love. However, without the moderating effects of societal counterbalances, what the unconstrained liberal drive for love and a diffuse sense of “brotherhood” very frequently engenders is contempt and dismissive derision.
Every American adult has had vivid examples of both personality types in their lives, very probably in their education. The tyrannical teacher (or nun!), ruling over his or her class with an iron fist, brooking no “subversion” of authority, quick to punish, ruling over a well-behaved but quietly seething classroom, is common in both public and private schools. So is the opposite: the painfully sensitive and diffident teacher, completely unable to assert his or her authority, who nonetheless makes a daily attempt to “connect with” or “understand” his students, who consistently mock and ignore those efforts.
There’s also a strong class-based aspect to the issue of “my country right or wrong.” The vast majority of American liberals, if they’re being honest, regard unrepentant conservative jingoists as dumb, ignorant, Bible-toting goobers who would applaud a political platform of dung-eating and torturing puppies if it was wrapped up in the American flag. The vast majority of American conservatives truly regard those liberals who don’t hesitate to criticize our country as effeminate, morally bankrupt Sodomites eager to turn our country over to Al Queda and gay married couples. Obviously both are ridiculous caricatures, but they are nonetheless the not-so-guilty pleasure that both groups indulge in. Ostracizing and demonizing outsiders is easy and unfortunately intensely pleasurable for social primates.
Where I differ from those for whom being a citizen of the United States hold no special meaning is in how these profound cultural and attitudinal differences are managed in our public life. For all the frustrating shortcomings of our political processes, it is a fact that so far we have managed to avoid the horrible swings between despotism and complete anarchy that have been common in virtually every other country in the world. Yes, we had to fight a ruinous civil war in order to maintain even the possibility of extending full rights to all Americans, and progress in that respect has been slow and halting, but in comparison to most of the world we have been extremely fortunate. In my opinion this is primarily due to our Constitution and the system of government it created, and is not due to some innate superiority that results by being born in this country. Americans at birth are not more or less evil or good than others in the world; it’s our culture and what we value that makes us who we are.