Xenophobia is alive and well
Posted in Random Musings on 27. Apr, 2011
Hi all,
I hope that you are well, wherever you are. Rio is experiencing heavy seasonal rains and flooding. I’ll check the news and give you an update shortly.
But that’s not what I want to chat about today.
I guess it had to happen. After writing this blog (sporadically) for almost 2 years, I received my first piece of hate mail.
Oh, sometimes readers have disagreed with me, or taken me to task for on having my facts in good order, as when Gary recently filled me in on the efforts of various US states to better control handguns after I said nothing was being done.
But yesterday I received my first out-and-out “Yankee -go-home” comment from a Bruno Marques in response to my post The New World Order. This is a bit surprising. I was fully prepared for some Americans to make a run at me, but not a Brazilian.
The comment was short if not so sweet. What is more bothersome than the comment itself is that I’m pretty sure Bruno didn’t bother to actually read the post in its entirety – or my other posts for that matter – or he would understand that I love Brazil and often take a Brazilian point of view. I live here legally, and plan to stay.
But there are xenophobes everywhere. I grew up primarily in the American South, and believe me when I say that that part of the US has more than its fair share of uninformed fools. But there, as everywhere, most folks are decent and reasonably tolerant, and avoid judging a person based on where he or she happened through chance to be born. Most folks – and certainly most Brazilians – have a healthy curiosity about individuals with different backgrounds.
I will choose to take the view that Bruno’s vitriol is directed more at American foreign policies than at me personally, since we’ve never met and, as I noted above, he doesn’t seem to have actually read my blog.
For any of you Americans considering a visit here, I will just add that the VAST majority of Brazilians are friendly, tolerant, and open-minded. Very much so.
Must run of to classes.
Até mais, guys,
John
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John—you are absolutely right….there are xenophobes and ‘nationalists’ in every country and thank goodness they are in a minority. I have always found the majority of Brazilians I have known over the last 30 years to be friendly, courteous, and tolerant—although I have heard some awful jokes told by Brazilians about ‘the Argentines’ and ‘the Portuguese’—aiii, meu Deus!
Many of my friends in Brazil know they can make negative comments to me about ‘coisas norteamericas’, but they usually politely point out that they are talking about the US government or culture, not the people who live in the US. Funny how these ‘perceptions’ are ingrained in various countries–the people in New Zealand often criticize the ‘offensive behavior’ of Australia tourist, the Hondurans warn you that ‘all Salvadorans are theives’, and the English has no love for the French, and the French hate everyone! 
It truly makes an interesting and amusing world at times!
brazilians are getting angry with north-americans because of the news about racism against brazilians in usa.
i’m totally against xenophobia, but you have to admit that europeans and americans, usually, don’t like latin-americans.
other thing that irritates brazilians is that people from other countries thinks that Brazil is just coffe, football, carnival, beautifull women, amazonia, beaches, rio de janeiro and são paulo.
This is some reasons that is getting the xenophobia in brazil bigger and bigger.
I haven’t lived in the US for 3 years now, so I don’t know about the news about racism against Brazilians. I do know believe that attitudes are changing. President Obama, and many others, would like to see Congress repeal the visa requirement for Brazilians – though this movement is driven mostly by economics: US businesses want Brazilians to come and spend.
It is unfortunately true that Americans in particular know little about Brazil beyond what they see on travelogues. However, if it is any consolation, their ignorance isn’t limited to Brazil. I had a conversation recently with an American woman about Australia and I realized she had it confused with Austria. sigh…