My Poor Austrian Students

Over the past few years, while working in a major European capital, I had the good fortune to work alongside local graduate student interns in American studies and history programs. In addition to their nearly flawless English, they brought to the table a deep understanding of American history and culture, our institutions and our role in the world. They brought to their work the same sort of enthusiasm one often encounters in American students intellectually enthralled with Europe. They were highly intelligent, motivated and clearly, by any standard, well educated.

Which was why it was so interesting to note that when it came to internal American matters, they found themselves at a loss. When an event occurred, and they plugged it into their matrix of knowledge, they came up with a conclusion that was almost always badly wrong. Concerned about this, we spent many hours over good beer discussing why. How could a person so well educated in our history, language and culture fail to understand the significance of contemporary events?

The answer, of course, is race. If you’re American, you already knew that. How can foreign students be expected to learn of matters of which we will not speak, not at all? The current Attorney General of the United States is almost never right about anything, but surely he was hitting that nail square on the head when he announced: 1) that on matters of race, the United States is a “nation of cowards;” and 2) that when it comes to his own view, when he says “my people” he doesn’t mean “Americans”, but “blacks.”

I could do nothing but feel sorry for them. All that effort! All that learning! All those years! And, despite it all, unable to answer even the most basic questions of American life correctly, when the right answers are available to the most simple among us.

Pop quiz!

Why do nearly all European-American professionals who live in the District of Columbia plan a move out of the District some time between the birth and the fourth year of their first child’s life?

Why do middle-class European-Americans commute an hour or more to work, from neighborhoods with sharply higher housing costs, when more inexpensive housing is available much closer to their jobs?

Why does a Latino man shooting and killing a young Black man grip the entire nation’s attention, including remarks from the President, when dozens of such events occur without similar results?

Oh, it’s easy to sit back in your red, white and blue chair and think such questions easy-peasy, but put yourself in those European students’ shoes for a moment. How would they know? How would they ever guess at the racial component of an over-eager hispanic do-gooder killing an apprentice standard-issue Black thug?

I mean, sir, really....I really don’t understand...there isn’t even a white person involved?

Ah, my poor students.