Luciana Rodarte is a Brazil born world dweller. She’s passionate about life, people, and understanding what makes each individual unique. She dreams about a world where each one of us matter and are respected, just because we are.

I’m Luci from Brazil. I’ve lived in many countries over the years - from a young child with my family, to pursuing study or work opportunities. 5 years ago, I moved to the UK, where I currently live. I immediately liked London. It was so cosmopolitan and welcoming - like no other place I’d lived before, not even New York. However, with time, I started noticing that every now and again I would feel uneasy. Perhaps, the unease was there before, but I just wasn’t able to notice, or understand what it was.

People would make comments based on deep rooted pre-conceptions of how Latins are, or their behaviour. People are often surprised that I (“the Brazilian”) was on time for an appointment. Some comments, unfortunately, were also sexist - like a time when someone said to me - “I couldn’t date a Brazilian, just too feisty”. These were very common and made me feel so bad.

Even though the individuals making such comments didn’t have an ill intent; they felt loaded to me. And it hurt. I was paralyzed, and didn’t know how to react. I would either ignore or start justifying myself and explaining my background, sometimes even arguing I was/behaved different from that pre-conceived idea because of my unique background.

One day, someone casually said to me: “Latins don’t work as hard [as Europeans]. I mean, you take such long lunch breaks”. It was so awkward. I was going into the automated mode of justifying myself, but then it hit me: maybe they just never stopped to think about what they said.

So I asked: “why do you think that having long lunch breaks means we’re lazy? Have you considered that it is just a cultural difference in terms of how we have our lunch?”

The person was stunned, they didn’t know how to react. It really hadn’t occurred to them that lunch breaks had nothing to do with work ethics: they are actually a cultural habit. Even tough it was an awkward conversation, I felt very good about it. I didn’t have to justify or defend myself, and my boundaries were gently reinforced. The person in question was uncomfortable and apologized, eventually thanking me for bringing them awareness.

My advice

What I learnt from that episode is that we should always be proud of who we are and our origins, beliefs, and everything that makes us, us. We should not apologize or justify. We shouldn’t argue, either. It’s much more powerful to gently return with a simple question “why do you think that?”

Sometimes, what our interlocutors need is a subtle mirror to help them see that all individuals are unique and worthy of the same respect as those who they perceive as “more similar” to them.