Overwhelmed and a bit shocked, I saw reports in recent days about some situations that made me reflect deeply.
A young man from Ceilândia in Brasília presented his black teacher with a steel sponge on International Women’s Day. As if this episode were not enough, in Bauru, in the interior of São Paulo, three students recorded a frightening video.
They wanted to deregister a classmate because she was 44 years old. I came to the conclusion that today it is not enough to ridicule people, it is necessary to spread ridicule.
And you know what’s funnier? When the case comes to light and reverberates nationally, the authors simply adopt the same discourse: I did not expect all this repercussion.
What did you expect? Just the local laughing stock? Did you expect to end a person’s life and yours remain intact? I’m not in favor of digital lynching, but to what extent should we tolerate cases like these?
Different offenses, similar cases
I know that the two cases are different from each other. In one, the mockery was made directly with a black teacher, which configures an explicit case of racism. In the other, we have the prejudice of ageism.
However, in both cases we have the similarity of humiliation as a spectacle, the use of the victim to try to aggrandize his ego, thinking that making fun of the other is funny.
And worse, among the people closest to me I’m sure that such subjects must still say: wow, the world is getting boring, we can’t even play anymore.
After all, in the not-too-distant past, this type of mockery was accepted and tolerated by majorities who did not have the ability to put themselves in the shoes of minorities. But the world has changed.
And we don’t accept it anymore
It is important to make it clear that we no longer want a society governed by prejudice, discrimination and self-affirmation through humiliation.
Humor is valid, wholesome. But making humor at the expense of other people’s suffering is not and has never been cool. If it was accepted before, it is not anymore. It is therefore up to schools to take appropriate action.
From what I saw, the biomedicine students had to leave the course. They wanted to disenroll the classmate, and they were the ones who were de-enrolled.
The boy from Ceilândia, on the other hand, will have to respond to a beautiful process of racism, and if possible pay in court the suffering he caused his teacher.
Yes, we should think about a more tolerant and just society, but under no circumstances should we be tolerant with the intolerant. Otherwise, this second group will grow, and will think that it can do what suits it.
Let everyone learn, and let situations like this not happen as if this were normal, because it is not.
