READING FOR 8TH
THE
AMERICANS
When asked about the Americans, most Europeans will
probably say they are all fat, speak too loud, dress very badly, drive huge
cars and eat beef for breakfast, lunch and dinner, followed by enormous
ice-creams topped with lots of whipped cream. They will add that they are all
very rich and live in very big houses.
It’s clear that the Europeans who think the Americans
are like that have never been to America. I can’t agree with this stereotyped
description of my fellow citizens. It’s true that we can come across lots of
fat people when we travel through America. But it is equally true that most of
us are quite normal and there are even a few, especially young women and
teenagers, that are very thin.
Did you say all Americans are rich? A big surprise for
Europeans touring America is exactly the large number of poor people they see,
especially in very large cities. Unfortunately, too many Americans live below
the poverty line due to unemployment or other social reasons. We often see men
and women looking for food in trash cans or sleeping in the street or on park
benches.
America is a country of contrasts: there are extremely
rich and extremely poor people; somewhere in between are the rest of us – the
middle class, treasuring life’s little joys and sharing our families’ and our
friends’ sorrows just like everyone else all over the world.
The difference between the Americans and people from
most European countries is that there are more of us and we have many different
origins; so we have more fat people, more loud people, more rich people and
probably more varieties of ice cream. Remember it is always dangerous to
believe in stereotypes. After all, you wouldn’t like to be thought of as one of
the oliver-skinned, lazy Portuguese, would you?
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