“You’re American! Donald Trump is your president! Fuck you!” Madison Barrows, an American, Catholic college student hanging out at a bar in Portugal, looked in bewilderment as a Portuguese man who noticed she was American proceeded to scream at her. The man didn’t even take into account whether Madison supported the president or not, he simply thought that all Americans were the same and thus they all supported the president. I asked Madison why she thinks the man acted this way towards her, and her reply was, “’Cause our president is pretty ignorant and puts a really bad look on our country for a lot of people. There’s like Americans that like him, but the rest of the world doesn’t. So, it’s pretty embarrassing when Americans wanna travel the world because it makes us look bad,” (6:16) After a quick Google search of “Trump Portugal”, I found that other than violent handshakes and Madonna seemingly wanting to escape America and go to Portugal, there haven’t been many political connections between the two countries. This begs the question: Why would someone from Portugal care enough about American politics to go around screaming at random Americans? On the one hand, perhaps it was the drink that drove him to express his distaste to that degree. On the other hand, maybe he felt that it was justified. I tried putting myself in the shoes of a Portuguese man in today’s world.
Madison was born and raised in the US. She doesn’t have any familial connections to Portugal, so I asked her how she ended up going to Portugal two years in a row. “I had a foreign exchange student live with me and we met junior year. She became my best friend and now I’ve visited twice for about a month each time,” (6:44) I don’t know too much about what life in Portugal is like, but considering this man, let’s call him Rick, was at a bar, I’d assume he was having a good time before the American came around. As I listened to Madison talk about her exchange with Rick and how it changed her outlook on the Portuguese people as a whole, it made me wonder just how bad things could get in countries where President Trump has a stronger influence (e.g South American countries). If Rick proceeded to scream at Madison because he heard her accent, what could possibly happen if someone were to wear a MAGA(Make America Great Again) hat around Mexico City? President Trump has been very vocal (through speeches and his more unconventional methods) about his distaste for illegal immigration and his desire to build a wall along the Southern border that will, in his view, curb drug trafficking and illegal immigration. His strong take on immigration has had a plethora of opposers, both domestically and internationally. During his campaign, Trump claimed that Mexico was going to be responsible for paying for the wall. That obviously didn’t go down well with Enrique Peña Nieto, the former president of Mexico, who said, “Mexico does not believe in walls. I have said it time and time again: Mexico will not pay for any wall.” It went down even worse with Vicente Fox, Mexico’s 55th president, who had a stronger reaction saying, “We are not paying for that fuckin’ wall.” At the surface, these political tensions seem to only have an effect in countries that are affected by the subjects of debate; however, even in other countries that have no connection to such subjects, everything that America does is being judged. The same can be said for other major powers in the world, such as China, France, Germany, UK, etc. This reminded me of how when Hitler first began to rise to power, he was looked at as illegitimate by other world leaders.
Most world leaders didn’t take Hitler seriously (which is justified considering the fact that conservatives in the German government also didn’t take him seriously). However, the things he did militarily were seen around the world. It just goes to show how important it is for major countries in the world to be wary of how their methods of governance appear to other countries. The implications could be anything from declarations of war to citizens getting yelled at in bars when they are touring. I once watched a Ted Talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, in which she talked about the danger of a single story. Throughout her life, she experienced multiple instances where people judged her based off a single story that they thought generalized a whole group. Later on, she found out that even she, herself, had fallen victim to believing in the single story. When a group is selectively portrayed a certain way, it becomes problematic because those that buy into it never get to see things from a different perspective unless they consciously go out to seek those perspectives. Thus, they think every member of that group is the same. I think Madison fell victim to being judged by a single story when Rick proceeded to scream at her just because he assumed she supported the president based solely off the fact that Rick heard her American accent. If I lived in Portugal and regularly kept up with news of what’s going on in America, I definitely would get to know someone before I formed my opinions on them due to how the views of American citizens are very diverse. However, Rick didn’t think about this before he attacked Madison, and he probably didn’t know either, which leads me to believe that he judged Madison on the single story that the American people unanimously support the president, which couldn’t be farther from the truth. Madison went on to tell me about some cultural differences between the US and Portugal, mainly the economic disparity between people of color in both countries. In Portugal, people of color tend to be either in the upper class or in the lower class, the “favelas” in Portuguese. I lived in Nigeria for a year, so I have experience with how such drastic cultural discrepancies affect not only immigrants but also citizens of that country. However, what does it take to drive someone to a point that they can openly, verbally attack someone? In my opinion, when stereotypes are made about a country or citizens of a country, for some people those stereotypes become ingrained in their minds to the point that whenever they meet someone from said country, the feelings they have towards those stereotypes are evoked without regard to the degree of which someone from said country actually embodies those stereotypes. When Rick saw Madison in the bar, those feelings of anger that he had felt about his current American stereotypes manifested and were dumped on Madison who had done nothing deserving of that kind of reaction. This reminded me of the scripts that citizens in Nazi Germany unconsciously acted out whenever they were presented with certain circumstances that matched those scripts. These scripts lead to the radicalization of societies, at the expense of the “antagonists” in them.
Madison’s experience is just an example of how important it is for representatives to actually represent their country in a good light because even though not everyone is affected by their government, it follows the citizens wherever they go due to the single-story phenomenon that affects everyone that isn’t completely exposed to multiple viewpoints. No one should ever be attacked because of where they come from and it’s important that we all avoid falling victim to the ideology of a single story, because single stories are never generally true.