The Arrogance of Americans

The arrogance of the Americas began a long time ago and they still continue today.  It’s the belief that those who are not Americans are less than intelligent or uncivilized.  If we look back in our history and study the attitudes and opinions of those then, we may come to realize that these same attitudes and opinions are prevalent today.  Looking at another and finding the differences instead of seeking the similarities often times leads us to excusing our distrust, dislike, disdain or simply ignorance of them.  We know neither their culture, nor their history or even care to learn of their experiences and this oversight, this refusal to see all as having the same rights to exist, live and pursue their dreams as we do ends up with us categorizing them instead of trying to understand them.

The American Indians were thought to be savages because they choose to live in teepees instead of log cabins and worshipped the Great Spirit instead of a single God and did not seek to own and control resources that others felt God had created simply just for their pleasure and they were labelled as less intelligence even though many of the ideas manufactured by Europeans and credited to them as their inventions were really ideas stolen by those who visited these savages saw and learned.  Slaves, women and other immigrants were thought as ignorant and uncivilized because they too dressed differently, looked differently and acted differently.  For slaves and women, they were even considered property and therefore had no voice in how they were seen or treated.  They were simply placed here for the benefit of those who were able to be accepted into this class of arrogance. 

The apparent difference today is that these two main groups (blacks and women) are not seen as property anymore but that idea seems to have been replaced by the term uneducated.  This myth has remained and can be seen to have gained in strength to the point where even some of those who belong to these main groups are beginning to believe themselves and teach it to their children.  They are educating their children to believe that there is an invisible “man” who controls what they do, how they do it and how far they can go in life.  This excuse allows those who choose to believe it a defense to taking responsibility for their actions and in doing so should be excused from acting long before thinking and treating others nowhere close to how they wish to be treated. 

For those who choose to shed this label of ignorance and exercise their true intelligence, they are immediately seen as a threat and is often avoided or minimized so that they do not cause others of these groups to get the idea that we are all in control of our own destinies and the only true limitation upon us are those we place there ourselves.