I volunteer in a science museum from time to time. We have live animal programs occasionally and I’m honestly surprised at how many people are terrified of snakes.
First of all, the snakes that we show and allow people to touch are generally either corn snakes or ball pythons, both of which are non-venomous and extremely docile (and the museum animals are even moreso because they’re used to being handled). But we still get questions/comments like…
~ “Oh no, don’t let that thing near me, it’s gonna bite me!” No, it won’t. These snakes are so used to being around humans that they don’t consider us threatening. We wouldn’t show you an animal unless we were confident that it wouldn’t hurt you under normal circumstances. Even snakes in the wild won’t bite a non-prey animal unless provoked (for example, cottonmouths will display the white inside of their mouths as a scare tactic before biting).
~ “That snake wants to eat me!” Even this big ball python couldn’t eat you if it tried, and besides, it prefers smaller prey which we feed it anyway. Snakes only need to eat once a week or so.
~ “I don’t want to touch it, it looks slimy!” Snakes aren’t slimy. Their skin is shiny because of the scales, which are smooth and dry.
~ “Snakes creep me out…they’re poisonous!” Not all snakes are venomous. In fact, in many areas of the country, most of the native snake species are non-venomous. Where I live, five of the six native venomous snake species are pit vipers which are easily distinguished by the shape of their head.
Amusingly, it’s almost always the adults that freak out the most - a good number of the kids are brave enough to approach and touch the snakes. Their parents could learn a thing or two
Chinese Fortune Cookies do not come from China. They were invented in America, and in China, when you do rarely come across them, are called “American Fortune Cookies”
really, most foreign cuisine that Americans are famliar with are not actually eaten in those countries. Similarly, American foods in foreign lands like pizza get pretty strange (I mean, have you seen how the Italians make it?!:D)
Canadian bacon is rarely called that in Canada - what foreigners think of as Canadian bacon, we call back bacon or peameal bacon. What we know as “bacon” is the same bacon as in the US.
There are a lot of misconceptions about life in the Peace Corps. The first one that I come across a lot is that volunteers must all be really wonderful people, who just want to help a lot. The truth is that most volunteers are just ordinary folk who for whatever reason thought that Peace Corps would be a good experience. Maybe they wanted to travel, or have an adventure. There are plenty of PCVs who are total assholes.
The other is that…gosh, how can I say this…that being in the Peace Corps is really meaningful and fulfilling. Looking back at my experience, it was really meaningful, but on a day to day basis, it’s just a job. I worked as a teacher in a public school and it was often really frustrating. Many times, I felt like being there was a complete waste of time because the school system was so fucked up that even a brilliant teacher would not be able to work effectively in it.
I’ve often been asked if I think if I made a difference in my village. Fuck if I know. If one of my students (the oldest of whom are now in 12th grade) grows up to be the prime minister of Bulgaria, then I’ll crow about it forever, of course.
That doesn’t even go into (Americans’) exoticized notions of how ~enlightening~ it must be to live in a developing nation. They’re so much less materialistic than us! They’re closer to the land! They’re happier with less stuff! The truth is: being poor fucking sucks and people know it.
Have they changed the policy then? It’s been a (ahem) few decades for me, but there was, at the time, an increase of a few hundred bucks in a person’s monthly AFDC check for each child. And there were also, at the time, more than a few welfare moms who more than fit the stereotype of taking advantage of the program, along with those actively defrauding the system.
I can’t remember what states were involved, but there were some scams going on back in the 80s where people who lived close to some state lines were signing up for benefits in two different states. I absolutely abhorred my brief stint on welfare and I wasn’t even on full-bore benefits, but I remember being stunned that someone would endure it for not only regular benefits but then go through the process for two or three (or more, as some of them were going as far as using dead relatives identities and so on) fraud accounts as well.
I’ve not a clue what it’s like nowadays, but back “in the day” it was a humiliating horror. The ones who just blithely accept it as their due and that it’s just a normal lifelong way to make a living, rather than the stopgap “get back on one’s feet” measure it was intended to be, just blow my mind. How can they stand it? For me, it was utterly demoralizing and mortifying. But yet there they are, on the bus, talking loud and proud about their welfare lives and their benefits this, that, and the other.
Anecdotes of course aren’t data, but my cousin was one of those. At around 17 she purposely got pregnant (for the first time), went on the system and had a very comfortable “career” on welfare until her kids were grown and she was forced off. My aunt and uncle subsidized (under the table of course) everything that welfare didn’t pay for. So until she was in her early 40s she lived on a ranch raising horses on the taxpayers’ dime.
It’s not hard to see where people get their misconceptions about this subject.
That “redneck” is some sort of race or ethnic group, specifically southern.
It was (at least in my neck of the woods) just a term describing a people who behaved in a certain way, generally not a positive term. Then Jeff Foxworthy came along with his cutesy little comedy routine about it, and now it’s practically a protected class.
While we’re talking about origins of food, I love the origins of teppanyaki Japanese restaurants. Unlike most “ethnic” foods in America, teppanyaki is genuine – in that it did indeed originate in almost that exact format in Japan, but it was originally a Japanese inauthentic American restaurant. So teppanyaki is genuine Japanese inauthentic food
Perhaps there is difference between a ‘misconception’ and an ‘over generalization’.
My guess is that the majority of people who are PCV are kind, altruistically-motivated people who want to help and who probably did find in meaningful to some degree. However, that doesn’t mean every last PCV felt that way. There are probably other examples in this thread that are more likely over generalizations, than rampant misconceptions. Not to pick on your example- it just jumped out at me.
The Italians keep the pits in the olives on the pizza. Will somebody PLEASE explain that one to me? How exactly is that ever going to be a pleasant and natural pizza eating experience? What do you do, eat the olive separately? Or are Italians so adept at eating olives with pits in them that they can take a bite of pizza-with-olive and spit the pit out while enjoying the pizza? And not spitting masticated pizza crust on Aunt Margaret?
Yep. They’re also able to extract a fishbone or a grapeseed from their mouths without spitting it to the other end of the room or making a scene. I’ve known a few Americans who, when spitting something, projectile-spat it: that’s not how the Italians I’ve seen do it did it, it’s more of a “move it to the front of the mouth and take it out” kind of thing.
You’ll find similar customs in Spain and Portugal: I like my fish de-boned and my olives de-pitted, but it’s a matter of preference, not of utter inability to deal with such obstacles (as it would have been for the projectile-spitters, at least in polite company).
I’m constantly surprised by the misconceptions people (often on this board) have about the US economy. Specifically:
Our economy is collapsing
We don’t manufacture anything anymore
We are outsourcing all our jobs
The country is going bankrupt
China is going to pwn us
Fact of the matter is the US is the largest economy in the world, if you don’t count the entire EU. Our GDP is bigger than the next 4 or five national economies combined. We are the largest manufacturer in the world. We have the highest per capita GDP of any country with a population greater than 50 million people. The US Dollar is the reserve currency for the world with over 60% of all currency held. Sure we have problems, but people don’t seem to realize how strong our economy is relative to everyone elses.
IMHO the biggest reason for misconceptions such as this is due to the misconception that there’s only x amount of wealth to go around, that it’s zero sum. There’s no conception that wealth is created. Instead we have people (even educated people!) that fret that income disparity and wealth disparity are inherent evils.
This becomes a social cause that can affect even otherwise good minds. It doesn’t matter that standards of living – even for America’s poor – are better than they ever have been historically; it’s only important that it’s not the same standard of living that those damned rich assholes enjoy. This cascades into all of the misconceptions that you mention above.
Yes and no. Whilst it’s obviously better to have wealth levels higher for your poorest people, the income disparity in a nation does have a tangible and negative impact for those at the bottom. A good read on this subject is the Spirit Level that compares the social outcomes for societies with greater and smaller income inequality, and those with higher disparity (even if their absolute level of wealth was higher) did worse in things like crime, poor health, mental health issues, teenage pregnancy etc.
Welfare reform was finalized in 1996 and enacted July 1st of 1997. What it did was create TANF (Temporary Aid to Needy Families) with a “clock” of 60 months, it was designed to help a parent get a child up to school age. The 60 month clock is the same if you have one child or ten, the parent only gets aid for 60 months, the clock can be stopped and restarted if the parent finds employment but loses it again before they’ve used up all their months.
On my caseload I had a single mother with nine children who’s clock had run out, she worked full time at Arbys and the older children watched the younger ones; she was eligible for food stamps only.
Besides what Balthisar said, I think one reason have the misconception about the state of US manufacturing is that people go by what they see at stores like Wal-Mart. And there you can hardly see anything made in the US. But there’s a lot more that is manufactured than what you can buy at Wal-Mart. Especially expensive stuff like aircraft and medical technolgy, which the US excels at.
