“I Hate Hate Hate Americans”

I never really witnessed true hate until I moved away from Canada. Growing up in one of the most immigrant-heavy areas in Canada meant hearing a lot of rumblings, dislike, whinging, and rude comments going on all the time, of course. Us white folk sure had it hard dealing with all these people that were just…different. They dressed strange, their homes had weird smells, and boy did they sound funny when they spoke in their native tongue. You can imagine the levels of frustration that Canadians whose families had the good foresight to be born and raised here for at least three generations (two if you were European) were experiencing.

When I got to Japan I was bracing myself for “reverse” racism (i.e. racism. Don’t matter who’s doing it). But in eight years I only got the random comment and if anything, I benefited from being an outsider. Even those few comments seemed more like just plain old ignorance, rather than deep seeded hatred. So you can imagine my shock when that hatred that you are supposed to only see in movies happened several times around me, though never directly at me.

I thought this one girl was joking at first. She started complaining about waiting in line and hearing some obnoxious comments from the people in front of her at some event back in Australia, and how she just  knew that they were Americans, and then they made some comment that proved it. That’s not much of a complaint, but you should have seen this girl tell her story. Her face got all flushed, she started talking really fast, and when the other guy in the room tried to give her an out she ignored it and said, “I hate hate hate Americans.”

I couldn’t believe it. And this probably highlights some of my naivety back then, because I thought she was playing with us. But she wasn’t. She really had this hatred of Americans, based on…oh I don’t know. Her friends telling her Americans were bad, newspapers screaming about what a bully America was, everyone in her little sphere of living breathing negative thoughts about America and of those Americans who weren’t respectful enough to learn about the ins and outs of every other country in the rest of the world.