Re: U.S. stereotypes & attitudes toward foreigners & non-U.S. institutions

“. . . Thou are like to meet with, in the way which thou goest, wearisomeness, painfulness, hunger, perils, nakedness, sword, lions, dragons, darkness, and, in a word, death, and what not.”
—Mr. Worldly Wiseman in The Pilgrim’s Progress, Chapter 1

Africa is still terra incognita on the West Coast’s map of the world. Learning that I with three female family members would be spending the summer in Egypt and South Africa, family and acquaintances reacted in a range from stereotyped but envying (“. . . lions and tigers and bears!”) to speechless (“What’s there?”) to alarmed about imagined perils “in that part of the world.” Yet we met little but graciousness there. And though Johannesburg’s razor wire was unnerving, we never felt ourselves at serious risk. We were careful—maybe we were lucky, because South Africa’s crime rate is indeed high. I think, too, the negative buzz on this side owes much to Americans’ generalized fear of foreigners (xenophobia) and distaste for any place that does not seem to share our culture, especially if Islamic. Color bias, of course, is not limited by geography. In South Africa, I found, crime is sensationalized by the white press, the real risks magnified by white paranoia over racial mixing, which is new; foreign governments have tapped into it, the UK warning its wayfarers: “Avoid isolated beaches and picnic spots across South Africa and stay in company.” That’s extreme. I bought a green gallibiyah in Luxor and look forward to wearing it on the front lawn in rural California. Now there’s a risk.