The Two Sided Mirror

One of the biggest challenges of being an international affairs major (and a human being) is attempting to break out of the egocentric mindset that allows you to believe that your own way of thinking is the only way of thinking. I have spent the last two or three years of my life actively trying to do that.

But clearly, I have failed. Because, though I've spent copious amounts of time, energy and research looking at how and why Americans perceive the Arabs, it had never once, until very recently occurred to me to take a closer look at how Arabs perceive Americans. International affairs, more particularly foreign policy, through the American perspective is a one sided mirror. We only consider how we look at the world, how we impact the world, how we act on the world. We don't really talk about how they see us. And that includes me.

But a few days ago the topic came up in class. One of my Jordanian professors asked us what people on the street talk to us about and what that says about their perceptions of us. Politically, the answers aren't all that interesting. They pretty much universally hate Bush and universally adore Obama. And they expect you to agree with them on that or you may have problems. There is also a weirdly widely held belief that 9/11 was perpetrated by the U.S. government. There was a quasi-compelling documentary called Loose Change made a few years ago that made that argument and it must have been really popular in the Arab world because I've heard this from multiple people. And forget arguing with them, they're pretty sure about this.

But anyway, Arabs, again almost universally, also have no problem separating the American people from their government. And their perceptions of us as a people are very interesting.

They tend to think that America is an epicenter of technology, education and wealth. But they also see us as morally corrupted. Which basically means they watch western TV shows, particularly soap operas and draw their conclusions about American societal values from there. But their reactions to their perception of our culture aren't condescending or disgusted. Its more like they pity us. They think we lead sad, empty lives, with no real familial or religious connections and they feel bad for us. Frequent questions about home include things like: "How many people do you know that had babies when they were 16?" "Are your parents divorced, do you come from a broken home?" "Does your dad make you pay him to live in his house?" Or other such ridiculousness.

In Arab culture, its pretty common for families of three generations to all live together. Male children, if they're unmarried sometimes don't leave their parents home until their late 30s or early 40s. Female children are very strongly discouraged from leaving home at all if they are unmarried and their parents are still alive. The American emphasis on leaving home and establishing independence at a young age shocks them, not unlike the way the hijab (head covering) shocks us.

A study (http://www.mafhoum.com/press10/290C31.pdf) about Arab perceptions of American society was conducted at the University of Jordan (where I go to school) of 10,000 respondents and the results pretty much supported what we had experienced among our friends and host families. It was also interesting to see that the results showed that most Arabs don't see their world and ours in terms of religious or cultural tension and they definitely don't believe in Huntington's Clash of Civilizations. Their problems with the west are purely political and their perceptions of the American people are much more ambivalent than we would probably guess. And, at least for the vast majority of them, their perceptions of Americans don't stop them from following up the inevitable "where are you from?" with an exclamation of "Ah! You are most welcome from America!"

And sorry, but I always feel compelled to respond in kind, so we may or may not have a couple hundred Jordanian taxi drivers and shopkeepers visiting us in the U.S. in the future on my invitation.