Opinion
 

Bigotry shouldn't be forced on kids

By Matt Bean

A cartoon festival was held in January in the town of Carquefou in northwest France. Although I admit I can't find the location on a map, I do know what took place at this little shindig: School kids of all ages competed in a contest to illustrate their visions of the United States.

As you might imagine, the results weren't good.

Now, I admit that I'm no fan of France. I'll be the first to tell you that it's a worthless country with few redeeming qualities, the best of which is that there's a huge ocean between it and us.

However, before you reflexively fire up your e-mail client to send me hate mail, I'd like to say that this contest got me thinking about a number of things.

Was I aware that a huge chunk of the world dislikes, even loathes, the United States? Of course I was, but I didn't care. In fact, I still don't care -- especially about what France thinks, and they've actively hated us for some time.

The problem with hatred like that, however, is that it's cyclic. It gets passed down from parents to children, and nothing ever gets done about it. I didn't give much thought to that until I read how the French children portrayed us. Allow me to elaborate on a few of the entries.

One student drew three hands: one balled into a fist, representing Stalin's regime; another with palm outstretched in a Nazi salute; and a third grasping a cross, representing the United States and President Bush specifically. I find it quite disturbing that the child felt the need to include us in his take on the "Axis of Evil."

Another student drew Uncle Sam smoking a stogie while riding on the back of a motorcycle with an American flag attached to the back. Not too bad, you say? Well, this motorcycle's front wheel was Earth, and it was flattening a screaming Statue of Liberty (a gift to us from France). To this child, we're running over liberty and using the rest of the world to do it.

Many students drew American citizens as extremely obese and gorging themselves on fast foods and sodas, particularly McDonald's hamburgers and Coca-Cola. Another popular theme was illustrating Bush as a liar or a monster.

I was shocked. I suppose it's only logical the children of France would see us that way, but sometimes one needs a good slap in the face to see things clearly. My cheek is bright red and stinging.

Children have no basis to hate us except what they are taught by their parents, teachers and the media to which they are exposed. Children do not begin to hate things for reasons of their own.

The next generation of people is being taught to hate. This is not just a problem in France. It's a problem here, and in many other countries.

I never thought about it before, but now I realize I certainly wouldn't want to raise my kids to have an arbitrary prejudice. It's one thing for an adult to have distaste for something, but when that kind of bigotry manifests itself in an otherwise innocent child, it's a sign that there is something fundamentally wrong with society.

This is the point in the column where I'd like to say that I'm extending an olive branch to France, but I won't be doing that. If we're lucky, though, one day my kids might.

Bean, a columnist for The Daily Cougar, 
can be reached at me@mattbean.com.