I don't understand Americans...

Chameleon, that reminds me of something Cats once told me; something about a school aquaintance/friend of hers who was Irish or something saying that they didn't believe anyone actually talk like anyone in America talks. Like, our accents are an affectation and we talk with British accents at home in private.

Anyway, you're running into a cultural translation here. Understanding that something is different is not the same thing as adjusting our behavior right away. It takes time, and they probably think that you were doing some odd stuff too. I doubt that this is unique to us Americans, but Europeans have more opportunities to get exposed and learn how to adjust their behavior earlier in life than most Americans, given the close proximity of cultures to them.

Cham- If I understand what you are saying correctly, your perception is that Americans assume everyone is the same until proven otherwise? We don't take difference as the default condition?

You may be right, but are you so sure we're always wrong? I mean it sounds like you make the opposite assumption, which could be just as wrong just as often.

Er, close... more like Americans assume everyone is the same whether it's proven otherwise or not. At least, that was the rather odd impression I got. I could be mistaken, of course, but the impression was borne out often enough to confuse me thoroughly. And I don't believe it to be a uniquely American thing- it just seemed to be more prevalent and harder to dispense with among them.

Which is itself a baseless assumption by you. Have you met all 308 million Americans? Even a majority of them?

Furthermore, as noted, we probably have the same occurrence rate of stereotyping as other nations. We just have more people, which means the false impression of it being more statistically likely will jump out at you...

... and, apparently, this is the point where I give up, largely unenlightened. Instead of even the slightest attempt to answer my question, I'm chastised for stereotyping. You know, there's a reason we have these things called 'cultures'. Namely, the people occupying said culture share certain traits. No, they're not universal, and they're present to a greater or lesser degree, depending on circumstance, but come on!

@Te Chameleon, that's sort of a damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don't situation. You say it seems weird that Americans act like there's no real cultural difference between themselves and people from other countries. But if you act like there are differences between Americans and non-Americans, you run the risk of offending them by using cultural stereotypes.

For example, suppose an American goes to Britain and, in deference to local customs, often greets house guests with a Spot Of Tea. But how often and with how much enthusiasm should tea be provided? Do it too much, and the British house guests may take offense that the American seems to think they're all tea-obsessed maniacs. For outsiders, there's a thin line between assimiliating into a culture and parodying a culture, and a lot of folks would prefer not to risk getting near it.

You're not stereotyping our culture (which would just mean you haven't looked up enough about it; not exactly surprising, since it's not your culture) you're stereotyping our reaction to other cultures. That is what annoys the hell out of me.

We can't explain to you something that we're not seeing ourselves, Chameleon. Or something that the posters here evidently just don't do/have not had the chance to do. This isn't an experience that has an automatic explanation, so yeah. Enlightment isn't going to be an easy thing to get from us. Have you ever just asked the actual friends you know about this? Said "Why do you act like everyone else has your culture" or however it is you put it? Because that's probably going to get you a better answer than asking us at this point.

Mmph... well, to end on a slightly less sour note (at least this portion of the conversation), all I can say is, I know what I saw. It encompassed a fairly scattered cross-section of Yanks and was surprisingly consistent with lesser examples I'd seen earlier, along with things that I had heard and honestly thought to be exaggerations. *shrug* If the conclusions I drew from it are erroneous, I apologize. But, like I said, I know what I saw. If that's not going to be believed, there's not much point in pursuing the conversation.

And I can't really ask the friends in question because it happened about a decade ago, and we've drifted apart since we returned home.

Honestly I think it depends on who you hang out with or where. If you are with a bunch of country bumpkins, of course they are going to be ethnocentric. Then there's the fact that Americans really don't have to learn about other cultures, that doesn't make them stupid. The nearest foreign country from where I live in Georgia is Canada and that's a 20 hour drive. Whereas in, say, Germany in 20 hours you can be in several different countries. So it's completely different worldview. Then there's the simple fact that everyone seems to judge America worse than other countries. Japan is also very ethnocentric, and not diverse at all but nobody calls them stupid all the time.

Well, I did my best in my initial posts to analyze what might be happening. What I am suggesting now is that this might be as much about your perceptions of us as our perceptions of other cultures. That isnt intended as an attack, just a friendly suggestion...

Eh, sorry De Marquis. Was more responding to others than you, your insights were appreciated.

@Wuggles- I'm not calling anyone stupid. I'm trying to sort out how a nationality that is supposedly so very similar to my own can confound me so very thoroughly. For that matter, I'm not calling anyone ethnocentric, exactly. That's just the closest word I could manage to come up with for what I was seeing.

Britain is a very close culture, in very macro-sociological terms, to the US, and they still confound me. What is strange is relative. Our culture and perception thereof is strange because you're not American, just like your culture and perception thereof would probably be strange to me.

There is no default. Culture simply is.

@ Te Chameleon:

I am an American and I think you're right about us, but it's so subtle it's not something we understand ourselves. So I'll try one more time and then give up. My evidence, as yours, is purely anecdotal and may not be representative of the country as a whole, so please take it with a large dose of salt.

It's kind of like a quote about "white priveledge" I heard once - "being white means you don't need to think about race." I suspect because America has been (1) the closest thing in the world to a single dominant superpower and (2) the suuperpower of exporting and importing culture, and (3) an unusually diverse nation culturally to begin with, we don't necessarily see ourselves as having a singular, specific, and easily identifiable culture.

As a relatively harmless example, take American football. It can seem very alien to people who have grown up thinking of a different sport as "football". I'd think most Americans are aware most other countries don't have NFL teams, but I don't think most Americans think of American football as something that is uniquely part of their own culture as calling something Americans might call cookies, "scones", is uniquely part of British culture.

edited 10th Sep '11 9:20:39 PM by FrodoGoofballCoTV

There's also the fact that American culture puts a relatively high value on non-conformity and doing things your own way, so you might expect Americans to disregard the norms of the society they're in more readily than people from other cultures might.

Hi. As an American that just discovered this topic, I'd like to throw my own 2-cents in. I agree with most of what's been said so far, and I'd like to add that America's ethnic diversity might be playing another role in the way we treat other cultures. Americans, even if they live in the mid-west or other locations that have less diversity, are used to seeing people of many different types and backgrounds either through media or in real life. It's not unusual in large cities to hear people speaking several different languages all within close proximity to each other, and on tv (particularly on the channels such as Nickelodeon or the Disney which arguably have a large influence on the younger population) African Americans, Asian, and Latino characters are mixed in with white. The cultures these people represent (whatever it may be, or however wrong it may be in the case of tv) are presented as different from being white, but also as totally normal and in most cases as a part of American culture. Americans are used to walking down the street and seeing someone who's acting different from them, and who may even have different world views to them. Whether they react with openness or a desire to convert someone to their own world view depends on the individual, but nonetheless they are used to seeing it. And at the end of the day, they go home and to the comfort of their own beliefs and whatever they consider to be their own culture. Americans are used to seeing different cultures and beliefs within their own country. It's normal here. And our normal reaction is to just keeping going on with our own beliefs and lives. Maybe we're coming off as dismissive of other country's cultures when we experience them. But it's really no different then a lot of what we see at home.

That's more or less what I was arguing.