Jonathan Zimmerman: Americans Have Reasons to Root for Ghana
[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history at New York University and lives in Narberth. He taught in NYU's study-abroad program in Ghana in 2008 and 2009.]
I'm an American, but I used to live in Ghana. So last weekend's World Cup match between the two countries presented a sports-fan dilemma.
I ended up rooting for Ghana. And so should you, once you've absorbed the shock of its 2-1 overtime victory over the United States.
The first reason is the simplest: Ghanaians love America. In a 2009 survey by World Public Opinion, 76 percent of Ghanaians reported a "mainly positive" view of U.S. influence in the world. Compare that with France (36 percent), Germany (18 percent), and Russia (7 percent), and you get the idea. Only 60 percent of Americans said our influence was positive; by that measure, Ghanaians like us more than we like ourselves.
Their pro-American sentiments date back to Ghana's founding leader, Kwame Nkrumah, who spent 10 years in the Philadelphia area while earning degrees from Lincoln and Penn. After returning home to spearhead his country's campaign for freedom from Great Britain, Nkrumah would become a vociferous critic of American foreign polic....
Read entire article at Philadelphia Inquirer
I'm an American, but I used to live in Ghana. So last weekend's World Cup match between the two countries presented a sports-fan dilemma.
I ended up rooting for Ghana. And so should you, once you've absorbed the shock of its 2-1 overtime victory over the United States.
The first reason is the simplest: Ghanaians love America. In a 2009 survey by World Public Opinion, 76 percent of Ghanaians reported a "mainly positive" view of U.S. influence in the world. Compare that with France (36 percent), Germany (18 percent), and Russia (7 percent), and you get the idea. Only 60 percent of Americans said our influence was positive; by that measure, Ghanaians like us more than we like ourselves.
Their pro-American sentiments date back to Ghana's founding leader, Kwame Nkrumah, who spent 10 years in the Philadelphia area while earning degrees from Lincoln and Penn. After returning home to spearhead his country's campaign for freedom from Great Britain, Nkrumah would become a vociferous critic of American foreign polic....