Anti-Americanism

The numerous sandwich shops, excellent street artists, Ben's Cookie, free hugs, stunning architecture, and a grand historic value: Oxford was a great place to be. I went to Oxford for about two weeks for an academic and cultural program. It was a fantastic experience, however, not in the way I expected it to be.

Besides meeting great new people from all over the world (Lebanon, Panama, Spain, Algeria, Switzerland, Ukraine, Russia.. and sooo many more), I think I got something completely different out of this experience: a sense of how the world views different countries, in particular: The United States of America.

It is only a coincidence that I attend boarding school in that country, but I noticed this strange obsession that a lot of people from ALL over the world have with the USA. Please try to understand the following things that I am going to tell you, and try to make sense out of it. I took three courses during the program: Medical Biology, Business Management, and Public Speaking & Debate. Funny enough, while studying in Britain, I have learned many things about American companies such as Ford Cars, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Wal-Mart, and Proctor & Gamble. I have watched an extensive movie on the American national debt & economic crisis. I learned a lot about the Food Drug Administration (FDA), an American administration FOR Americans and how bad they are. I have debated topics such as: Should the US invade Syria? Should handguns be banned? Should torture be used to fight terrorism? Should we have universal health care? Do all these topics sound like familiar problems to any Americans? I think yes. 

But it does not end here, my Public Speaking & Debate teacher showed us two speeches in class: Obama's speech in 2008 when he won over New Hampshire, and Mitt Romney's speech in 2011 when he won over New Hampshire. However, we viewed the entire Obama speech, while we only watched three minutes of Romney's speech [A short disclaimer before I continue: I do not prefer any political party over another]. Not only did this highlight, in BRIGHT yellow, the incredible biased opinion of my teacher by not letting Romney finish his speech (and we had plenty enough class time left), he forced a popular view on all of us by saying that Obama is good, and Romney is bad. While I have no opinion about either of the presidential candidates, I think it is horrible to judge a man on three minutes of his speech, while we judge another based on twelve minutes of talking. No, it does not end here either. 

While debating the before mentioned topics in class, students would come up with arguments such as: the US is not a trustworthy country, the US does everything for their own benefit. And the moment I mentioned that without the US most of us would be speaking German right now, people would stare at me and continue their US bashing without any reason. I wish these people would look at their own countries and the mess that the Eurozone, especially, is in right now. We could have debated about Greece and Spain, the Euro, the European Union, the importance of the British monarchy, British healthcare. There were so many different options, the choices that were made in a short two weeks just left me shocked.

I felt something that I had never felt before. This feeling frustrated me for a long time, until I realized something: it had been happening around me all along: Anti-Americanism. And for me, knowing what is out there in the USA and what the country has done for us, sure it also has many flaws, it makes me look differently at Europe, and at my home country. 

I was definitely not disappointed during my time in Oxford, it made me learn a lot about the world.

XO