To ask why Americans are so loud?

[MrsMattBomer]

We've got some American relatives and their friends visiting today. My god, they're loud. They've commented several times at how quiet and restrained British TV shows are and even when just having a conversation with us they sound sooo much louder.

My eardrums feel like they're going to burst!

And there is definitely a feeling that Americans don't like you insulting their country, as shown by your replies on this thread

OP, every American I know (including myself) will criticise the US's many faults at great length, and will happily self-deprecate. That is different from smiling benignly while people from other nations repeat misinformation. There is a lot of real anti-American feeling on Mumsnet, which can be pretty hurtful. Many things which you and others have said are just not true- for instance, flag burning is not illegal, but protected by the constitution.

I realise that there are also a lot of insular, small-minded Americans who want to "Make America great again".

Similarly there are a lot of narrow minded British people, so I don't agree with your statement:
Any Brit will join in with you in mocking Britain as will the French, generally. If you were living in Germany (for instance) and a group of Germans started repeating untrue things about English people, the NHS, etc, I am not sure that every English expat would join in in a good humoured manner.

I have lived in England for 18 years and love so much about your wonderful country, but I don't think the narrow minded and misinformed attitudes people have towards foreign ways of doing things is anything to be proud of.

Not my (American) aunt, omg, if anyone on my FB says critical things about USA or Americans as a group she gets REALLY huffy. There are others like that on my FB, too. Aunt is a staunch Republican who lives in a staunch rarely travelled Republican bubble.

tbh, MN is much more PC & less critical of Americans than a lot of rest of British. BBC radio used to say many pointed anti-American things.

ime, Americans do implicitly believe that their country is the best in the world & everyone knows it. (shrug). I was genuinely to find out that most people in the world quietly think their origin is the best culture/country ever. I suspect I was more blinkered than most, though. (because I don't read people very well, not because I was raised in a complacent bubble)

Restless, I'm not being funny, but grouping people by "race" always strikes me as very dodgy. We are the human race, then there's cultures & skin tones.

I suppose the word "race" seems to imply that characteristics are entrenched within that skin colour. Obviously that's bollocks, as if you birth and raise a girl in America you could get Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Margaret Cho, Alice Waters etc. In a multicultural society it is very obvious that people's behaviours reflect their society (or micro-culture), not a predisposition to behaving in a certain way, or having certain talents or interests.

I've got to say, while Canadians can be racist, I have never, ever heard anyone hear use the term "race" to describe an ethnicity, skin colour, or ancestral origin.

It just sounds like eugenics to me. I realize loads of people use the term & definitely don't mean it to sound odd. But I'm hoping the term will fade away.

I have a large extended American family, spread from Seattle to Baltimore, of such mixed ethnic origins as to constitute a mini-UN. Not a loudmouth or redneck among them. The men display that wonderfully courtly behaviour that I have always thought of as American, and are quietly and respectfully spoken.

Well I've got rednecks on rednecks in my family but a lot of them are okay despite it. (Some are assholes.) :o

Lizzie excellent point.

Slightly different aspect. When Dd was little she was a little noisy terror, ran us ragged. In a cafe one day, everyone tut-tutting at her behaviour. American lady came over to chat and said dd was amazing, delightful!! Saw dd in a new light after that

lizzieoak

In England and Wales we have the Equality Act 2010 which makes race and other forms of discrimination unlawful (i.e. actionable in a civil court). Whilst it rewrote some of the predecessor legislation, a lot of the concepts around race discrimination came from the Race Relations Act 1976.

The definition of "race" in the Equality Act is at

Section (9) which states: Race

(1)Race includes—
(a)colour;
(b)nationality;
(c)ethnic or national origins.

Whilst I know nothing about Canadian discrimination laws, I would be very surprised if the definitions were much different. The Canadian Human Rights1985 mentions race discrimination.

BTW Happy Christmas!

Justice, it may well use that term in legislation (& we have a very good human rights code), but what I meant is that we don't use that term in daily speech. And from what I've seen (thought Toronto & parts of Vancouver are an exception) we're more integrated than American cities. Historical reasons probably.