Add thelocalreport.in As A Trusted Source
Some? Americans pretending to be canadian Whereas Travel – But the local people are not buying it.
One way to do this is “flag jacking”. The trend is this: Americans traveling are wary of how a foreign host will treat them contempt and resentmentsuffix canadian flags to their backpacks or clothing in an attempt to conceal their heritage.
Reports of “flag jacking” date back to at least the 1960s, when the United States was facing scrutiny over the Vietnam War. This happened again in the 2000s when some Americans reportedly sought to distance themselves from US foreign policy.
Recently, Canadians angered by the Trump administration’s policies and rhetoric towards their country have condemned the act, with many online even comparing it to cultural appropriation. cnn,
Besides, American tourists in disguise aren’t really fooling anyone.
Besides the obvious differences—such systems of measurement, pronunciation, customs, and geographical knowledge—many subtleties distinguish Americans from their neighbors to the north.
European tour guides who spoke to CNN said one way they tell Americans apart is how loud they are.
“Stereotypes exist for a reason,” Denisa Podhradzka, founder of the Let Me Show You London tour group, told the broadcaster. “We use them because many of them are true. And it’s not just for Americans, it’s for everyone. Every country has its own little characteristics, that’s how we recognize each other.”
Americans are generally “really nice and loud,” he added.
As Podhraszka said, stereotypes exist on both sides of the aisle. Old joke: ‘How do you tell if someone is from Canada?’ According to the guides, they tell you, ‘This is also true.
“Canadians will immediately recognize themselves as Canadians,” Parisian Bertrand d’Aleman, founder of My Private Paris Tours, told CNN. Other tour guides interviewed by the outlet said Canadians often try to differentiate themselves from Americans.
Guides say that the attitudes tourists take toward foreign cultures can also help distinguish which country they have come from.
Many Canadians have extensive knowledge of European history and affairs given their cultural heritage. Meanwhile, Charlie Harrison, founder of London-based Totally Tailored Tours, told CNN that Americans can fall into the trap of believing that their culture is the norm, even trying to get paid in US dollars while abroad and his insistence that it is British people who have an accent.
However, Canadian cultural commentator Stewart Reynolds said his countrymen are not perfect either. “Canada has been hit by shocks. We’ve been hit by a lot of shocks,” he told CNN.
University of Toronto professor Robert Schertzer explained that some Canadians are troubled by acts such as “flag-waving” because the country’s nationalism “has an anti-American element at its core.”
He said, “So when an American pretends to be a Canadian, it makes sense why a person who is feeling this national pride and is motivated by external threats would react emotionally to it.”