Hello and welcome to show 268 of our podcast “Absolutely Intercultural”. Sometimes we are the objects of other people’s stereotypes and sometimes, we are, in fact, the people who actively use overgeneralizations to simplify our social lives. When we use stereotypes, we instinctively categorize others using shared beliefs about a certain target group. But do cultural stereotypes really always make our lives easier, or do they sometimes ruin relationships and harm the relationship between two different cultures? Our mothers told us, not to use stereotypes, but then, some people tell us that stereotypes may be a great trigger for small talk ?Are cultural stereotypes the bridge that connects two cultures, or are they the reason why this bridge between two different cultures is never built?
In our show, three students tell us about concrete situations, where they were the objects of stereotyping and how those stereotypes affected their personal lives.
absolutely Christian
In our first category, “absolutely Christian”, Berla, a student from Iraq tells us about being stereotyped as a Muslim by her fellow classmates before they had even seen her in her new school in Germany. They were in for a surprise.
absolutely secular
In our second category, “absolutely secular”, Erta tells us how a friendly bus driver in her university town wished her Eid Mubarak just because he knew that she is Albanian. In his mind all Albanians are Muslims.
absolutely white
Finally, in our last category, “absolutely white”, Ali from Yemen remembers a story where a girl he met in a club was a little surprised by his skin color.
What about you? Have you been the object of a stereotype? How did you react? Do you try to use these situations to connect to others or do you just ignore them and move on?
Please write a comment or mail us, we could do a follow-up interview with you in one of our next shows. We could go deeper into other categories such as Heterostereotypes which we have about the others and Autostereotypes which we have about our own cultural group. On our web page, www.absolutely-intercultural.com, you can get more information about this show and previous episodes and you can leave comments. And if you enjoyed the show, please like us on Facebook too.
By the way, did you know we are also on iTunes or Apple Podcasts? You can subscribe to us there for free and give us a rating and a comment.
Our next show will be coming to you on 3 December.
Until then – try to watch out for stereotypes – and
Bleiben Sie absolutinterkulturell!
The host of this show is: Dr. Laurent Borgmann
Chief Editor: Esjona Musta
Assistant Editors: Natalia Obikhod, Elene Mikeladze
