HOW BAD IS AMERICA? CRITIQUE OF A EUROPEAN VIEW

By Tom Kando
  
Some Europeans deeply dislike this country. I am also a frequent and vociferous critic of America, but let’s be fair: Only half of us are imbeciles. The rest of us are  reasonable people.

In this post, I want to rebut some of the excessively negative views of America held by some Dutchmen. 

Recently, a Dutch friend sent me an article about guns and racism in the United States. The gist of the article was that whites are far more opposed to gun control than blacks; whites feel that they must arm themselves to defend themselves against crime, which is often associated with race. In other words, white opposition to gun control is another manifestation of American racism.

However, this article fails to see the whole picture: even though Americans  have become more  pro-gun in recent years, poll after poll shows that a majority  still favors gun control. What prevents gun control from ever becoming reality is the stranglehold which  the gun lobby (the National Rifle Association) has on Congress.

My friend did acknowledge  that there are two kinds of Americans. He quoted  Maarten van Rossem, a well-known Dutch expert on America who publishes a widely  read  monthly magazine.  Van Rossem illustrates the problem with the contrast between his two nephews: If they hear something rustle in their backyard,  one nephew, who lives in Boston, takes a careful look to see if some animal might need care. The other nephew, who lives in the Midwest, grabs his rifle so as to shoot the animal.

So according to my Dutch friend, America  as a whole is problematic: he says that “this is due, for one thing, to a number of institutional peculiarities (for example your electoral system), and for another thing to the impact of the country’s “bad” part. Obama’s policies suffer as a consequence. Furthermore,  some of his actions  are themselves questionable, including some of his foreign policies (e.g. drones).”

My friend continues:
“But back to the topic of racism: every country probably has its own degrees and types of racism.  In the US, it is clearer than in the Netherlands.  in America all sorts of statistics are collected about race. in Holland this doesn’t happen explicitly. At the most, sometimes indirectly, for example when the birthplace of your parents or grandparents is recorded. demographic statistics and surveys are based on characteristics such as age, gender, education, sometimes  income.  I have occasionally come across an American questionnaire where I had to enter my race. I found this shocking.”

Well, I must demure on several counts:
Regarding America’s “good” and “bad” parts/regions: Generalizations are always hazardous, but if I were to single out a region whose culture is generally dysfunctional, because it clings to feudal values, it would be the South, not the Midwest. One could argue that if the South had managed to  secede, the remaining United States today would be a more civilized country, comparable to, say, Canada.

More importantly: the US is a vast and  diverse continent, better compared to all of Europe, not to a small country such as the Netherlands. I live in the state of  California, a place as large and nearly as populous as France. Our policies and our public opinion are as progressive as those in Holland. To hold me accountable for what people do and think in Texas is like holding a Dutchman  responsible for gypsy killings in Hungary and the economic conditions in Rumania.
I realize that my analysis doesn’t work altogether, because America is one country. Perhaps my friend  is right about some “institutional peculiarities.” Granted, our electoral system is a bit odd, for example our winner-take-all electoral college  is undemocratic, and so is our Senate.  But then, most European countries, including the Netherlands, also have bicameral systems which include an undemocratic upper house/senate.

As to the collection of racial statistics: In the first place, without such statistics, affirmative action would have been an impossibility. For better or worse, it is through such ameliorative policies that the country has tried, for half a century, to redress severe racial imbalances in the job market, school admissions, etc. I have written critically about affirmative action in the past, advocating color-blindness instead. But there can be no doubt that, whether misguided or not, affirmative action was  intended to increase racial justice, and that for this, racial statistics were essential.

More generally, how are the fields of ethnic studies, race relations, etc. to go forward without collecting racial and ethnic information? Indeed, practically half of all sociological research is about race, ethnicity and  race rations.

There is no doubt that America  has problems. Today’s Tea Party reminds me of the McCarthy era.  Could  America “go fascist”? I suppose it could, but so could any country. Currently, the racist, reactionary right is on the rise everywhere, including Hungarian gypsy killers,  Dutch right-winger  Geert Wilders and France’s Le Pen family.  And don’t forget the Dutch historical  record: You had your NSB Nazi collaborators, “Apartheid” was a Dutch invention, and  you were not very nice to the Indonesians.

In conclusion, let me quote Maarten van Rossem back: “America is just another European country. The only difference is that it happens to be on the other side if the Atlantic.”

© Tom Kando 2014

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