Do Americans think Europeans are rude? Why?

Peter Wade

Sort of, yeah.

There are several layers to this.

The first is that, in the US, it’s perfectly acceptable to sit down with someone you don’t know, and just start talking to them. Particularly about intimate medical problems. In most of Europe, it isn’t. And in some European countries it’s really really isn’t.

So when an American tries to strike up a conversation with strangers, they often get rebuffed. Not knowing any of the socially acceptable ways to start talking to people you don’t know (e.g. in UK, talking about the weather, or a mutual problem, or when in a queue) they end up feeling isolated and rejected.

The second problem is that some topics and behaviours which are fine in the US are not in Europe. In the US talking about your achievements, your wealth, your possessions, is harmless banter. In most of Europe it’s cringeworthy. Similarly, when Europeans criticise their own country or government, it’s an extension of trust, and an invitation to compare and contrast with criticisms of your own country. It’s not an invitation to enthusiastically agree that the US is better. And when Americans enjoy themselves loudly in public, they’re doing so because that’s seen almost as generosity in the US, sharing good cheer in public with others, filling up an otherwise quiet or empty public space. In Europe, where people live much closer together, public spaces are smaller and need to be shared, so being loud isn’t bad exactly, but it is giving the people around you no choice.

And the third problem is that, for some Americans, any criticism is too much. Many are raised with the idea that their own country is objectively the best in the world, and the envy of all. And when the reality of meeting foreigners doesn’t measure up to that, they can get quite aggressive about it. Hence why Americans are always putting criticism from others down to envy and jealousy, rather than admitting the possibility that others may not see the US as perfect.

So when Europeans criticise America along with all the other countries,

..it’s seen as some strange aberrant obsession with the US, rather than just being familiar with other countries and being willing to talk about their merits and flaws.

But the biggest difference of all is universalism. In the US, there’s the right way to do things, and if it is the right way to do things in the US, it’s the right way to do things all over the world. In Europe, it’s accepted that different countries will want to do things in different ways, and there’s nothing wrong with that. (If only because the alternative is yet another war.) This doesn’t make Europeans any more accepting or happier about the differences between countries, but they do see it as a difference, and one which potentially teaches them as much about their own culture and it does about those in other countries. For many from the US, where things are not relative, but either right or wrong, the only reason for anyone to deviate from the freely available US pattern is that there is something wrong with them. That’s not necessarily a problem, and heck we all have flaws, and some of them are charming, but those differences will always be flaws, ready to be fixed.