neurological dryer lint

there's a running joke about me at work... my cube's nametag for a while said:

Justin Hall
(From the United States Of America)

because of a phone call i was on once with a company from the netherlands... specifically i was trying to resolve some shipping problems with a piece of network equipment. i got connected to the woman who was holding up the order, and, being that she was in this strange european country i assumed she wasn't great with english, so i announced myself on the phone as justin hall "from the united states of america", in my best speaking-to-a-four-year-old tone of voice. she sounded used to this kind of treatment in her response - in flawless english, of course.

since then i've been more self-conscious about it, and yet still notice the phenomena. i spent much of the day on the phone with people in other countries today, trying to arrange for the installation of equipment in their datacenters. i noticed in myself a very troubling shift of mindset whenever the person on the con call spoke in broken or halting english - i immediately assumed they were unintelligent. even more painful to me is knowing i've done it all my life - with classmates, professors, dudes on TV, strangers, people manning tech support phone lines (although...)

i listened to nofx's usa-holes on the way to the gym tonight, and it kind of brought this all to a head. what the heck is my problem? i remember this mental perspective, this instant classification of foreigners and non-english-speakers as slow or incompetent, from when i was very young, but i don't think my parents taught it to me, because they're not like that. but i have no idea where i picked it up. did i learn it from america? i'm very aware that i'm not the only one with this flaw, and i'm starting to think that our culture sort of raises us in this way. i am an arrogant american with a superiority complex, just like (most of) the rest of us.

while our government's foreign policy often embarasses me and makes me cringe at the thought of how it makes us look to the rest of the world... seeing this in myself disgusts me even more. i'm such a sheltered little kid, pretending a global, inclusive perspective because my minor's in international business and i have internet access. but place me in a foreign environment where i have to depend on people from a different country, interact with a different culture, and i go all fish-out-of-water and freak out.

put me in an environment with foreigner playing and i'll be a jukebox hero. with stars in my eyes.