A group of Georgetown University students said they were “embarrassed” to be American in shocking campus interviews ahead of the July 4 holiday weekend — but none of them could name a better country to live in.
Ophelie Jacobson, a reporter for Campus Reform, surveyed students from the private college in DC Friday about whether they were “proud” of the stars and stripes.
But instead of getting patriotic responses in the lead-up to America’s birthday, the reporter found that the majority of them struggled to say they were proud of being American — with several even admitting they were “embarrassed.”
One student told Jacobson, whose conservative news site is a higher-education watchdog, said: “I think a lot of things about this country are really embarrassing: racist history, colonization, even currently, just what’s going on with politics and the cops.”
Another student said: “I think that’s a complicated question for me. I think most of the time, no … at least over the past four years — it’s been tricky to love to be an American.”
Jacobson also asked students if they think the US is the greatest country in this world.
“To be a white person, it’s pretty good to live here. But overall, I don’t think it’s the greatest country in the world,” a student told her.
“America is not really known for being the most hospitable place,” another one said.
Another woman concurred, saying that “a lot of times, it’s just embarrassing” to be American because the US claims “to support everyone, but we continue to support Israel, which [is] dislocating quite a few Palestinian people.”
Students also admitted they would be willing to move out of the country — or even go so far as renouncing their citizenship because of how they felt about the nation.
However, when asked if they could name a better country, nobody could come up with an answer.
One interviewee said a “tiny European country that’s thriving” might be better than the US while another just said, “Europe.”
Lily Tang Williams, a US citizen who immigrated from China, told “Fox & Friends” on Saturday that she felt “sorry for those young students.”
“They remind me of my past, living in communist China for 23 years, and I was indoctrinated to believe everything the government told me and that Chairman Mao [Zedong] told me,” she said, according to Fox News.
She added that “there are millions of people who would like to switch places with them.”