#and everyone else is rotting in poverty like ough i wish i was american

[headspace-hotel]

Reblogging because this is a great and important addition overall.

It is completely true, that America thinks it is the main character of the Earth, so I am sorry to be perpetuating that attitude more.

To be clearer on what is happening in my mind here, I have been trying to make my mind less USA-centric, and I see how it comes about that I unintentionally dismiss poverty throughout the world, because images of poverty and suffering are shown in American media as the ONLY images of most other countries.

Especially, in more religious areas of the USA, the ONLY opportunity to visit another country a poorer person will get, is through "mission trips" run by a church where a bunch of students are sent to an impoverished area in another country for a week basically to gawk at "third world" poverty, feel good about themselves for "helping" poor foreign people, and reflect on how they are so privileged and different.

Basically, reflecting on my privileges as an American is tricky because Americans are encouraged to do that...in an incredibly patronizing, deeply colonialist way.

When I say "we have poverty here in the USA" it is not meant to be "we have it worse than everyone else (or even equally as bad as everyone else)" but rather "USA media and popular opinion shows a simplistic binary of the world where America is the best place on Earth and all other places (except Western Europe) are nothing but poverty and misery"

This has the following effects: it makes Americans afraid to try changing or improving their situation for fear of making it worse, it forms a justification for meddling in other countries' business (because we have the privilege/resources to """"help"""" other countries, which are too poor/weak to do anything for themselves), and it creates the idea that Americans are innately different than everyone else.

I don't know how, but it seems like it's important to balance "Americans have certain privileges from being in a powerful, wealthy imperialist country" and "Americans aren't so different than everyone else that a poor or average American is more similar to a rich American than a poor or average person from another country, that's just a lie made to divide us"

Thanks for this thoughtful response, though.

I literally don't care when people are like "haha americans are so annoying/dumb/whatever" cuz I can take a joke, but I've been seeing tags on posts of mine from people who like. Deeply, Viscerally, Venomously Hate USAmericans.

They see us as the privileged oppressor class of the world who willfully and gleefully fuck everyone else over so "we" can enjoy luxuries. Our big cars, our extravagant restaurants, our Disney World and McMansions, right?

And it makes something inside me die a little bit, because the USA distributes TV shows, movies, magazines, newspapers and advertisements that tell you what America is like and what luxuries Americans enjoy...

...and it's propaganda. It's propaganda, not reality. These images and mythology of a luxurious, affluent America are so inescapable, constant and penetrating, like radiation, that even Americans believe it even in spite of reality around them.

It hurts that the propaganda is all anyone sees outside the USA as well, is what I mean to say, because inside the USA it's the same. I feel average, not poor, but I have always been demeaned by these depictions that tell me, "This is a normal American" showing financial privileges I would never hope to have and that my mother or her mother would never have been able to even imagine.

Like I looked up "average american neighborhood" on google images

And there are articles from American papers and publications that use these stock photos as images of an "American neighborhood" or "American homes" and it feels like being chipped away bit by bit, because when I was in middle school I went to the house of my friend and my friend's mom asked me condescending questions about whether my family ate instant noodles and "frozen food" (which they were too good for) and that year I was too humiliated to invite any of my wealthier friends over to my house, and yet they did not live in houses as big as the houses in these photos. THIS IS NOT AVERAGE. AVERAGE AMERICANS DO NOT LIVE HERE. WHAT THE HELL. There is a neighborhood in my town that looks like this and in my head I call it the "rich people neighborhood."

I come from the Americans that live here

and mobile homes/trailers are around 12% of houses in my state, so it's not rare, and when my mom was growing up everybody she knew lived in one of these. But this isn't what the world is shown. And even in America when this is shown it's something to be gawked at and pitied.

"Americans buy fast fashion every month and on average only wear it a couple times" I wear my clothes until they're falling apart and many of the clothes i have now are hand-me-downs from my mom or from Goodwill. "Americans eat out at restaurants all the time" Growing up I would eat out at Red Lobster as a treat with my dad about once a year, and sometimes we couldn't afford that. "Americans work so much because they're so obsessed with money" when I was a kid I remember when my dad would sometimes be working until 11pm or later at his construction and remodeling job, coming home exhausted and covered in drywall dust, and we barely got to see him because he was trying to dig us out of our house imminently going into foreclosure.

And I know that I have it so much better than so many people that came before me. Compared with the world my mom grew up in, I grew up in a world of fabulous luxury. My Mamaw's family was sharecroppers and by the time she was highschool age she started working in the cotton mills making gold-toe socks. And being white they've got a position of relative privilege even then. At least they didn't face violence and hatred over the color of their skin.

Why do the articles and writings say "Americans" live in big houses and eat in extravagant restaurants, but they don't say "Americans" live in flimsy, non-permanent structures propped up on cinder blocks and eat whatever cheap processed food is sold at the Dollar General, which is the only store for miles around and doesn't even sell fresh fruits or vegetables?

We're all trained to identify ourselves with the folks in the big houses, not the folks who have to camp out under tarps underneath the bridge, but I would say more of us are closer to the second one than the first. The images of America don't look like people I would talk to and hang out with, they look like the people that used to look down on me and my family like we were less than.

Fact is, "americans have it sooooo much better than all those people in third world countries, everybody there would kill to have the privileges you have" is a fundamental key part of the propaganda, and the purpose is to make Americans, especially poor Americans, think they're fundamentally different than working class people in other countries.

The mythology that the USA is the best place on Earth is a threat. Truth be told, a lot of poor folks are panicky conservative reactionaries in part because they can't afford to travel and see what the cities are like, let alone another country, and they have been told their whole lives that this is the best possible society, and they are scared to death of things getting worse.

Idk where i'm going with this, I just think seeing nation states as discrete categories of people that have more in common with each other than they do with anybody outside their country is a nefarious piece of propaganda

and also I have seen people claiming specifically that Black people in America have it better than the rest of the world by virtue of being American, which is so fucking stupid but i didn't wanna start shit but now i'm sick and in bed and kinda do

we are more alike than we are unalike and the people that say otherwise are mostly trying to get us to identify with a nation state that sees us as lower than garbage

[thecottageinthedark]

#random#u.s. centric#us centric#oops this longer than i thought#it's just like. it's all true at once. yes americans have ability to Purchase Stuff and access to amenities etc.#higher than many other places around the world#but it's also like. a weird white savior-y and patronizing fantasy that americans are super affluent#and everyone else is rotting in poverty like ough i wish i was american#that's what we are encouraged to believe#and it's like. seeing ourselves as having innately different material circumstances no matter what#that's what fuels SO MUCH of the american sense of Specialness#some of it is just demeaning. people can't believe a 'third world' country could have scientists technology literature arts#i've had people in my notes insisting only the USA could possibly have wildlife conservation#as if??? people in a 'third world' country couldn't be educated/smart enough to value animals#or they don't have scientists and experts to study animals? or they're not Advanced enough to take action

I literally don't care when people are like "haha americans are so annoying/dumb/whatever" cuz I can take a joke, but I've been seeing tags on posts of mine from people who like. Deeply, Viscerally, Venomously Hate USAmericans.

They see us as the privileged oppressor class of the world who willfully and gleefully fuck everyone else over so "we" can enjoy luxuries. Our big cars, our extravagant restaurants, our Disney World and McMansions, right?

And it makes something inside me die a little bit, because the USA distributes TV shows, movies, magazines, newspapers and advertisements that tell you what America is like and what luxuries Americans enjoy...

...and it's propaganda. It's propaganda, not reality. These images and mythology of a luxurious, affluent America are so inescapable, constant and penetrating, like radiation, that even Americans believe it even in spite of reality around them.

It hurts that the propaganda is all anyone sees outside the USA as well, is what I mean to say, because inside the USA it's the same. I feel average, not poor, but I have always been demeaned by these depictions that tell me, "This is a normal American" showing financial privileges I would never hope to have and that my mother or her mother would never have been able to even imagine.

Like I looked up "average american neighborhood" on google images

And there are articles from American papers and publications that use these stock photos as images of an "American neighborhood" or "American homes" and it feels like being chipped away bit by bit, because when I was in middle school I went to the house of my friend and my friend's mom asked me condescending questions about whether my family ate instant noodles and "frozen food" (which they were too good for) and that year I was too humiliated to invite any of my wealthier friends over to my house, and yet they did not live in houses as big as the houses in these photos. THIS IS NOT AVERAGE. AVERAGE AMERICANS DO NOT LIVE HERE. WHAT THE HELL. There is a neighborhood in my town that looks like this and in my head I call it the "rich people neighborhood."

I come from the Americans that live here

and mobile homes/trailers are around 12% of houses in my state, so it's not rare, and when my mom was growing up everybody she knew lived in one of these. But this isn't what the world is shown. And even in America when this is shown it's something to be gawked at and pitied.

"Americans buy fast fashion every month and on average only wear it a couple times" I wear my clothes until they're falling apart and many of the clothes i have now are hand-me-downs from my mom or from Goodwill. "Americans eat out at restaurants all the time" Growing up I would eat out at Red Lobster as a treat with my dad about once a year, and sometimes we couldn't afford that. "Americans work so much because they're so obsessed with money" when I was a kid I remember when my dad would sometimes be working until 11pm or later at his construction and remodeling job, coming home exhausted and covered in drywall dust, and we barely got to see him because he was trying to dig us out of our house imminently going into foreclosure.

And I know that I have it so much better than so many people that came before me. Compared with the world my mom grew up in, I grew up in a world of fabulous luxury. My Mamaw's family was sharecroppers and by the time she was highschool age she started working in the cotton mills making gold-toe socks. And being white they've got a position of relative privilege even then. At least they didn't face violence and hatred over the color of their skin.

Why do the articles and writings say "Americans" live in big houses and eat in extravagant restaurants, but they don't say "Americans" live in flimsy, non-permanent structures propped up on cinder blocks and eat whatever cheap processed food is sold at the Dollar General, which is the only store for miles around and doesn't even sell fresh fruits or vegetables?

We're all trained to identify ourselves with the folks in the big houses, not the folks who have to camp out under tarps underneath the bridge, but I would say more of us are closer to the second one than the first. The images of America don't look like people I would talk to and hang out with, they look like the people that used to look down on me and my family like we were less than.

Fact is, "americans have it sooooo much better than all those people in third world countries, everybody there would kill to have the privileges you have" is a fundamental key part of the propaganda, and the purpose is to make Americans, especially poor Americans, think they're fundamentally different than working class people in other countries.

The mythology that the USA is the best place on Earth is a threat. Truth be told, a lot of poor folks are panicky conservative reactionaries in part because they can't afford to travel and see what the cities are like, let alone another country, and they have been told their whole lives that this is the best possible society, and they are scared to death of things getting worse.

Idk where i'm going with this, I just think seeing nation states as discrete categories of people that have more in common with each other than they do with anybody outside their country is a nefarious piece of propaganda

and also I have seen people claiming specifically that Black people in America have it better than the rest of the world by virtue of being American, which is so fucking stupid but i didn't wanna start shit but now i'm sick and in bed and kinda do

we are more alike than we are unalike and the people that say otherwise are mostly trying to get us to identify with a nation state that sees us as lower than garbage