Episode 63: A Bit of Arguing

We talk about English teaching in Brazil, and then we argue about race.

Links:

• Brazil's Credit Bubble -- from Rio Gringa
  
• Brazil: A Racial Paradise? -- from PBS
  
• Abdias do Nascimento -- from Wikipedia (We played a clip of him in this episode.)

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Comments

[Mike]

It seems that I can not put my big comment in one piece so I will send it in three pieces.
1. To start in a good spirit I want to say that before I listened to the podcast I saw the picture and it has a very nice composition. Me being an amateur photographer, my attention was grabbed first by this great photo. And yes Milton, you rock! :)
Now to go to the serious part of the matters discussed in this podcast.
I was a little concerned by the discussion regarding costs in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. I want to move to Brazil and this is a news that it is not conforting for an immigrant from a country far less rich than Brazil. I would like to live in another city than this two but still I hope that this rise in prices will not affect other cities and regions of Brazil.
And regarding teaching english, I can not imagine how can someone give an exam to it's students using words or any things that the student wasn't thought. There can be alternatives like Kinsey said about students figuring out what the teacher meant, but the teacher you talked about didn't applied this methods, that are not prefered in the first place.
I do not want to comment the part where Milton was distracted by that student, in a talk about football, I just found it funny. :)

[Mike]

2. Regarding racism in Brazil, I want to put my two cents in. I can not talk directly about the phenomenon in Brazil because I do not live there, but let me tell you about a similar situation that we have here, in Romania.
I am pretty sure that many of the listeners if not all heard about gypsies. Some are poor and some are actually rich, but I will talk about the majority, which are poor.
Gypsies are considered by other countries that are unhelped by the Romanian government, unhelped by the Romanian people, shunned and mainly discriminated. They can not be more wrong! Gypsies are the kind of people that since they formed as an ethnicity, they roamed from their home territory, suposedly India and came to Europe and from here dispersed to North America and South America, and surely in other developed countries. Now to get to my point, gypsies were nomads since recently and because of this, their culture has it's defects. Firstly they are used to have what they want, if they didn't found it in one place they were moving to somewhere else. But now the poor gypsies steal from people and they do not do it nicely, people die, get stabed, shot, you name it. And the rich gypsies do the same, that is why they are rich in the first place, plus they have other ilicit "businesses" with extremely bad consequences for their victims.

[Mike]

3. Another aspect is that they are morally decayed. They merry their children by agreement while the "wife" is still a child, from as low as 9 years old if not even lower. The agreement consists in the exchange of large amounts of money, gold and other goods that are sent one to the other, I do not know whom to whom, but it doesn't matter.
The majority do not let their children go to school either, so not because the government or schools do not help them study, but because their parents keep them home to work, beg on the streets and be someones wife, if that gipsy is a girl. They actually have a special program in the Universities where they have special places for them, no matter their grades, and they can enter without an exam, but the places are always empty.
I saw recently an article of a child from a gipsy family which desired to go to school but his family didn't want this at all and they beat him so hard that he almost died.
I have many things to add, but to not make this comment longer, I will finish by saying that outside appereances may say one thing but the truth is totally different.
So to connect this to the talk you had with Milton I want to say that maybe some Brazilians of color have a hard life because of the Government, laws and people around them, but there are also many that live in favelas and are stealing, do all sort of ilicit things, sell drugs and never think to go to school, get a job or even send their child to a school.
I do not know if I am totally right and I hope I am not right at all, but this seems to be the truth accordingly to the things I found out about Brazil and by the discusion you had with Milton.
In the end it was a great podcast and thanks for sharing all this information to all your listeners.

[Kinsey]

Mike,

Thank you for your long thoughtful comment. About the photo, that was taken in Brasília in front of the Cathedral of Brasília. I agree that it's a good photo. Milton will, of course, disagree. Every time I think a photo of him is good, he hates it. And whenever I think a picture of him is godawful, he invariably likes it.

Yes, things really are expensive throughout Brazil, not just housing. I'm always amazed when I go back to the States how cheap everything is.

Your analogy to the Gypsy situation in Romania is interesting, but I don't think it applies to the question of racism in Brazil. Gypsies (Roma) are a completely different cultural group and even have their own language. They also tend to want to remain separate and not assimilate. As you said, they don't even generally allow their children to go to school in the countries where they live. In Brazil there are, of course, some afro-Brazilian cultural traits, but the differences, where they exist between blacks and whites, are minimal and, I would argue, are less pronounced than even in the US. There is no cultural reason why dark-skinned Brazilians would be less hard-working or more inclined to crime. Unlike the Roma, they are fully assimilated into the culture. (And they're not nomadic.)

[Mike]

Thank you for the response! I noticed that the Cathedral is really contemporary looking, I know that Brasilia is a very recently built city but still I didn't expect such architecture on a cathedral, or maybe jut my European culture with much more history could not adjust. It is beautiful, I am not saying it is not, but it is totally different than what you will encounter here.
And about racism in Brazil and my gypsy analogy, what can I say, I was mistaken but as an excuse I am not from those parts. I am sorry that there is a different between people of different colors because they are not from different races. Maybe we need a new Martin Luther King to make some difference even in this century.

[Kinsey]

The inside of the cathedral is also quite spectacular.

[Rafael]

Good episode.

Regarding the cost of living in Brazil; I recently moved back to Brazil (from Houston to Rio) temporarily, and the prices here are are just insane, things that in the US can easily cost US$10, here are line $100. It makes not sense, but I think we (brazilians) are to blame. We are the one buying it, and if someone buys it at that price they will keep selling it.

Regarding the racism. I am not sure you guys were actually disagreeing, rather speaking about different things. I dont think any one can disagree that most poor people in brazil are of darker skin and that poor people in brazil are not given the same opportunities. I am not sure if "racism" (which I think is a feeling of hatred towards someone of a different race) is as common in brazil as some other places (US and Europe), but of-course its is there. But I am pretty sure Blacks are more discriminated against here in Brazil than elsewhere.

[Kinsey]

Hi Rafael,

Sorry I didn't see your comment until just now. Yes, the prices here are absurd. I remember back in the eighties when things were dirt cheap in Brazil, at least in terms of dollars. (They were probably just as expensive for Brazilians.) Now Brazilians are traveling to the US and Europe to buy stuff much more cheaply.

I think racism can exist without overt hatred. As you said, there is less outright hatred in the racism of Brazil as exists in Europe and the US, but the level of discrimination may actually be higher in Brazil. It's a difficult question.