Ayesha Hazarika
(Picture: Daniel Hambury)When I was younger, I was obsessed with America. Like so many, I grew up on a television diet rich with American treats from Roseanne and The Cosby Show to The West Wing. Roseanne became a racist, “America’s Dad” was accused by dozens of women of sexual assault and Donald Trump became president. The American dream turned into a nightmare. Certainly for us liberals. I was never in any doubt that America was at its heart a gun-slinging, tough-talking, law and order obsessed, religious yet macho country. You only had to experience the queue for passport control at JFK in the early Noughties. It gave you a glimpse into what Guantanamo Bay must feel like.
But the fact that in amongst all this structural conservatism came shoots of change made them all the more powerful and full of promise. Much of this was of course cultural and was projected on our screens in an aspirational way — like The Cosby Show. When I saw this attractive, successful, middle class black family on screen, my mind was blown. That was the America I naively wanted to believe in. I felt that way when Barack Obama became president. I wept with joy at how far America had come and how this would change the world.
