[Peptobismol]

Life would be damn boring if things were to be formal ALL the time.

LOL I think that's what defines us compared to other people

[DrJonson]

Marllon for someone who has never truly lived in Brazil (you left when you were 3 years old) you seem to be quite a scholar on us, don't you? The fact that you have Brazilian ancestry does not make you an expert on it, not at all. You live in the US, and the Brazilians you deal with are people who live in the American society and therefore are heavily influenced by it.

I think you overlooked the part where I said that some Brazilians do this. I made sure not to generalize. Moreover, I come into contact with Brazilians who have been here for 5-10 years, which is not long enough to be influenced by the local culture if they arrived as an adult. Also, my parents are very Brazilian, even though my father has been here for 21 years, and my mother for almost 20 years, and yet they're not Americanized in the least bit. They speak broken English and use Portuguese in their daily lives. Their social circles revolve around their Brazilian friends. They have no friends of other nationalities, except for Brazilians and some Cape Verdeans.

I don't think that when Brazilians say these kind of things they have, in their minds, the idea that Brazilian-Japanese are not truly Brazilian. Like Incanal said, Brazilians call all Asians they meet (even Korean Brazilians and Chinese Brazilians) "Japones" because that was the most common Asian in the country the past.

Brazilians usually call others by nicknames. Brazilians call Brazilians with recent Portuguese ancestry "Português" or "tuga" and most blonde men eventually end up with the nickname "Alemão" (German), even if they are not German. For example, a reality show contestant and B-grade celebrity Diego "Alemão" is called that way all the time in the media (and on Big Brother, the show he was on) because he's blonde. But he doesn't even descend from Germans (his full name is Diego Bissoloti Guasques, I think his blondism comes from the Italian side of the family). Brazilians also call all Middle Easterners and Brazilians that descend from non-Jewish Middle Easterners "Turks" (even though most of them are descended from Levantines from Lebanon and Syria). People from São Paulo call all the Northeasterner immigrants "Bahiano" and people from Rio de Janeiro call all of them "ParaÃ*bas", because those are the states from which most immigrants came to their respective city (even though not all of them came from those states, still they are lumped together).

It's interesting to read these testimonies written by some Japanese that visited Brazil in 1996. Somethings they got wrong, but somethings they got right about Brazilian society:

http://www.ri2660.gr.jp/stage/GSE/gs...eb/Hasegaw.htm



Notice that he thought all Blacks are called Bahiano in Brazil because he stayed only in some cities in São Paulo. Anyway, I think the parts that I bolded are correct.

To sum up, Brazilians have a knack for simplifying things (like where someone comes from) and giving people nicknames, especially based on appearance or place they come from (or their ancestors come from). The reason Brazilians call all East Asian looking people Japones (even Asian Brazilians who are not even descended from Japanese) is because Japanese were the biggest Asian community in Brazil for a long time. Normally when Brazilians call someone by an ethnic name (Japonês, Alemão, Portugues, Portuga, Polaco, Turco, etc) they're not actually thinking these people are not Brazilian, they're just referring to what makes them distinct. This happens more with phenotypes that are rarer or more distinct from the Brazilian average, as is the case of Japanese Brazilians.

The one case in which Brazilians are saying they do not think someone is Brazilians is when they call someone "gringo". Most foreigners are called gringo, especially Europeans, North Americans and other Latin Americans.

Edit: Also, I don't feel offended (most of the time) when people call me "Japonês" or "Japa". A lot depends on the context, but it's very rare for people to use those words to offend. This seems to be different from the US, where I heard "jap" was seen as negative way to call Japanese.

Thanks for your input, Malcolm Z. I appreciate it. Although, it still doesn't explain Nordenskjöld's experience when he went to the UK, though, or why some Brazilians refer to an interracial couple between a Nikkei Brazilian and a non-Nikkei Brazilian as "japonês com brasileira" and vice versa. I've heard people refer to half nikkei children as "uma mistura de brasileiro com japonês". It just puzzles me as to why they do this. Overall, I understand the gist of what you meant.

---------- Post added 2012-04-12 at 12:54 ----------

Sometimes I get this feeling that many americans think that knowledge and culture are transmited genetically. Sort of like that Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan character who starts speaking english even when he was surrounded by chimps his whole life just cause his parents were anglo lol.

I'm not American... Ubirajara just likes to call me one.

[picinaRefadia]

There are a lot of Chinese immigrants in Chile, the images I have of them is smelly people that live in their stores and their only Spanish is the prices of their products.

[Gubocang]

Sometimes I get this feeling that many americans think that knowledge and culture are transmited genetically. Sort of like that Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan character who starts speaking english even when he was surrounded by chimps his whole life just cause his parents were anglo lol.

I have observed that in the US, any kind of word that denotes or hints race has to be racist no matter what.

It's not the entire US, far from it, but mainly liberals and a subset of douchy minorities who are butthurt by a sense of exclusion. As has been explained in the Latin American examples, much depends on the context. You can also see the pattern in people with mixed ancestry, picking and choosing which ones they want to claim, based on their personal and political views, or whether they feel accepted or rejected by other descendants of said ancestors. Overall anybody who is a native born or naturalized US citizen is American, no shit. People talking out of both sides of their mouths, claiming a homogenous nationality while projecting their personal insecurities into social constructs that divide people.

[Cuccuccaltefe]

Is that supposed to be some kind of indirect reference to me? Because I sure don't claim a homogeneous nationality nor am I divisive. It's very self-evident that the point of my thread is pro-inclusion.