So over the past few months, I've made a determination to stop being racist against Americans. I think I've gotten tired of people saying that Americans are a dumb, red-necked, war-mongering, clueless, vacuous, obese, imperialistic peoples. I think it's sad that if we used the kinds of descriptors that we so callously use for Americans against any other peoples, we would easily be labelled as 'racist', but, for some reason, the same does not hold when we talk about our neighbours (can you imagine painting Somalians or Sri Lankans broadly as clueless, ignorant idiots, and developing TV shows to demonstrate that ignorance, as we do here to Americans?).
Now, I don't agree with everything that they do, nor do I agree with all their cultural values either. However, I don't think that that justifies endlessly poking fun at the specks in their eyes, when we've got plenty of logs ourselves, thank you very much....
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3 comments:
Julia,
Refreshingly fair perspective. Crossing the border from the U.S. to Canada was an intriguiing experience; anti- American feeling is so much higher than I ever remebered it.
Dan MacD
Hopefully you're not the only one with these sentiments! Still proud to be an American :D
True. There were a lot of American students studying among us at Regent College, and it was decided that we weren't really loving our neighbors either, in a biblical sense.
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