Anti-americanism
All in good fun?
The American flag: symbol of liberty or oppression?
It’s the first day of school and you have just stepped into class. As everyone settles down, your teacher rises from his seat to write "Capitalist Pigs" in big letters on the board. Although the teacher hasn’t yet spoken, there seems to be a consensus that the "Capitalist Pigs" in question are our neighbors from the South -– the good old people of America.
“Those Capitalist Pigs,” “Them Rednecks,” and “The Real Terrorists” are just some of the many complimentary names for Americans that one might hear in a classroom, hallway, or maybe even a department office at Jarvis. Reading these names and chuckling, you might be saying to yourself, as a Grade 12 male student did when surveyed, “Well, it’s all in good fun!” Perhaps it is. Could it be that what we consider good fun is simply the most socially acceptable form of racism at JCI?
Anti-Americanism is not defined by hatred for the Republican Party or the Bush Administration, but, instead, by a dislike of the 300 million people
inhabiting the fifty states of America. By this definition, is the presence of anti-Americanism at Jarvis something we should view as a source of laughter?
Firstly, it was important to know if Jarvisites felt that there was anti-Americanism at our school. Forty Grade 12 students were surveyed on the issue and the results were not only staggering, but also somewhat confusing: although over 75% of students surveyed expressed the belief that there is no racism at Jarvis, most of those same students felt that Anti-Americanism does have a strong presence. Over 50% of the students surveyed also admitted to being anti-American themselves.
This is a problem because, as it became apparent through interviews and surveys, Jarvis is a school where racism
should seldom be found yet we make an unfair exception. As for the idea of it being all in good fun, a Grade 12 American-Canadian student, Taylor Baldwin, responded, “I’m American and I get a lot of crap for it.” When asked if he believed it was a problem, Baldwin said, “Yes, because they are stereotyping a whole nation on the actions of one man [current president George W. Bush].”
Mandy Lee McCall, another American student in Grade 11, agreed with Baldwin: “I believe that there is a lot of anti-Americanism at this school," she said, with an air of frustration. "And with George Bush being elected to a second term, that really put them off in how they respected the United States."
In the July 2003 edition of Forbes Magazine, British historian, Paul Johnson, defined anti-Americanism as “racist envy.” He described the issue, saying that anti-Americanism could simply be characterized as the old world’s envy of America’s economy, political power, and, most importantly, 200+ year-old democracy, which most of Europe has failed to maintain over millennia.
What is it at Jarvis that makes our student body so chauvinistic?
The same group of students was asked to respond to that question and many of the answers were far from surprising. Twenty-seven of the forty students said that the media was to blame for brainwashing us and another fifteen students blamed the Unites States for making us hate them.
The surprising answer came from six of these students who also blamed our teachers for contributing to this attitude. One female student even went as far as saying that, “teachers are very anti-American because, as Canadians, they are encouraged to make fun of Americans.” Again, the image of an anti-American is not a tall, radical, commie with an angry expression and a meter stick. Rather, it is a teacher not nearly as strict about sexist or anti-Semitic sentiments.
Our teachers were also given a say. Mme Rossos, a French teacher at JCI, admitted to possibly being anti-Bush but not anti-American. She said that the cause of this anti-Americanism, if in fact it were present at Jarvis, would probably be the fact that Bush’s policies might have been a little too conservative for the world. She added that because of this, most people “become very anti-a-country,” and start to view all Americans as one. Rossos also blamed the media by saying, “If the only views we get are of war and destruction, what else can we expect?”
Ms. Sgouromitis, who teaches Law, English, and American History, also had a lot to say about the subject: “This school is very anti-American!” She went on to tell me that, in the last few years, she has noticed her American History classes shrinking. She even mentioned that once, when suggesting the course to a student, the student responded, “I hate Americans and I don’t want to study their history.” Ms. Sgouromitis also made it clear that she strongly believed that teachers should try to teach historical events without any sort of bias.
Although it is impossible to control out-of-school influences, it seems evident that we must do everything we can to ensure that within the walls of Jarvis, anti-Americanism along with any other kind of discrimination will not be accepted.
JargOnline 2006 - 2007 