by Gabrielle Cidade
To my future students, I hope that you all read this article with respect and please, try to keep an open mind.
When I think about culture, I see something unique and sometimes something that a lot of people have in common because they live in the same country or region. But at the same time, it can be different for each person.
One example of this would be the concept that North Americans do not prolong eye contact during a conversation, but South Americans do. If you all think wisely, you will notice that this could be just a stereotype and also a personal choice. You get to choose if you want to keep eye contact during a conversation no matter where you came from.
Here you can see how a stereotype is created. All you have to do is take a personal aspect and transform it into the entire culture.
But we can see that this doesn't always work out just by the fact that people outside Brazil think Brazilians start dating as early as twelve years old, and, yes, some people really do, but we can not say that this is the whole story.
The exact same thing happens when Chimamanda Adichie said in her speech “The Danger of a Single Story” that her American roommate was shocked by knowing she spoke English so well or by the fact that Chimamanda’s “tribal music” was actually a song from Mariah Carey.
One information can not be the whole story, you can not say that you know the whole culture just because you saw in somewhere that all the members of a country do one specific thing.
One solution to the problem with stereotypes is to fight back, and we Brazilians need to push ourselves against the stereotypes made about our country, like the ones shown in the documentary “The Foreign Eye”. Because, if you are Brazilian and you see someone representing your country as a place where you find “ beautiful naked women on the beach” and “monkeys everywhere”, you have the right to make a bad critique via internet complaining about all the stereotypes and recommending anyone who wants to produce a movie about some country to visit the country first.
I learned in my second semester at the University that people and countries are more than just stereotypes. We are a set of individual choices and if we stop seeing everything as a multiple set, we would see how some stereotypes might be wrong.
I wish, for all my future students the same experience that I received during my academic life. Open your heart to the outside world and experience knowing both different countries and the people who live there.
To my future students, I hope that you all read this article with respect and please, try to keep an open mind.
When I think about culture, I see something unique and sometimes something that a lot of people have in common because they live in the same country or region. But at the same time, it can be different for each person.
One example of this would be the concept that North Americans do not prolong eye contact during a conversation, but South Americans do. If you all think wisely, you will notice that this could be just a stereotype and also a personal choice. You get to choose if you want to keep eye contact during a conversation no matter where you came from.
Here you can see how a stereotype is created. All you have to do is take a personal aspect and transform it into the entire culture.
But we can see that this doesn't always work out just by the fact that people outside Brazil think Brazilians start dating as early as twelve years old, and, yes, some people really do, but we can not say that this is the whole story.
The exact same thing happens when Chimamanda Adichie said in her speech “The Danger of a Single Story” that her American roommate was shocked by knowing she spoke English so well or by the fact that Chimamanda’s “tribal music” was actually a song from Mariah Carey.
One information can not be the whole story, you can not say that you know the whole culture just because you saw in somewhere that all the members of a country do one specific thing.
One solution to the problem with stereotypes is to fight back, and we Brazilians need to push ourselves against the stereotypes made about our country, like the ones shown in the documentary “The Foreign Eye”. Because, if you are Brazilian and you see someone representing your country as a place where you find “ beautiful naked women on the beach” and “monkeys everywhere”, you have the right to make a bad critique via internet complaining about all the stereotypes and recommending anyone who wants to produce a movie about some country to visit the country first.
I learned in my second semester at the University that people and countries are more than just stereotypes. We are a set of individual choices and if we stop seeing everything as a multiple set, we would see how some stereotypes might be wrong.
I wish, for all my future students the same experience that I received during my academic life. Open your heart to the outside world and experience knowing both different countries and the people who live there.