USA is called country of “melting pot.”

The title of this post comes from one of my sister Fadima's classmates' interpretation of their English text on “Immigration in the USA.” The text itself was boring, wildly inaccurate and completely irrelevant to Malian students' lives and included gems like “some immigrants came to America to get rich, other were brought and sold. (slaves),” but it capped off a couple days in which I had been spending even more time than usual talking about the US with Malians, which is always a very interesting experience.

If Obama, or indeed any American politician, wants to feel good about him/herself and our country's image abroad, he/she should have a chat with Malians. The US is still wildly popular here (even more so since Obama's election) and despite the Muslim supermajority and the US' role in propping up the Malian dictator Moussa Traoré (no relation) back in the day, America is still pretty much the promised land. We talk about the US just about every day, either describing our own home or answering our friends' questions or both. Sheik says there are two cities in the US that interest him, Las Vegas and Hollywood. Our rapper friends ask about how easy it is to get a music contract. And everyone agrees that America is beautiful, everyone is welcome there, and no one is racist. In a somewhat in-depth conversation with Robert two days ago, he explained that he though America was a blessed country because it says “In God we trust” on our money and therefore every time you spend a dollar you are blessing someone. (If anyone I took radical theory with is reading this, you must know I pictured all of your reactions to these statements).

All of this leads to the interesting question of how to respond to these statements. They tend to be followed with “n'est-ce pas?” (right?) so my confirmation is required. For example: no one in America is racist and it is easy to move there...n'est-ce pas?” I don't enjoy badmouthing my country and I don't want people to get the impression I hate America, because I don't. I'm actually proud to be an American and treasure my blue passport, but explaining the relationship between that statement and my serious issues with many MANY things about the country is difficult even in English. Plus, it's kind of hard to tell a Malian I think the American government is dysfunctional because, frankly, my issues with the government add up to what we affectionately term “first world problems.” This doesn't mean that I'm going to change my mind about partisan bickering or the much larger issues of race, class, gender, etc facing Americans, or think of them as any less important, they just can't easily enter into these conversations. Also, I have to remember that in the “not racist” category we're largely being compared with France, which explains a lot. So what I wind up doing really depends on who I'm talking to. I tell Sheik about LA and Vegas and joke with him that he'd lose all his money if he hit the casinos. I tell our rapper buddies that it is definitely hard to get a music contract, but sure if they ever come to America we can go clubbing in LA. But when I talk to Robert and Baïssou about serious things I try to explain how I feel about being from a country that exports MTV and the effects of cotton subsidies that keep Malian farmers teetering on the brink of catastrophe, but that it is also founded on ideals that I believe are hugely important. The problem, really, is that if you really believe that all [people] are created equal, you have to believe that extends across all boundaries of race, class, gender and nationality. This is, of course, universalist and therefore open to all kinds of problems, but it is one of the great ideas. Therefore, I will wear my Obama pagne with pride and keep explaining to people that rap videos do NOT represent the lives of most African Americans.