A Puerto Rican In Washington D.C.

Tourists tend to find hard to adapt to other cultures, but it’s something that should be done due to respect.  While walking through the street in other countries, as a tourist you observe the vast differences you might have with the people that live there. As a Puerto Rican, I consider myself quite close to the Americans but the differences in culture are explicit. The perception of tourists might change from place to place; in Washington D.C. how the tourists are treated might be quite unpleasant.

The relationship between the people that live in D.C. and the tourists is one of antipathy. The taxi drivers who deal with tourists everyday do not show any interest in sharing a nice conversation with them. Myself, being a tourist felt discriminated. Taxi drivers left you waiting when called or simply said no when you waved your hand. They made questions in a rare way as if we were too different to them. I used family members to go on their own and evaluate how they were treated also. I concluded that they just didn’t enjoy tourists. There was one driver that focused on talking about the bad English accent that the Puerto Ricans have. It’s absurd that they complain about our English, when we are more versatile in languages than most of them.

White House - Washington, D.C

I continued to evaluate how we were treated or just how we were looked at. While riding the Metro I noticed how African American stared at my Puerto Rican friends and me; it made me feel quite uncomfortable. Usually our culture treats tourists different. I’ve had the opportunity of speaking with tourists here in Puerto Rico and they’ve explained how they love our charisma.

I believe that in the island we sometimes are nicer to foreigners than to other island civilians. Because of what I’ve seen my whole life I was quite shocked at Washington D.C. with this behavior. Soon after taking a look around I remembered the Ugly American. We talked in class about how this term refers to the Americans that visit and criticize every aspect of our culture. I noticed that it wasn’t just present when they visited, but also when we came to their place. The taxi driver that criticized our accent was just the best example I could find.  The discrimination just experiences I think was majorly by the othered African American cultures, because of the