Culture: The Big External Influence 49
“American culture” affords rights and privileges based on the
ideology that we are all created equal.
We keep circling back to the discussion of entitlement. Most of
us feel we have a right to the basics, not only of survival, but a
quality of life. We have a right to personal mobility and choices at
the grocery store. We have the right of appeal if a court case doesn’t
go our way. And in many peoples’ minds, we have the right to yell
profanities at a politician, preacher, or police officer we hate.
Depending on who we are, that sense of entitlement can have vastly
different implications, and others in the world might view some of
them as bizarre, even though Americans are not alone in feeling
this is a right. (Remember the 2005 youth riots in France over the
entitlement not to be fired from a job?) Combine the concepts of
“subjugated” with “born with a spectrum of rights,” and the result
is a super-entitled victim.
When we go overseas, we are often lumped together as “the
ugly American,” because people abroad recognize our sense of
entitlement and may make a sweeping assumption about how it
affects our gestures and language. They don’t necessarily take into
consideration that, depending on how strong the sense of entitle-
ment is, an American’s reaction to a violation can range from the
obvious to the subtle, from purposeful affectations to movements
emanating from the subconscious.
Probably more than any other cultural group, Americans suffer
from culture shock when traveling abroad due to perceived homo-
geneity of the entire North American continent. Most Americans