Ivy League Ignorance

 My "best friend" took one look at my now wife and said with a touch of disdain, "Does she even speak English?"  Needless to say, my wife doesn't like him too much.

But he was a bit "ghetto", and many would have taken one look at him, judged and thought, 'His ignorant attitude is not surprising'.  I, however, was a first year student at Colombia, and many considered us "Ivy Leaguers" anything but ignorant.

The truth is I was someone who could get into Yale, but I was also someone who actually thought the terms Puerto Ricans, Mexicans and Hispanics were interchangeable 🤦🏼‍♂️.  I was a Kluge Scholar who, according to Columbia University's website 'distinguish themselves for their remarkable academic and personal achievements, dynamism, intellectual curiosity, the originality and independence of their thinking, and the diversity that stems from their different cultures and their varied educational experiences', but I was in reality, an ignorant person - Ivy League Ignorance.

Where did you live? What did you see?

Not far from my home in the Philly Area, I saw with my own eyes a now infamous "when ordering speak English" sign.  Perhaps the most famous cheeksteak place in the world had the sign in place for all to see from 2006 to 2016, when the owner's son decided to take it down.  The owner, Joey Vento, died in 2011, but apparently it was his dying wish for the sign to stay in place after his death.  No comment.

In the years to come, Pew Research Center would conduct a study in which a whopping 64 percent of foreign born Hispanics in the U.S. said, "it has been more difficult in recent years to be Hispanic in the U.S.".  In addition, about 40 percent of all Hispanics (foreign born and U.S born) said that they either had been treated unfairly because of their background, criticized for speaking Spanish in public, told to go back home to their home country or called offensive names.

Regarding an Ivy League Ignorance of the world in general, George Barnett, Ph.D., global communications researcher and professor at the University of Buffalo is reported as saying, "People from other countries and any well-traveled, well-read U.S. citizen know that, as a group, Americans are virtually ignorant of anything beyond our own borders".   

Whether or not that is true, National Geographic published a Gallup study commissioned by the Council on Foreign Relations, titled, U.S Adults' Knowledge About the World, which stated that at one point only 55 percent of adults surveyed knew that South Africa was the country that had apartheid as its official national policy and more recently only 47 percent knew that Afghanistan was the country that gave safe haven to Al-Qaeda before 9/11.

A quick search on YouTube for "What's the dumbest thing an American has ever said to you?" reveals a series of videos that are truly hilarious (watch for language).  My favorite is part 3 at the 5:11 mark where a woman from Switzerland who moved to the U.S. explains that she was on the phone with her friend in Germany when she said goodbye and hung up.  A man nearby asked her, "Why is your friend going to bed so early?  It's only like 3 pm."  She proceeded to explain how Germany was 6 hours ahead due to the time zone difference.  The man looked really confused and then asked, "If Germany is 6 hours ahead, why didn't they warn anybody about 9/11?"

Nice!

When we're supposed to be smart but we haven't cared enough to learn, that can be termed an Ivy League Ignorance.  Ignorance is defined as a lack of knowledge, yet a child isn't often called ignorant, but if anything, innocent.  We think ignorant he who be cocky, he who love his box and he who mocks.

- attributed to Benjamin Franklin

“Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.”  Maybe we should travel, if we can.  'See the world'.  'Learn a language', they say.  May it matter in the slightest, that inability to bear one's soul with 80 percent of humankind.  Dare we entertain the unimaginable limitation the current state of language imposes on both the individual and collective mind.  I am of the opinion, that sooner or later, the truly smart man learns how dumb he actually is.  But whether dumb or smart, braindead or brainwashed, may I rinse my hands of the choice of ignorance.