It is difficult to get across to people outside the US exactly how isolated the US is. It's so big and so far removed from anywhere else that most of the people in it have had no contact with anyone with a non-US background. Furthermore, the vast majority of US people will never have much, if any, contact with non-US people. (Most people in the US don't have passports--they won't need them.) Those who do meet people from other countries automatically assume that those people came to the US to "be American." They don't assume this because they are racist--it's simply what they've always been told, especially if they themselves are the children--or more likely, grandchildren or great-grandchildren of immigrants. And furthermore (again), they've been told--by parents, teachers, and their own government--that people from other countries want to go to the US to become American.
And no one--and I do mean no one has ever told them differently. Which is why USA-Americans seem so full of themselves. They just don't know any better.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2006-07-18 09:30 am (UTC)It is difficult to get across to people outside the US exactly how isolated the US is. It's so big and so far removed from anywhere else that most of the people in it have had no contact with anyone with a non-US background. Furthermore, the vast majority of US people will never have much, if any, contact with non-US people. (Most people in the US don't have passports--they won't need them.) Those who do meet people from other countries automatically assume that those people came to the US to "be American." They don't assume this because they are racist--it's simply what they've always been told, especially if they themselves are the children--or more likely, grandchildren or great-grandchildren of immigrants. And furthermore (again), they've been told--by parents, teachers, and their own government--that people from other countries want to go to the US to become American.
And no one--and I do mean no one has ever told them differently. Which is why USA-Americans seem so full of themselves. They just don't know any better.
Honest. I speak from firsthand experience.