Political Correctness
First, a few words about terms. According to Gary Althen and his book American Ways, for the past dozen years or so, Americans have been quite concerned with what has come to be called “political correctness.” The term means different things to different people, but in general it refers to the notion that speakers and writers should avoid any words or phrases that might be considered “insulting” or “demeaning” to anyone. For example, restaurant waitresses (as well as waiters) are now commonly referred to as “waitstaff” or “servers” to avoid the implication that people who serve restaurant customers are predominantly females in a lowly station. Many people with what were formerly called physical or mental handicaps now prefer to be called “differently abled.” Writers and speakers are encouraged to avoid the exclusive use of the word he in any passage that refers to members of both genders. The word foreign, used for decades to refer to people from one country who were temporarily in another, has been criticized for implying strangeness, or being out of place. People who consider themselves sensitive to the feelings of people from other countries urge the use of international in its place. So, “foreign students” has generally been replaced by “international students,” “foreign visitors” by “international visitors,” and so on. People who consider themselves sensitive to the feelings of citizens of the Western Hemisphere outside the United States of America argue that it is unacceptably arrogant for people in the United States to refer to themselves as “Americans.” Everyone from the Western Hemisphere is American, they say. People in the U.S. should refer to themselves as “U.S. Americans,” “U.S. citizens,” or some such term.
How do US Americans see themselves and foreigners?
According to Gary Althen, an eminent American scientist and a profusive author of books on cultural differences, Americans do not usually see themselves, when they are in the United States, as representatives of their country, even though they are quite patriotic at times. The author adds that for a period following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Americans displayed considerable emotional attachment to their country. But that began to fade after several months. Usually, Americans see themselves as individuals who are different from all other individuals, American or foreign. Americans often say they have no culture, since they often conceive of culture as an overlay of arbitrary customs to be found only in other countries. Individual Americans may think they chose their own values rather than having had their values and the assumptions on which they are based imposed on them by the society in which they were born. If asked to say something about American culture, they may be unable to answer and they may even deny that there is an American culture and become annoyed at being asked such a question. “We’re all individuals,” they will say. Because they think they are responsible as individuals for having chosen their basic values and their way of life, many Americans resent generalizations others make about them. They may be offended by the notion that they hold certain ideas and behave in certain ways simply because they were born and raised in the United States and not because they had consciously thought about those ideas and behaviors and chosen the ones they preferred. At the same time, Americans will readily generalize about various subgroups within their own country. Northerners have stereotypes (that is, overgeneralized, simplified notions) about Southerners, and vice versa. There are stereotypes of people from the country and people from the city, people from the coasts and people from inland, people from the Midwest, minority ethnic groups, minority religious groups, Texans, New Yorkers, Californians, Iowans, and so on. The point here is to realize that Americans acknowledge few generalizations that can safely be made about them, in part because they are so individualistic and in part because they think regional and other kinds of differences completely distinguish Americans of various groups from each other.
Like people everywhere else, Americans, as they grow up, are taught certain attitudes toward other countries and the people who live in them. Parents, teachers, schoolbooks, and the media are principal sources of information and attitudes about foreigners and foreign countries. Americans generally believe that theirs is a superior country, probably the greatest country in the world. It is economically and militarily powerful; its influence extends to all parts of the globe. Americans generally believe their democratic political system is the best possible one, since it gives all citizens the right and opportunity to try to influence government policy and since it protects citizens from arbitrary government actions. They also believe the system is superior because it gives them the freedom to complain about anything they consider wrong with it.
Americans generally believe their country’s free-market economic system has enabled them to enjoy one of the highest standards of living in the history of the world.
Writer Bill Bryson puts the point this way:
“When you grow up in America you are inculcated from the earliest age with the belief—no, the understanding—that America is the richest and most powerful nation on earth because God likes us best. It has the most perfect form of government, the most exciting sporting events, the tastiest food and amplest portions, the largest cars, most productive farms, the most devastating nuclear arsenal and the friendliest, most decent and most patriotic folks on earth. Countries just don’t come any better.” (1989, 270–71)
If Americans consider their country to be superior, then it cannot be surprising that they often consider other countries to be inferior. The people in those other countries are assumed to be not quite as intelligent or hardworking or sensible as Americans are. Political systems in other countries are often assumed to be inadequately responsive to the public and excessively tolerant of corruption and abuse; other economic systems are regarded as less efficient than that of the United States. Foreigners (with the exception of Canadians and Northern Europeans, who are generally viewed with respect) tend to be perceived as underdeveloped Americans, prevented by their “primitive” or inefficient economic and social systems and by their quaint cultural customs from achieving what they could if they were Americans. Americans tend to suppose that people born in other countries are less fortunate than they are and that most foreigners would prefer to live in the U.S. The fact that millions of foreigners do seek to enter or remain in the U.S. illegally every year supports this view. (The fact that billions of foreigners do not seek entry is ignored or discounted.) Foreign visitors often find that Americans in general are condescending to them, treating them a bit (or very much) like children who have limited experience and perhaps limited intelligence. Foreign visitors are well advised to remember that it is not malice or intentional ignorance that leads so many Americans to treat them like inferior beings. The Americans are, once again, acting the way they have been taught to act. They have been taught that they are superior, and they have learned the lesson well. There are obviously many exceptions to the preceding generalizations. The main exceptions are those Americans who have lived or at least traveled extensively in other countries and those who have in some other way had extensive experience with people from abroad. Many Americans will also make an exception for a foreigner who has demonstrated some skill, personality trait, or intellectual capability that commands respect. British writers, German scientists, Korean martial arts specialists, and Kenyan runners, among others, readily have many Americans’ respect.
If you ask a Turk (for example) who is visiting the United States whether the Americans she has met think and act the way Turks normally do, she’ll probably say, without any hesitation, “No!” If you then ask her to explain how the Americans differ from the Turks, she will probably hesitate and then offer something along the lines of “Well, that’s hard to say.”
It is indeed difficult to explain how one cultural group differs from another. Anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists, linguists, journalists, communication experts, and others have tried various approaches to explaining the distinctive features of different cultures but the issue is still widely debated.
Social Relationships
Recounting his stay in the US the late British journalist Henry Fairlie once wrote this: “One spring day, shortly after my arrival [in the United States], I was walking down the long, road street of a suburb, with its sweeping front lawns (all that space), its tall trees (all that sky), and its clumps of azaleas (all that color). The only other person on the street was a small boy on a tricycle. As I passed him, he said “Hi!” just like that. No four-year-old boy had ever addressed me without an introduction before. Yet here was this one, with his cheerful “Hi!” Recovering from the culture shock, I tried to look down stonily at his flaxen head, but instead, involuntarily, I found myself saying in return: “Well—hi!” He pedaled off, apparently satisfied. He had begun my Americanization. The word “Hi!” is a democracy. (I come from a country where one can tell someone’s class by how they say “Hallo!” or “Hello!” or “Hullo,” or whether they say it at all.)
But [in America] anyone can say “Hi!” Anyone does.” (1983, 12)
Like many foreigners, Fairlie was struck, even stunned, by the degree of informality and egalitarianism that prevails among Americans. Anyone can say “Hi!” to anyone. First names are used almost immediately. People (most of them) seem warm and friendly from the very start. Fairlie remembers his first meetings with the Suffragan Bishop of Washington and with resident Lyndon B. Johnson. Both greeted him with “Hi, Henry!” In most countries, such a thing simply would not happen.
There is a difference, however, between friendliness and friendship. While Americans may seem relatively warm and approachable upon first encounter, they may later seem remote and unreachable to many foreign visitors.
Superficial is the word many longer-tem foreign visitors use to describe Americans’ elationships with other people.
Some of them believe that it is only with foreigners that Americans tend to make friends slowly, if they make them at all. More observant visitors notice that Americans tend to be remote and unreachable even among themselves. They are very private, keeping their personal thoughts and
feelings to themselves. They are difficult to get to know on a deeper level.
Fairlie indicated that in his native country one person does not usually talk to another until the two have been introduced to each other by someone else. So it is in many countries, but not in the United States. Of course, such acquaintanceships may well begin when people are introduced to each other, but they may also begin when one person simply starts a conversation with another.
There is no need, Americans will say, to “stand on formality.” Why do people pursue relationships with others in the first place? Cultural differences in this respect can lead to misunderstanding and disappointment.
How do Americans get to know the people who might possibly become their friends? They meet each other at school, in offices, in religious and volunteer organizations, at sports facilities, through mutual acquaintances, and, as Fairlie learned, on the sidewalk. Anyone can say “Hi!” to anyone and can stop to ask a question. (Asking a question is a more common way of opening a conversation than making a statement is.) A tone of friendly informality is nearly always appropriate. Those people who do not wish to be engaged in a conversation with someone to whom they have not been introduced will make that fact clear by their response. The small-talk topics are common among Americans and are appropriate for interactions with new people.
Friendship
Foreign visitors sometimes feel betrayed by Americans whom they meet and who seem so kind and interested at first but who later fail to allow new acquaintances to really get to know them as individuals. That initial friendly “Hi!” may come to seem dishonest or misleading as the smalltalk continues and Americans’ ideas about important topics remain hidden. “They seem cold, not really human,” one Brazilian woman said. “Americans just can’t let themselves go.” To many foreigners Americans seem unavailable to build a close friendship with anybody. Although they may have a large circle of friends, they are likely to avoid becoming too dependent on other people or allowing others to become dependent on them. With the exception of their immediate families, they remain apart from others. They have not learned to do otherwise. This is not say that Americans never have close friendships. They do. Such relationships are relatively rare, however, and can take years to develop. However, it is not uncommon for close friends to go weeks, months, or even longer without seeing each other, especially if they live in different cities. They might or might not be in regular contact with their friends by telephone or e-mail. The most important characteristics of a close friendship, for many Americans, are the freedom to discuss private, personal matters as well as the persistence of the relationship over time and distance.
It is important to remember that there are exceptions to these generalizations. Some Americans are indeed willing to devote the time that is necessary to get to know new acquaintances well and to develop close friendships with them. They will talk openly about personal thoughts and feelings that other Americans rarely reveal.
Compartmentalized Friendships
Americans typically assume that when people gather to socialize, they will undertake some activity together. They may go to a restaurant for lunch or dinner, go to a movie, play cards, or “have a few drinks.” Americans do not usually assume that it can be pleasant or rewarding to sit and talk with other people for extended periods. (Americans would probably say “just sit” and “just talk.”) Their discomfort with such a lack of structured activity is often evident if they are forced to sit and interact with people they do not know fairly well.
In some ways teenagers are an exception to what has just been said. They often “hang out” (or just “hang”) with other teens—at a mall, in someone’s car, or at one of their homes. Even so, the sense they often convey is not that they are enjoying each other’s idle company but that they are looking for something to do or waiting for something to happen. Perhaps because of their emphasis on “doing things” with friends, Americans typically develop what have been called compartmentalized friendships. That is, they tend to have different friends with whom they engage in different activities. For example, Americans might have friends with whom they study, others with whom they go to the gym, and still others with whom they go shopping or dancing on Saturday nights. Likewise, co-workers who eat lunch together every day and occasionally go out for drinks after work may never set foot in one another’s homes or meet members of one another’s families.
Gender Roles and Friendship
In many countries a friend must be a person of one’s own gender. Most Americans, though, believe it is possible to have friends of the opposite sex, and they do not generally assume that a male and female will participate in sexual activity if they are alone together. This is not to say that Americans see no sexual component in a male-female friendship, but that they believe the people involved are capable of showing the restraint and maturity necessary to avoid sexual interaction if sexual interaction is somehow inappropriate for the situation. Thus, male and female business colleagues might travel to a conference together without anyone assuming their relationship has a sexual component.
Relationships Prescribed by Roles
The anthropologist Edward T. Hall in The Silent Language (1959) has described the United States as a “low-context culture,” meaning that there are relatively few rules or guidelines to prescribe behavior in particular situations. In a “high-context culture,” such as those of Japan, the Middle East, and much of Latin America, there tend to be agreed-upon guidelines for behavior in many specific situations. For example, a proper young Latin American woman does not allow herself to be in the company of a man unless some responsible third party is present. That is the rule, and everyone knows it. In Japan rules govern who sits where in a meeting, who speaks first, and which specific words are to be voiced in specific circumstances. In a high- context culture there are rules for many situations. In the United States, however, there are far fewer situations in which people’s behavior is governed by widely agreed-upon rules. Still, some roles generally entail certain expected behaviors. Such roles include customer, tenant, neighbor, and co-worker. While it is possible to observe regional and institutional variations in the behaviors described here, a few generalizations can be offered.