|
| w |
|
This is an image is from a 1980s film. The look and style of Val Kilmer's character exemplifies what I remember as the typical American studying abroad around that time.
American Students Overseas, Then and Now
Alex Kurtagic
When I returned to university as a mature student on a postgraduate program, one
of the changes in the landscape that struck me the most was the contrast between
the Reagan-era overseas Americans I had known as a high school student and their
successors, the overseas Americans of the George W. Bush regime.
The Americans I befriended in the 1980s were all White and fit nearly every
positive and negative European stereotype.
On the negative side they were loud — incapable of not bursting a person’s
eardrums with their vociferated greetings, laughter, and conversation; they were
chauvinistic and jingoistic — America was always right, always first, always
best at everything; they were arrogant and condescending — there was only one
correct way of seeing or doing things, and that was the American way;
they were proudly ignorant — many could not locate countries other than
the United States and her immediate neighbors in a world map (“Spain... isn’t
that South of Mexico?”); and they had no use for sayings like “in Rome, do like
the Romans” — it was always “in any country, be as American as possible, all the
time, anywhere, everywhere”. They
read American magazines, watched American television programs, and even ate
American food, which they sourced from their respective embassies or military
bases. In fact, some of these overseas Americans managed to almost completely
insulate themselves from the local culture, and even then they participated in
reentry orientation programs that were in place for U.S.-bound Americans who had
been away for more than a year. America was the alpha and the omega, the cosmic
epicenter, the promised land, won with guns and blessed by God.
On the positive side they were honest, hardworking, and self-motivated — when
homework was given, or there was an exam, one could count with the fact that
they would give it their best effort; they were positive and confident — they
faced difficulties and misfortunes bravely, never allowing themselves to lapse
into depression, sullenness, or self-pitying negativity; they had a can-do
attitude — presented with a challenge, they rose to it and saw anything as
possible provided one had the right attitude; they were not petty nor envious —
faced with a display of excellence, they were genuinely pleased and the first to
offer a congratulatory handshake or pat on the back; they were open,
approachable, and friendly — although they sought the company of fellow
Americans, the way that compatriots do when they find each other abroad, they
were never hostile or unpleasant towards strangers and they were quick to trust
and offer their hospitality. I always sought and preferred the company of
Americans for these reasons, and for a while I could not conceive of dating a
girl who was not a fair American.
Both men and women flaunted an obviously and uniquely American sartorial style.
The men almost invariably wore jeans, bright white sneakers or high tops, white
socks, and brightly—colored tee shirts or polo shirts; the women plastered their
faces with an inch-thick layer of makeup and had hairstyles that looked like
stars that had gone supernova, held in place by several CFC-gushing canfuls of
hairspray (remember: this was the big hair era of the 1980s).
The men spoke in a low but loud monotone, sometimes forcing their voices below
their natural pitch, to signal maximized testosterone levels; the women spoke in
an ultrasonic whine or squeal that, unfortunately, sometimes belied their
intellect. Neither were singularly averse to racial epithets: in male company I
heard — although they were used very rarely — the words ‘nigger’, ‘spic’, and
‘wetback’ deployed in conversation without controversy, and when I used the word
‘nigger’ on one occasion (right out in the open, basically repeating something I
had heard a friend say some time before), I only got a mild reprimand from a
female friend, who said plaintively, “Don’t call them that.”
Perhaps a cruel caricature of the White American male from this period was a
person who ate McDonalds, drank Coca Cola, read Stephen King, donned baseball
caps and denim jackets, rode BMX bikes, watched baseball and American football,
listened to some form of Rock music, and watched brutal Schwarzenegger and
Stallone films; he wore brands like Nike, Levi’s, Vans, Converse, and Ray-Ban.
The White American female listened to Madonna and Cindy Lauper and Duran Duran,
watched Dynasty, read Barbara Bradford-Taylor, permed their hair with frizzy
coiffures, and wore big shoulder pads or spandex acid wash jeans with
stratospheric waistbands. Both the stereotypical male and female was tough,
brave, assertive, hardnosed, and hugely ambitious, especially in dollar terms.
This was tempered by the magnanimous disposition — entirely devoid of malice —
of a omnipotent race of world masters.
The American students I encountered twenty years later were unrecognizable. To
start with they were of mixed racial stock, some White, others Black (ranging
from dark to medium brown).
.jpg)
This image is from the end of the 2000s, showing an overseas American student in South Africa. The style and body language is in line with what I encountered in the post-graduate programme.
The Black ones, exactly like one or two I encountered in high school, were
middle class, soft- and well-spoken and behaved like normal students — neither
loud nor unusually quiet. Unlike the rather friendly and easygoing exemplars
from the 1980s, however, the new crop were noticeably more serious, almost surly
— they never or joked or smiled.
The White Americans, on the other hand, were nothing like their Rambo-fed
predecessors: they spoke softly, moved diffidently, were apologetic, and made
obvious efforts to blend in with their attire and their accents. Gone where the
swagger, bright colors, and porn-star looks; gone where the booming voice and
exclamatory whooping and squealing; gone, even, were the flaunting, the
smirking, and the sense of absolute certainty: these modern overseas White
Americans desired no one to notice their country of origin, and, in fact, struck
me as ashamed of being American in the first place. Even their muscles were
gone.
There was one make-up-less female I remember, who seemed interested in doing
mission work in Africa. She struck me as being in a permanent state of righteous
anger, at least whenever I was present; but she otherwise kept a low profile.
When I spoke to her I was not able to immediately recognize an American accent:
she had one, but she had done a competent job at suppressing it. She quietly
avoided me after I said that the Democrats (for whom she had done volunteer
work) were indistinguishable from the Republicans, save for minor areas like a
percentage point up or down in the rate of income tax. I think she was deeply
offended.
The Americans I knew in the 1980s socialized without much regard for race: the
Black ones had mostly White friends, and they were affable and courteous towards
me. This might have been because there were very few in number — maybe one or
two per grade. The Blacks I encountered later exhibited more tribal tendencies,
despite their low numbers, and kept company with one another. They were icy
towards me — even contemptuous in one case — although this might have been
because I reminded my fellow students during one of the seminars that until
recently the natives of Africa never had nation states, that these were created
by White colonialism, and that (at least in places like South Africa) the land
that made up said nation states was either sold or given by the Blacks to the
Whites during the 19th century in exchange of military service.
In any event, it was clear that modern students had been reared on a different
body of literature.
Noel Ignatiev,
perhaps?
There are some potentially important factors we need to consider before drawing
conclusions. Firstly, the overseas Americans I encountered a
lustrum
ago belonged to an arguably superior, more refined breed: one that qualified for
a postgraduate program at an elite university, as opposed to an undergraduate
program for expatriates in a generic high school. Secondly, the later overseas
Americans lived in a post-9/11 world, and were embarrassed by George Bush and
his neocon government’s foreign policy. Thirdly, the later Americans were
uniformly Democrat supporters, while my coevals from the 1980s came from both
Democrat and Republican—supporting households. Fourthly, the Americans in the
latter group where expatriates, sons of diplomats and military personnel
temporarily stationed at embassies and bases, while the Americans in the former
group were individuals studying abroad at a foreign university of their choice.
And finally, the sample from the glory days of Yuppiedom and Mike Tyson was much
larger than the sample from the age of the War on Terror.
Despite all these caveats, however, I could not help but find the contrast
between the two groups significant, as they were harmonious with the background
historical and sociocultural developments that took place during the intervening
years.
There appeared to be a corresponding contrast between the America of my teenage
years and the America of my prime. Many of the harmful trends and phenomena
blighting the United States during the mid 2000s — globalization, political
correctness, deficit spending, and third wave feminism — began in the 1980s,
while others — e.g. multiculturalism as a government policy — began just before
but were felt later. All the same, from my vantage point in continental Europe,
the United States irradiated exuberance, opulence, velocity, and nuclear force.
A visit in the late 1980s and another in the early 1990s — one to the southern
United States and the other to the Midwest — did little to disconfirm what seems
now an excessively optimistic view. This might have been because I saw mostly
middle class suburbia, giant shopping malls, university facilities, and
lightyear-wide highways flanked by vast coniferous forests. This might have been
also because my earlier United States destinations during the first years of the
1980s had consisted of luxury holiday resorts.
By the middle of the last decade, however, I had come increasingly to see the
United States as a hollowed-out, floundering superpower, drowning under a tide
of Third World immigration, public and private debt, political correctness, and
universal discredit — a country that had dismantled its manufacturing base,
squandered its wealth, mortgaged its future, and (through being so obviously in
the thrall of an aggressive Zionist clique) plundered its moral capital on the
world stage. By the end of the decade, with a Black president in office
compounding already staggering deficits with ruinous economic policies, with
pointless interminable open-ended wars raging in far-flung regions of the world,
with regions being systematically invaded and handed over to immigrants from a
neighboring country with territorial ambitions, it was apparent to me that the
long and sad descent into bankruptcy, mongrelization, and eventual dismemberment
had by then become inexorable.
Alarming signs appeared to justify this gloomy perception during a visit to the
country last year.
An excursion to a shopping mall in Atlanta revealed some astonishing demographic
and cultural changes. Firstly, nearly all the White Americans I saw there and on
my way there were elderly and diffident — they looked, in fact, positively
archaic, living relics from a bygone age; by contrast the colored shoppers were
predominantly young and cocky — they swaggered and strutted their stuff with
bouncing shoulders, jutted chins, and angry stares. Many evinced or were
evidence of a prodigious fecundity. Secondly, there was not a single bookshop
anywhere: the shops sold mostly food, fashion accessories, and jewelry. And
thirdly, there were no record shops — the shopping malls of yesteryear usually
had one or two, offering a selection of classical, traditional, and popular
music. It might be that I visited the wrong shopping mall, or that I was in the
wrong part of town, or the wrong city, or the wrong state, or the wrong region;
but elsewhere I found only vendors of food, packed or prepared. Was it the
depression? Whatever the reason, I felt out of place: local commerce appeared to
cater only to the lowest common denominator, meaning basic survival and basic
status display.
Another sign was the almost complete transformation of the rolling stock on the
roads: 90% of the cars in circulation were foreign-made. I could not but
remember of my experience in the mid 1970s, when every single vehicle on the
road was Made in America — White
America. Cars from that period do not enjoy the best of reputations; they
weighed as much as a brown star, they were defiantly unaerodynamic, they guzzled
gallons of fuel per mile, and for seats had benches made out of slippery vinyl
that caused me as a child sitting at the rear to slide from port to starboard
and back every time my father made a sharp turn. Whatever their deficiencies, I
was fascinated by these American cars (and even more by their 60s and 50s
predecessors) on account of their roaring ferocity and enormous length and size.
Nowhere else in the world could one find cars like these — no one else could
afford to make them! (Or run them: the fuel tank of my father’s 1976 Gran Torino
could siphon dry an entire oil field with each filling.) Presently, many
American models are much smaller, less distinctive, more economical, and look
like blockier versions of their European counterparts. Is it globalization?
It might be that through a concatenation of circumstances, flukes, nostalgia, transferences, projections, and amazing coincidences, I ended up with a distorted view of the facts, seeing only what I needed to see to confirm acquired fears or misconceptions. Who knows? But it would be interesting to discover whether others have observed the same as I.
Alex Kurtagic
(
Permanent link: http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/authors/Kurtagic-American-Students.html
