American Flaws

I just read a journal posted on deviantart by a member called Humon. She's been posting cute and silly little comics mostly about Scandinavian countries, but also other countries around the world. She's getting flack from people who don't like how she's portraying their own countries and consider her to be racist. She kind of just wants people to let the jokes and silliness stand, but also to not take things so personally. It's based on stereotypes, which in a way are based in truth of how other people perceive something to be. I perceive people who wear all black and dye their hair black and one other stupid color to be emo, that's not always the case, but it's a stereotype. Just like how back in the early 20th century women were considered to unstable to be able to vote o do a man's job. Blacks were considered to be too ignorant to to do anything other than menial labor, ever.

This all come back to an ignorant comment written by someone who was bore in 1993. that's... 16 years old. Someone else posted the valid point that they're some America and laugh at how America is depicted. That's fine, the issue I took was from the 16 year old who said 'Why not laugh at America, there are SO many flaws.'

It's that type of thinking that starts hate to begin with. No country is perfect, if that were the case people would be flocking there because the land would be made out f rainbows and sunshine. Puppies would be given away free on every street corner, there'd be no need for most of our laws because those issues would be nonexistent. People would be hired solely on their ability, skin color would play no part, so in theory there would be an even mixture of every skin-tone.

That is not the case. Yes, I agree that America has flaws, I see them pretty much every day, but I don't think the answer is leaving this country. In looking at British tabloid-news and the flack that's been falling there about Jan Moir's insensitive article and Nick Griffin now being lambasted in the public for being a Nazi, let's say sympathizer, those are issues in Britain. In talking in my not-really American Literature course we spoke about how few rights there are for women in other countries. All that are flaws. But if America is so fucked up, why are people flocking to come here. Some legally, some not, but in some instances all people want is to move to America. Some Americans want nothing more than to move out. Yes, this country has it's flaws, but in today's era of time they're not that bad, sometimes. In the past 100 years we have learned what to do and what not to do and things have changed. There are voting rights across the nation, people can't be barred from the polls. There are equal opportunity rights for rental, purchase, hiring et cetera in this nations. Laws are being passed every year to protect more people who in the past have gotten the short end of the stick. Not every country can talk about working towards that sort of acceptance for so many countries.

I'm not saying America is perfect, and I'm not saying it's a hellhole. It's another country, like so many other First World Countries where our issues are bourgeois such as 'oh no! there's a scratch in my car' or 'oh no! the screen on my 80 bajillion dollar electronic is cracked' and not something like 'oh shit! My neighboring country is invading and killing all my villagers' or 'oh shit-fuck! That factory up river is dumping billions of gallons of chemical waste into the river where my cooking water comes from' or 'oh shit! I now have HIV, am passing it onto my kid, an am dying of malaria.' I'm not trying to trivialize every issues that Americans may have, but when they're compared to the lives of people who don't have what we have, safety regulations for pretty much everything. People are trying which counts for more that people want to think.

Yes, America has it's flaws an I see them much more glaringly so than other countries because I haven't bee to other countries. Every country has different flaws for where they are in having money so they can work to bettering things for their country. America has made it so far and in the youngest major power in the world. That counts for something, but with such rapid progress and change, some corners were cut and events that happened hundreds of years ago are now happening in America.

I don't think I properly addressed what I wanted to say, but it kind of ties into my journal from a few weeks ago about people complaining about attending college at ODU, or complaining about America while still living here. I'll end this with one of my mother's mottoes. ''It could be worse, so I can't complain.'

Jasmine P.