It was the summer before my first year in high school and I had just arrived in Dublin, Ireland, from the suburbs of Philadelphia, PA.  I would be there for three weeks at a program for talented Irish youth learning about archeology.  I had not slept at all that night on the plane, and barely the night before.  It did not really hit me that I was going to Ireland, a place I had never been to and did not know what to expect from, until my plane was landing.  Instead of that typical foggy, rainy green place people talk about, it was a warm, sunny day.

That first day I, along with a few other Americans, was sitting outside talking with a group of Irish people in the program.  The first thing they asked us was what we thought

of Michael Jackson.  When did he become a symbol of America? Did they actually think that we were concerned about his personal life?  We had to explain that we really did not think or care about him at all. To us he was just a celebrity.  We did not think of him as an American or even an “American” celebrity.  This got me to thinking what do people think of Americans?

Here are the statistics on

Stereotyping America