Americans and Ignorance

A Remedy to Ignorance – Travel

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, & narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.” — Mark Twain

In today’s society and political climate, it has once again become normal to exercise prejudice and flaunt ignorance. You can find countless examples and embarrassing videos of ignorant Americans with a simple 3 second search on Google. Racism, lack of awareness and education, ignorance, and ethnocentrism are all found too often in American society. Close-mindedness and ignorance have almost become something to wear like a badge of honor.

My Experience

Ever since I was little, I’ve had the opportunity to travel. I’ve been to 10 different countries around the world and have experienced the people and customs of some wonderful cultures. Growing up, I was often asked questions like “What is Panama?” and “Where in Mexico is Puerto-Rico?”. I quickly came to the conclusion that travel as the answer to the stop of questions like those. The USA is an individualist society, which means we think about ourselves as a top priority instead of thinking of society or the world as a whole.

Interview

In a small office in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Sheena Carey, an expert on Race and Diversity at Marquette University, sat enclosed in an igloo of books and expanded on some of the issues with ignorance in American society and how travel ties into it. “The United State’s biggest challenge with ignorance is based on ethnocentrism.” she said. “[Americans] think that there is one right way of sort of navigating the world and they judge all other ways as less than”. We’re so infatuated with our own ideas and expectations of the world, it has become close to impossible to open ourselves up to learning about differences; differences in cultures, languages, customs, traditions, ways of thinking, food, structure, dress, and ways of living.

The world is full of unique people and in thinking that you have the best culture, you close yourself off to the beauty of the world, which is shown through our differences

Sheena Carey

” Prof. Carey continued, “[Today] it’s going from ethnocentrism into a sort of jingoistic thing where we don’t even allow the idea that there are other ways of being. In ethnocentrism you see that there are other ways of being… in jingoism it’s my way or no other way. If you do want to be a different way then there’s something wrong with you, maybe even something traitorous, and that is something dangerous.” Dangerous. Our way of thinking in the US has evolved from ignorant to dangerous, to ourselves and to people around us. Ignorance is now a matter of safety.

Travel

Travel. How does travel help with ignorance? Traveling done well will open the mind of even the most ignorant person. It allows you to see the world in a different way. It allows you the opportunity to experience how other people cook their food, what kind of shoes they wear, why they wear a burka, why they speak more than one language, where they work, and who they are. Immersing yourself in a culture so drastically different from yours will cause you to reflect on your values and your way of living. It is easy in American culture to not think about others. It’s easy to be ignorant and closed-minded and not aware of the world around you because that is how we are taught to think.

American Education

The American education system imitates and perpetuates the close-mindedness of this country. The lack of awareness of basic geographical and worldly knowledge can only be attributed to the fact that Americans only focus on themselves. American history, American government, American wars. Everything that kids are taught is from the perspective of Americans. Our education rarely focuses on other countries and we often receive an inaccurate and one-sided account of historical events. American education not only fails to give kids and accurate and wholistic view of the world, it also fails to inspire curiosity about cultures and traditions outside of the American perspective.

Prof. Carey speaks about the American education system and ignorance saying “ I wish that the education system that we’re providing our students made them curious about the world to the extent that they want to go out and explore. [Today] we basically educate to put people in a particular place in life and tell them not to move from there”.

Traveler’s Mindset

We need to learn how to have a traveler’s mindset in our own country before set off around the world. Actively looking for opportunities to learn about the things around you instead of being content with your preconceived notions is the markings of any good traveler. Marco D’Eramo said in his article Geographies of Ignorance “Exoticism is born just around the corner or at our feet; to discover it there is no need to embark on a long flight. Instead, we need to cultivate an explorer’s sensitivity to everything that surrounds us, and which we filter out, like so much background noise”. Being a traveler is all about your mindset and being open to questioning your own notions and learning about others.

Ignorance and ethnocentrism are huge problems in the United States, but they can be lessened through travel. Remedying ignorance is more than the act of traveling. Having the perspective of a traveler and being open-minded is really the most important thing in combatting ignorance.