What's going on here? Allow me to generalize....

My co-worker casually says to me: “….Americans are lazy. They don’t want to use their brains. They don’t want to think.” She’s a visiting research fellow from India and we were chatting over coffee. She acknowledges that she used to only be critical of the US administration, but now, she’s giving up on all it’s citizens as well, leading her to the above conclusion.

More and more I’ve noticed people making all kinds of generalizations about Americans as individuals. I try and imagine reversing my colleague’s comment to describe India, and honestly, I can’t. As we seem to have a growing sensitivity to avoid cultural stereotyping, we also have an increasing ability to make assumptions about Americans. It’s similar to when my Canadian colleagues discuss the US health-care (non)system. They describe it one-dimensionally, that in the US it’s everyone-for-themselves, it’s some sort of quasi-anarchism for well-being. Certainly I grew up taking trips to the doctor for granted and the lack of universal coverage in the US took me a while to actually wrap my mind around. But once I did, I became aware of the elaborate public health services coordinated by state and national government. While in the US, I worked in a state department of health and, being in the family health office, learned about their sincere efforts to improve the health all children in the state, not only those with money.

Perhaps I’m the one generalizing from comments over coffee and from around the conference room table. Nor am I either criticizing or endorsing some of the typical claims made about Americans. But I can’t think of any other nationality that is subject to such assumptions from outsiders. So what’s going on here?

On an unrelated update about this blog, I’m happy to say that my sister is finally on her way to Vietnam. She faced some truly ridiculous delays- a nightmarish culmination of bad weather, city-wide computer glitches, and impressive airline incompetence. However, on the up-side, she was able to swing a brief stop through Toronto (30 hours late), and I could share with her my apartment and new ‘hood, and she could share with me some very quality Brazilian music!