Izzy Blaber ‘19: Tradition and Battle
As an American overseas, there are some stereotypes of the united statesA. that you’ll inevitably encounter, concerning every little thing from manners, to speech, political affiliations, and many others. Whereas pesky, a whole lot of these stereotypes are fairly straightforward to mitigate inside a 10-minute dialog. When one is a cultural ambassador for the U.S. (in addition to Rhodes), nonetheless, there are some generalizations which can be extra insidious in nature, resembling the belief that American girls are “straightforward,” or that each one People search to discredit the Qur’an, or that each one People are exorbitantly rich, and many others. (all of which I’ve heard on my host campus). As an American, I do really feel considerably obliged – and in a position – to talk up for myself when somebody makes an inaccurate assumption about me merely due to the place I’m from, or an assumption about America as a complete; normally, these misconceptions are fairly simple to appropriate gently and transfer on.
What I’ve discovered a lot harder to handle are points like seeing the Accomplice flag on Moroccan college students’ T-shirts and jackets. I’ve seen three college students carrying numerous articles of clothes, with numerous incarnations of the flag, sporting textual content saying “Southern Insurgent” and such. As somebody who doesn’t help the usage of the Accomplice flag, I discover this tough to grapple with. What I discover much more complicated is that once I requested a pupil why he was carrying the flag, he replied that it was simply “an American image” – he and his mates had no concept that the flag evokes a deep battle that also troubles our nation. After I defined the sophisticated historical past and standing of the flag, with the warring interpretations, he was horrified and went to alter. I believed perhaps this was an remoted incident, however I’ve since seen college students carrying the flag twice extra. It is a sophisticated situation to discuss with non-People, since I really feel as if I ought to have one simple reply; however there are such various opinions on this subject that I can’t merely fake that it’s a settled argument, or deny that some People consider that flag as an American image.
Thus, what I’ve discovered is that as a cultural ambassador, you’re in for the nice, the unhealthy, and the ugly. Cultural impressions of the united statesA. transfer sooner than its cultural ambassadors, so it’s as much as every particular person cultural ambassador to decide on what they do or don’t wish to deal with, and converse up once you choose you are able to do essentially the most good.
