Chapter 1: Americans and Foreigners

Overview

Have I told you about protocol wafers?

My attention was distracted by a ravine we had almost plunged into. No. What are they?

An invention of mine ” a biscuit that gives foreigners the know-how to behave in our midst. Which direction to pass the port, what plaids not to wear, the really important titles ” that sort of thing. You dissolve one of these wafers, preferably in a little whisky, and straightaway you re clued in.

There s a bloody fortune in it. I ll take the American dealership .
” S.J.Perelman, Eastward Ha!

The first thing that probably needs to be said in a book about Americans and foreigners is that the former don t really believe in the latter. Oh, they realize that there are a large number of socalled foreign countries teeming with odd-looking people who speak strange languages, but deep down Americans have a hard time believing that these people are fundamentally different from them. While they accept that people from other cultures may be foreign on the surface, Americans believe that underneath we re all alike. They believe, in short, that any differences that do exist between themselves and non- Americans are ultimately insignificant.

Accidents of Geography and History

By and large, this inability to accept the essential otherness of non- Americans is not stubbornness or even arrogance on the part of Americans; it is, rather, an accident of geography and, to some extent, of history. Americans are born into a very large country with no other country on two of its four sides. Among other things, this has meant that Americans can travel for thousands of miles and weeks at a time and never cross a national border. Given that a mere 13 percent of Americans possess a passport, this kind of internal, domestic travel is the only kind most Americans engage in. The vast majority of the citizens of the United States, in other words, spend their entire life without setting foot in a foreign country. Is it any wonder that foreigners don t seem entirely real to most Americans?

People don t have to leave home to encounter foreigners, of course, and most Americans have no doubt had considerable contact in the United States with people from other countries. But as anyone who has traveled abroad knows , running into foreigners on one s own turf is a profoundly different experience from being surrounded by them on theirs. It is the difference between encountering a foreigner and being one. If more Americans had had the experience of being foreign, there would probably be more true believers among them.

In many ways, the assimilation ethic in American society has also undermined the belief in culture. For generations of immigrants, becoming American meant giving up large parts of their birth culture and replacing them with new beliefs and behaviors. The American experience seemed to suggest that cultural identity could be shed with relative ease and speed, in no more than a single generation in most cases. Can Americans really be blamed, therefore, for believing that culture must not go very deep?

Immigration and assimilation are not unique to the American experience, of course. War, famine , and disease have been uprooting people since the dawn of history, and when the uprooted settled down in a new place, they had to give up some of their old ways in order to fit in. If Americans are not unique in this regard, then, if most societies have experienced the letting go of culture in order to assimilate, one has to ask why people in these other societies didn t lose their belief in culture like Americans did.

The answer probably has something to do with the age of American culture; the United States is a young country, and the memory of immigration and assimilation ” of shedding culture ” is still relatively fresh in the national psyche. It is a recent experience, a topic that is still prominent in the national conversation. Hardly a week goes by that some oped columnist in a major American daily doesn t make a reference to or even write an entire piece about diversity, the melting pot, multicultural this or multicultural that, or a nation of immigrants. People in older societies had similar conversations at one point in their history (and some countries, such as France, England, and Germany, are addressing immigrant issues yet again), but that was a long time ago, and in the centuries that followed, a new culture emerged from the mix of immigrants. So it is that people in these older societies know that the eventual outcome of assimilation is not the watering down and disappearance of culture itself but the emergence of a new culture. Americans may learn as much too one day, but meanwhile they can perhaps be excused for not believing that culture is deep and real.

Two other themes of American culture ” individualism and the related notion of being self-made ” likewise get in the way of Americans fully believing in culture and, by extension, in the true otherness of foreigners. Because they place such a high value on self and the personal uniqueness of each individual, Americans have an almost visceral reaction to being typed or categorized, to any suggestion that there might be such a thing as an underlying set of values and beliefs they all share with each other. It s as if admitting to any kind of group or cultural identity would somehow rob Americans of the personal, individual identity they are so proud of. While people in many societies can accept that they are unique in some respects and like other people in others, for Americans it seems to be much more of an either/or proposition; either you re your own person, an individual, or you re a cultural being, a member of a group . But you cannot be both.

Individualism is of a piece with that other great American theme, the notion of being self-made, the idea that a person is not born into any particular fate or destiny but shapes his or her own future. You might be a peanut farmer, but you can become the president of the United States. If people are truly self-made, if they create their own identity, then that doesn t leave much room for anything else that might make a person, such as culture.

Many strands come together, then, to support the American belief that all this talk of culture is much ado about very little. And if there is not really such a thing as culture, then there can t be such a thing as different cultures ” or the so-called foreigners who come from them.

No Excuse

Needless to say, the fact that Americans have a hard time believing in culture has a number of consequences for how they view ” and ultimately for how they treat ” foreigners. It s only natural, for example, that people who have no basis for accepting that other people could be significantly different from them are therefore going to assume that everyone else is just like them. And it follows that they would also assume that the way they behave is normal and natural, and that any other kind of behavior is by definition abnormal and unnatural .

To put it all another way, not believing in culture means that Americans have a hard time accepting that there is any legitimate reason ” any excuse ” for the odd way foreigners sometimes behave, and they conclude, therefore, that all such behavior is simply arbitrary. The strange things foreigners do may be deliberate or accidental, conscious or un- conscious, but the point is they don t have to act that way.

This sentiment sums up the typical American view of cultural difference, and it also explains the typical American response to people from other cultures: to not take them or their differences very seriously. If there is no real logic or reason for the strange things foreigners sometimes do, then why should Americans (or anyone else, for that matter) have to put up with them? Moreover, if these behaviors are actually unnatural and abnormal, these people should thank Americans for showing them the right way to behave. When Americans encounter cultural differences, there is an underlying assumption, a deep conviction , that once they point out odd, counterproductive, and illogical behaviors, foreigners will drop their annoying habits and start behaving normally.

When foreigners do not give up their odd behaviors ” or even agree that their behaviors are odd ” Americans are not amused. And the stage is thus set for the drama that so often plays out when Americans work with people from other cultures: Americans find them difficult, rigid, or impossible . They won t listen to reason. They don t understand.

They don t even want to understand. They are deliberately complicating, undermining, or sabotaging whatever it is the team is trying to accomplish. In short, foreigners are the problem. And Americans, it goes without saying, are the solution.

Foreigners, meanwhile, playing their part in this little drama, see things a bit differently and react with that typical catalogue of complaints so often directed at Americans: that they re arrogant , insensitive, ignorant, and rude. They don t listen. The American way is always the right way. These sentiments, it must be said, are not unreasonable under the circumstances.

Be Prepared

If you re a foreigner, you will need to prepare yourself for dealing with Americans, beginning with realizing that any experience you ve had with other nationalities has not necessarily prepared you for dealing with people from the United States. For all the reasons outlined above, Americans are in some ways uniquely ill-equipped to deal with people like you, to understand or tolerate behavior they re not used to, and this can make working with them quite different from working with other nationalities.

Americans are much more likely than other nationalities to be unprepared for and therefore to have a strong reaction to different behavior, more likely, in other words, to be surprised, confused , or irritated by some of the odd things you may do. They may also be less able to see things from your point of view and less willing, as a result, to listen to your explanation of things or to understand why you don t agree with them. They are more likely than colleagues from other countries to see you as stubborn and unreasonable.

At the same time, ironically, Americans are not very good at compromise, at finding some kind of middle ground between the way you want to do things and the way they want to, because they don t believe there is a middle ground. Or, perhaps more accurately, they do believe there is a middle ground ” and they re standing on it! They will often go along (agree) with something you ve proposed, for example, knowing that as they work with you they will eventually be able to convince you to adopt their approach. When you don t, they re naturally very disappointed in you.

Meanwhile, Americans are also uniquely ill-equipped to understand and appreciate how they re coming across to you. Since they start from the assumption that how they behave is normal, they assume they come across as easygoing and perfectly reasonable. They can t imagine that you might see them as difficult or that there is anything in their behavior that you would find unusual or have to get used to. They have no real reason to believe that anything they do could be surprising, confusing, or irritating to you. As a result, they will neither understand nor be especially sympathetic when non-Americans like you get upset with them. Americans are quite capable of believing that while it s only natural that they will get upset with you from time to time, there would never be any reason for you to get upset with them.

All appearances to the contrary, the point here is really not to put down or complain about Americans but to explain them. And a good place to start is by pointing out how their national experience has conditioned them to be more ethnocentric and less self-aware than many other nationalities. If this makes working with Americans difficult, as it certainly does on occasion, you should remember that at least Americans aren t trying to be difficult; they come by their national identity the same way everyone else does. That may be cold comfort , needless to say, on those days when you re completely fed up with them.

Quick Tips: Advice for Working with Americans

• Don t expect Americans to immediately see your point of view.

• Don t expect Americans to understand how they re coming across to you.

• Don t expect Americans to think you re being reasonable.

• Don t assume Americans are deliberately being difficult.