#ones that spoke to me in english out of excitement and not condescension

[imruination]

Here is my experience as an American who traveled internationally a lot. For context, I have worked previously as a flight attendant and an Au Pair. My best friends live throughout Europe and Canada. *TW vague SA mention.

One time I had to order an Uber in Argentina, and the driver rolled down his window, took one look at us, realized pretty quickly we were American women alone, and drove away immediately leaving us stranded. Later in the week we had rented a car that broke down on us in quite a dangerous place off the highway. People stared at us from their open windows, and the car rental place even hung up on us multiple times while we were sitting there terrified with our doors locked and sweltering in a 100 degree car.

Once I attended a lecture in a London museum, they called on me because I wanted to ask a genuine question about the history they had a PHD in. They proceeded to make fun of me and my American qualities in front of the entire crowd. I went to a drag show the following night where the Drag Queen on stage proceeded to do the exact same thing because my friends and I (who were Scottish and Belgian by the way) were kind and remained in the front row the whole show while everyone else trickled out early.

I lived as an Au Pair in Italy for 3 months which required me to travel alone a lot, as someone who was very obviously not Italian I quite often got a lot of looks even though I am quiet and pretty good and doing what I need to do without standing out. Once I was on the train at night alone because the fellow Au Pairs I had met locally got off on stops before me. I was literally SA’d on the train with a few other people on it. I got off at my stop and the man proceeded to follow me off the train. I pretty much ran home despite making eye contact with multiple people on the way and them whispering to each other about it. I was too flustered and panicked to be able to speak in Italian at that moment. Nobody approached me so I managed to lose the man in the crowd and walked home alone in the dark on the phone with my friend countries away, hoping I wasn’t about to be murdered.

I usually understand. Every time I meet someone in another country we have the exact same conversation about where I am from. They’re usually amused. I am a long way from home, a place where people notoriously don’t care enough to travel. I am quiet and nondescript while American tourists obviously are always obnoxious and loud. It’s kind of funny from their perspective, and I get it. At a certain point though I get very frustrated. Here I am as an American trying to be respectful, trying to learn about cultures other than my own, trying to be thoughtful and unbiased- but a lot of the time I am not given the chance.

Then at some point, the dislike of America goes beyond annoyance and gets downright malicious. I, as an American, hate America. However, I hate America out of compassion. I want the people who live here to not be traumatized just by existing. A lot of us are fighting to try and make things better, and to assume otherwise is ignorant. To say we deserve to suffer, is malicious. If my suffering even outside of America is flat out ignored, that is malice not just in theory but in action, and frankly I am getting tired of it. Dehumanizing any person, or population is dangerous. It being the U.S. doesn’t magically make it funny or okay. It’s the generalization that is the problem.