by João Vicente Cardoso Kohem
During this semester, I was confronted several times by my vision of people from other countries and the stereotypes created around them. And, although this certainly had a huge impact on me, the main reflections in my head were not about that subject. In fact, they were about how these people see my country – and how I see it myself and its culture.
But, to start, I would like to define what is culture. Well, I am not able to speak for everyone, but, for me, culture is defined by everything that human beings can create not necessarily coming from a biological necessity or something like that. It is a reflection of those things you can find in the most diverse societies around the world: from things like sculptures and tools to our own political system itself. From that, I would like to ask you (rhetorically) two questions: what are stereotypes? And how they are created?
First of all, stereotypes are the images built by the common sense throughout time about one specific issue. Almost one hundred percent of the time these generalized images are used to reinforce prejudice and limit the view of those who do not know certain groups of people and, consequently, do not know so much about several cultures around the world. And that is the most important thing to say right now: stereotypes aren’t necessarily wrong, but they show just a small (and usually negative) part of a major and more diverse truth concerning one specific subject.
Based on that, I thought that the stereotyped view of Brazil as a tropical and violent place – where people can have sex all the time while monkeys are passing nearby – had already been overcome in the past few years. Unfortunately, I was wrong. As my classmates and I could see in the presentations of the results from our interviews with the PPE students (PPE means Progama de Português para Estrangeiros, a program offered by the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul to those students who come from another country and don’t have Portuguese as a native language), the film industry still sells worldwide this image of a poor country, full of violent conflicts. And we indeed have these problems in our country – and we certainly must talk about them. But Brazilian culture has so much more to offer to the world than just that.
As Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie once said, we can’t let the single stories endure throughout generations. Showing the good things concerning different countries around the world (not only our own) is vital in times when we can spread information much faster than other generations could. To finish, I would like to thank the PPE students for giving a chance to Brazil. May you cultivate good and flavorous memories of our country while you have the opportunity to stay here.
Also, thank you for not letting the single story live. You are always very welcome in Brazil.
During this semester, I was confronted several times by my vision of people from other countries and the stereotypes created around them. And, although this certainly had a huge impact on me, the main reflections in my head were not about that subject. In fact, they were about how these people see my country – and how I see it myself and its culture.
But, to start, I would like to define what is culture. Well, I am not able to speak for everyone, but, for me, culture is defined by everything that human beings can create not necessarily coming from a biological necessity or something like that. It is a reflection of those things you can find in the most diverse societies around the world: from things like sculptures and tools to our own political system itself. From that, I would like to ask you (rhetorically) two questions: what are stereotypes? And how they are created?
First of all, stereotypes are the images built by the common sense throughout time about one specific issue. Almost one hundred percent of the time these generalized images are used to reinforce prejudice and limit the view of those who do not know certain groups of people and, consequently, do not know so much about several cultures around the world. And that is the most important thing to say right now: stereotypes aren’t necessarily wrong, but they show just a small (and usually negative) part of a major and more diverse truth concerning one specific subject.
Based on that, I thought that the stereotyped view of Brazil as a tropical and violent place – where people can have sex all the time while monkeys are passing nearby – had already been overcome in the past few years. Unfortunately, I was wrong. As my classmates and I could see in the presentations of the results from our interviews with the PPE students (PPE means Progama de Português para Estrangeiros, a program offered by the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul to those students who come from another country and don’t have Portuguese as a native language), the film industry still sells worldwide this image of a poor country, full of violent conflicts. And we indeed have these problems in our country – and we certainly must talk about them. But Brazilian culture has so much more to offer to the world than just that.
As Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie once said, we can’t let the single stories endure throughout generations. Showing the good things concerning different countries around the world (not only our own) is vital in times when we can spread information much faster than other generations could. To finish, I would like to thank the PPE students for giving a chance to Brazil. May you cultivate good and flavorous memories of our country while you have the opportunity to stay here.
Also, thank you for not letting the single story live. You are always very welcome in Brazil.