One of the things I noticed different between American society and Arab society, for example, was the inability of Americans to relate to other societies [whether Asian, Arab, African or Latin] unless they were superficially similar in appearance. Everything and everyone else who is "different" is exotic, if not suspect.
Most Americans have never left America. The American media is geared towards Americans who have never left America because they are the majority. I think the inferiority of the American media is the main reason that Americans are so ignorant. Media in places where it might become important to understand other cultures try harder to inform about other cultures. In America understanding other cultures feels more optional. If our media chooses to flatter us and stoke our patriotism rather than to inform us we would not know the difference unless we were scholars devoted to objectivity and research.
Media matters because that is the only contact most Americans had with other cultures prior to the huge wave of immigration that happened in the last 30 years. Obama would have been too exotic to become president had it not been for the huge wave of immigration that happened during the last 30 years.
You are not comparing Americans to the Indian who repairs shoes by the side of the road. You are comparing Americans to modern cosmopolitan Indians or cosmopolitan Arabs.
The world is like a comic book staring America to Americans. The less educated Indians view of America was also sort of comic book like and I sort of felt like an exotic semi-human circus freak spectacle and a source of entertainment when I was in some Indian villages in the 1980s.
Non-village Indians and Arabs and Europeans have always been used to being exposed to people of other ethnicities. This was not true for Americans until the last 30 years. There were Italian Americans and Irish Americans but their parents and usually their grand parents were born in America so they felt very American.
Also the legacy of slavery and the conquest of the Native Americans meant that Americans needed to live in a sort of fantasy understanding of other cultures. To be honest would have created a conflict between American's idealism and American's desire to fit in and be prosperous.
Retrospectively, I felt more comfortable with the Arab society, even though I was less fluent in their language and knew less about them, because they were able to accept my "differences" as "normal" by assigning it to my culture. The attitude was markedly different.
When I traveled I was struck by how one culture slowly transitions into the next culture as you travel in that direction. Austrians were like Germans mixed with Serbians. Serbians were like Austrians mixed with Greeks. Greeks were like Serbians mixed with Turks. (the Greeks would hate to hear me say they are like Turks) I have know Arabs though other than passing through two Arab Airports I have never been to an Arab country. Arabs seem to be like Greeks with a little bit of India mixed in. No wonder Arabs felt more familiar to you and no wonder that you did not seem strange to Arabs. India and the Middle East have always been connected. Europe felt more familiar to me than India did. [/QUOTE]
In the context of this thread, I was struck by quads comment that I refer to native Americans in the context of other subjects like the Holocaust. I don't really see much differences in the effects of enforced segregation regardless of the target. Whether it is the caste system, bantustans, the warsaw ghetto or reservations, or even self imposed segregation, there is a distinct concept of otherness to it, a dehumanisation of the other, so to say, a reduced ability to identify with the other as part of a whole. Is this something less obvious to people like quadrophonics ?
I agree with you. You would think that a good analogy would convey understanding but you can't make people understand what they don't want to understand. Blaming the victim is always an option. Loyalty and pride can make people refuse to see the analogy if the seeing analogy would require disloyalty or wound the pride. Even to change a belief could be a little uncomfortable if you had an ego investment in your own intellectual sophistication. I am still addicted to my beliefs and the idea of being smart even though I know how stupid that is.
If you can understand the tunnel vision of Shiv Sena then you can understand the tunnel vision of the various varieties of stubbornly ideologically indoctrinated Americans. Do Hindu extremists have their own TV networks?
One of the things I have wondered about, for instance, would Obama win the Presidency if he spoke like a "black man"?
No. Jeremiah Wright did two things wrong, he spoke like a black man and his observations were hurtful to American's pride. I don't think most white Americans particularly older white Americans are ready to elect a president who sounds black. I guess we don't judge a man by the color of his skin any more but we do judge people for sounding black. Some of the people I grew up with also prejudge white Americans who have southern accents as being sub standard.
Why don't they? Considering the impact of your decisions on your coming generations is how most societies keep their stability.
If we asked Americans whether they cared about the wellbeing of future generations I think they would say that they do care. I don't know why the media never brings up planning for the distant future. The media never gets very deep into policy discussions presumably because they don't think that Americans are interested in mental puzzles. They think American attention spans can only be held by emotional dramas.
The politicians are only worried about their next election. The corporations are only worried about 3 months to ten years.
The whole global warming debate is about the long term future. But America lags behind the other educated people in understanding global warming presumably because more money has been spent trying to convince Americans that global warming is not real.
The American media is a real problem because it cares primarily that it deliver an audience to advertisers and has little concern about whether it informs people correctly and shapes opinion in a way that will benefit society. The problem is that short term profit has replaced social responsibility as the goal in every sector of American life in which the two goals compete for influence. This is not a choice that Americans ever consciously made.
I think the rest of the world is unconsciously on the path of increasingly adopting American style prioritizing of short term profits over social responsibility.
It is most people's jobs to help maximize profits. Who's job is it to look after the seventh generation yet unborn? The politicians and media seem to no longer want that job. The religious leaders don't seem qualified for the job. I guess the task has been left to the University professors.
I'm just shocked no one picked up on that. I mean I don't exactly think that all white men speak with a southern drawl, the same southern drawl that blacks from the american south speak with. Hey sam know anything about a New York dialect? 
