Charitable and Compassionate American People

Observing Americans

In all fairness, Americans are truly compassionate, charitable and welcoming people. These are aspects marketed or promoted in most American films and media, which are not false or fictions, but an accurate reflection of the United States and its people. American cultural promoters: writers, film producers and musicians, truthfully expose or represent their society or country in their work. The only other country in the world that I know and whose men and women of culture do market or exposes  in their productions the factual faces of their country through their work is Nigeria. Certainly there many other countries around the world whose men and women of culture are their genuine ambassadors, but I have chosen to mention the United States and Nigeria because both are leaders in their world.  The US in the western world or globally and Nigeria is champion in Africa, as their film industry and writers have demonstrated.  As far as Americans are concern, I have noticed that, they are markedly different from other westerners, especially some French people or to be specific, French people living within the Greater Paris Region, which I know very well for having spent more than a decade with them.  But make no mistake, there are equally some extraordinary compassionate, charitable and welcoming French men and women, that I have come across.   I am not in any way saying or writing that, Americans are perfect people or that their country is paradise on earth. Perfection, they say, is not of this world, but in heaven and the preceding saying is justified as recent events in Charlottesville and also the strange reaction from Donald John Trump have established. 

For the world seems shocked to see assertive Nazi groups and other racists marched in broad day and worse, the lukewarm criticism that, the extremists received from the President of the leading liberal democracy in the world has irritated many. What happened in Charlottesville and other US cities demonstrates that, the America has its limitations as will be elucidated more later on. But the truth  remains that, they(US) remains a beacon of hope and  more than others in the world,  she offers greater chances or opportunities to none natives or none nationals. My first focus or evaluating point of the American society was to find out or see how tolerant Americans are. And my evaluating benchmark on how tolerant American people were, was made, whenever, I took or boarded the Washington DC Metro every morning. The Washington DC metro, it is true, is not the United States, but at least, it provided a sample of what to expect or how Americans, in particular the majority White Americans, treated minorities. Hence every morning, as I boarded the DC metro, I first cast wide view in the wagon on which I was to see ethnic composition. And in most cases, in particular the line I boarded, was overwhelming White. But there are equally some lines such as the yellow or blue lines, if am not wrong, that, I sometimes noticed that, the ethnic composition was predominantly African America with pockets or dots or Hispanics, Asian or Chinese and White Americans. Second, while on in the wagon, I start observing how most white passengers reacted at the sighting of blacks and other minorities and vice versa. And here again, I was surprised at how blacks and white were mixing up without any detectable sense of suspicions and tensions in both predominantly white and African American metro lines. Another observation that I made was that, I did not hear the speakers of the subway blaring the cautionary calls of: “beware of pick pockets”, as it was the case in Paris, whenever the CCTV cameras caught  disproportionate presence of people of North African, afro-Caribbean ancestries or Roma people in the subway.