A few years ago I went to a series of lectures at Gresham College, which had been organised by The American Embassy in London. These took place just prior to, and immediately after, the last American election, so it was an interesting time for the US.
One of the speakers from the Embassy, who would have represented the outgoing Clinton Administration, said that it looked as though the Bush Government was going to take a more isolationist stance and take less involvement in International affairs. Whether this is true or not, we'll never know, because the events of September 11th changed everything.
One of the talks at Gresham was about America's cultural contribution to the world. At the end of the lectures they always throw the floor open to public comment and questions. On that day it was more comments than questions and it soon became obvious that the people in the audience thought of America as a cultural void. The comments became increasingly catty and the people who were making them took less and less care to disguise their contempt for US culture.
I was sitting there, thinking about all the totally cool music and film and literature that has come out of the States and has enriched my life and contributed to making me the person that I am. I couldn't understand how the people who were sitting around me had forgotten this wealth of music and art that has flourished in America and mus certainly be in all their homes in one form or another.
I felt embarrassed to be a part of that audience because of their open hostility to the speaker and what she represented. I didn't speak up, because I go to these lectures to listen to what people have to say and save shooting my mouth off for the pub, but with hindsight I wish that I had said something, if only to redress the balance.
I think this is when stereotypes become dangerous - when they become so fixed in people's minds that we no longer look beyond them, either because it does not occur to us to do so, or because it is easier not to.
