Understanding America for the Non-American: A Few Explanations of What Things Really Mean

Using Ifemelu as our inspiration, we have a few "explanations" of what things really mean in America, from the non-American perspective:

1. I feel like this happened to me about 15 years ago, but it was actually 7 years go when I had to go through perhaps one of the most awkward experiences in my life.  I was in the US, trying to survive in an American high school.  One of the classes I had to take was P.E. and the coach there had nicknamed me "Turkey" because I was from Turkey, and in his country, coincidentally, it was the name of a bird.  Haha, funny, right?  I was not happy with this and had to confront him, eventually.  He told me that it was all in good fun and he didn't mean anything by it.  When I asked him how he would feel if I called "America," he have me a 10 minute speech on how it is important to be an American and how proud he feels to be one.  I had to give the man some credit though, that was the most patriotic I felt for awhile, and I'm not even American.  He did, eventually, stop calling me "Turkey," though that's because I ratted hm out to the school administration.    --Kaan O.

2. Be enthusiastic about your homeland, especially if it's Africa.  Beware that Americans accept it as a land in its natural form, where people live happily ever after in their primitive form with wild animals.  If you try and explain what it was like back in Nigeria, how education was possible and conditions were not as bad as Americans think, just nod while they are talking. They like to think of Africa as an exotic land but a land similar to theirs.  Get used to how they commercialize your culture.  That's what interests white folks: not your education, life-style, but your exotic and wild traditions or poor slums.  People like to talk about things that they don't see.  If you do not want to be seen as resistant, you better swallow all of it and hang on to your assimilated identity.      --Aslı A.

3. America is probably the most religious country in Europe and the West.  When an American meets someone foreign, especially from the Eastern part of the world, s/he asks you whether you are Muslim or not.  By this question that they really mean, are you a terrorist?  They generally consider all Muslims as terrorists and think that they are potential attackers  But you should know that not all Muslims are terrorists--it's a stereotype they created about us.         --Pınar I.

4. Numbers and statistics are always used to soften the blow, not to reveal facts.  The American tendency to prefer visual presentation to simple facts ends up creating a problem of an ironic nature: Although police brutality regarding race and racial profiling have always been around as two big challenges to the black minority, not so many people felt the need to pay and sort of attention to it as long as they were expressed in numbers.  "Turns out 90% of all black people in this area have been frisked for no reason...Meh, what's on TV anyway?"  --Murat A.

5. Taking colorblindness literally: This doesn't mean what you think it means initially.  I have seen people take colorblindness way too literally, people who turn blind when they see color.  These people stop seeing you and they even refuse your existence when they are near you.  They don't treat you like a person, as they should, by not caring about your color, but they simply stop caring at all.  Full on apathy; let none survive.  Amazing.     --Murat G.

6. If you have even 10% black blood in you, you're too black.  While being too much Italian means pizza and pasta; being too black means danger and gangsters.     --Ilkim T.

7. Tell a white a person you're from Turkey and they say, "you don't look Turkish."  This means that you don't wear a head-scarf.  But all Muslims wear one, according to Americans.  So they think people who believe in the same religion have the same look and if you don't look like what they imagine, they are surprised.       --Tansu Ö.

8. The term melting pot is another "white lie."  As we all know it means having a unified society where all people have the same characteristics, from the white perspective.  But let's make this term concrete.  Suppose that African Americans are lettuce, Mexicans are cucumbers, and Asian Americans are tomatoes and whites are one big heavy sauce.  Let's mix them up and have a "homogenous" salad!  When you look superficially, you seem to have a "homogenous," delicious salad.  Yet, look more closely.  Every piece of lettuce, cucumber, and tomato has their shape without any change.  You cannot change then even if you put them in the same bowl and mix them.  Then the white sauces are all over the lettuces, cucumbers, and tomatoes.  It suffocates them and disturbs them.  Too much sauce in the first place--white supremacy--destroys the fairytale "melting pot." Let's be honest: the melting pot is a lie.  If you force different ethnicities into fixed characteristics, not a melting pot, but balkanization is what you get!         --Bige Y.  

9. White people do not want to accept that the things they do and think about black people because they are accustomed to always being right and true.  That's why they never think and act for big changes.  It is time to accept that you are doing wrong, American people and you are the ones who are mistaken.  Its time for a big change and it's your duty to change and shape this situation again and give this racist shape of your society a non-racist shape.     --Özge B.

10. If you are person who is African American, Mexican, Native American, or Asian American and asking from America for the rights you think you have the legal right to ask for, they say "no, according to the law, you can't have these rights."  Actually, they mean that we (Americans) are free to change the laws according to when/where/to whom they will be applied, so you are denied your legal rights.  Sorry! (not actually).    --Berivan U.

11. You are still inferior; your lives do not matter.  It is funny, many years after adding the 14th amendment to the Constitution, black people face the same kind of problem that they did during slavery.  They're still considered as sub-human beings whose lives are not as valuable as whites!  Look at the situation now.  Killing a black unarmed guy while being a white cop is something almost fashionable; it's viral, spreading all over the country.  Why?  Simple! When you are a white cop and you kill a black man, you won't be convicted at all...so let's go, who can stop them?  Even when a video shows you killing a guy who tells you he cannot breathe, white justice will tell you that you've done a great job.  Awesome, right?     --Inés A.

12. Requirements to be an American:

1. Be white (beige is acceptable too)
2. Do not be a non-European immigrant
3. Do not be a child of a non-European immigrant
4. Speak English only (if you happen to have a different mother tongue, it will be taken from you)
5. If you're Native American...why the hell are you still alive?
6. If you fail to do the following, we will make your life hell.                                                     God Bless America.  You May Proceed.         --Sera