Ah sterotypes, every place has them. A sterotype is usally false facts about a place. It’s tells about how the place works and the people. Some are that all Americnas are fat and stupid, which isn’t true. Another is that all British people have bad teeth, dress fancy and drink tea, whivh is also false(The tea part is kinda true), and that all Mexicans are sleepy and lazy. Coming from Missouri I usually get the hillbilly stereotype. I don’t wear overalls, I have never been on a tractor and I would NEVER marry my cousins. I also don’t so meth. I know how to operate a compulter and I have never used a gun before. Growing up in the urban area almost everyone I knew had an standard American accent and not a country. So what sterotypes do you embrace from the area you come from?
Not so much as if I lived in the United States, I guess, but I’ve faced blonde jokes from time to time.
They usually refer to intellectual capacities, though there are others too. They’re a nuisance since, not trying to brag, or anything, I’ve never done that badly in that respect.
I guess the best that can be done, is simply ignore those stereotypes and try to play them in your favour.
Also, no kind of racism was really an issue in our country, but due to current political problems (which maybe I shouldn’t elaborate), we’re now fully experiencing it.
This is a great topic! Stereotypes are really fun to play with if people are in the mood for jokes. And, of course, most of you would know I’m not exactly one for being polite (although I do know my limits). For the most part, I think as long as one doesn’t honestly believe in stereotypes, they’re okay to talk and laugh about.
See, the problem with stereotypes is that they rely on absolutism. I’m a fan of subjective truth (one of my favourite films is Vantage Point, which in turn is inspired by Rashomon, which I’ve been meaning to see for some time).
When one says X is always Y, then it becomes a problem. Does gravity always work on Earth? (Not in zero-gravity simulations) Is killing always wrong? (Not when it’s in self-defence) Et cetera.
However, stereotypes, as offensive or humourous as they are to different people, contain a grain in truth in them. Otherwise we wouldn’t form such conceptions if they didn’t exist. It is when one takes these characteristics and generalises them on an entire group that one can be seen as being misguided/prejudiced/ignorant/racist, etc.
Sometimes, people don’t have malicious intentions to stereotype, in fact, they may use it to be friendly as possible. Let’s say I see a Caucasian person on the street carrying a backpack and a tourist map. My automatic assumption is that he’s American or British, and if I had to talk to him/her, I would try English first. Does this mean that I’m prejudiced against French/German/Russian/Israeli people? No, I formulated a mental picture based on my experiences and knowledge to choose the best possible course of approach.
I encounter the reverse of this when I go to hawker centres here. The stall owners, who don’t speak English, look at me, a Chinese person, and automatically assume I speak Mandarin. Does this mean they’re racist? They could be, but not necessarily. They merely jumped to a conclusion: “This customer looks Oriental, and we’re in Singapore, so there’s a 90% chance he might understand my language,” they think.
This annoys me to no great end, because my linguistic capability is being judged on my skin colour and facial features. But am I mortally insulted? Not really. If anything, I sympathise with them, and I try to speak in my horrendously broken, toddler-level Mandarin.
Now with regard to Pixarfan91’s question: Singapore, being a multi-racial country, is abound with stereotypes of every ethnic group and culture. Since I am Chinese, I’ll start with the predominant race on this island - a stereotype of Chinese people here is that they are selfish. Also, they’re very booksmart, but not streetsmart. If you asked a fifth-grader here what is the value of Pi, he can probably quote it to ten decimal points. But if you tossed him into the middle of a playground fight, he’d probably lose ten teeth. I feel that this view is false, because I lost eleven once fighting a chihuahua.
A stereotype of Malay people here is that they are lazy. Also, that they are good in language and the arts. Both are not true according to my experience. For the former view, my Malay colleagues at work are extremely hardowrking (the two of them singlehandedly paginate the entire paper). For the latter view, I beat my Malay classmates in Malay-language class during my secondary-school years, despite being Chinese (true story!). My teacher even pointed this out while lecturing them on their lousy Malay grades. After that, they were certainly flowery with their insults! (just kidding, they were actually quite nice to me)
A stereotype of Indian people here is that they smell bad. Also, that they love curry. This is not entirely true, because I smell bad and I love curry, yet I’m not Indian.
A stereotype of foreigners here is that they are here to steal jobs and girls from locals and live in enclaves. This is true to an extent, because I’m here on a Work Pass (so I must have stolen a Singaporean’s job) and I’m house-sitting my parent’s apartment, which is an enclave for foreign Caucasians and Indians. However, I have never “stolen” a Singaporean girl because I’m as attractive as a chicken’s bottom, and I’d prefer to hang out with the locals because they know where the great places to eat and play are better than my fellow expatriates!
Stereotypes aren’t much of a problem in Singapore cos’ everyone knows them and even talk about them. There are hate-speech and racial/religious harmony laws here, though, a famous case last year involved a trade union worker who was sacked for complaining online about her Malay neighbour’s wedding (she related Malay weddings to high divorce rates, and asked how society could “allow people to get married for 50 bucks”). She later fled town and returned to Melbourne - turned out she was a Malaysian-turned-Australian foreigner!
Police report filed against Amy Cheong over offensive Facebook post
The rule of thumb is if you can’t say something nice, say it among your friends and family, don’t post it on Facebook and let your employer see it (which basically applies everywhere else, come to think of it).
While I do think archetypes are necessary for societies to function, stereotypes are dangerous to play with unless there’s an excessive amount of confidence between the players.
The problem is when someone who isn’t really your friend makes a joke that is really intended as an offence. Then it becomes racism (or sexism, or religious intolerance, or whatever the stereotype is related to). I could cite my country’s problem, but I’m not sure if I should.
On an unrelated note, nobody show go on not having watched Rashomon!
Ah, the classic backhanded insult! In that case, yes, if used as a thinly-veiled jibe by an enemy, they can be incendiary indeed! I think stereotypes are known by everyone, it’s just that not everybody can discuss them in a calm and rational manner. And it offends me when people use it to dismiss entire classes of people (like some of my friends or family members would say “What do you expect? That kind of people are always like so and so” and it riles me).
Ok, I don’t really speak English, so I botch half the sentences I write. I kind of fixed it. I meant everybody should have watched Rashomon.
Even when people don’t really intend to make an offence, but they thing they’re just being funny, I think it’s bad taste. Some even think they’re making a pass at you with their stupid jokes!
Yeah, humour can be a double-edged sword. Different people have different tastes, experiences, knowledge, and tolerance levels.
My rule of thumb is that I can stand ignorant people, cos’ we all are to an extent. So if a person from a rural country in Africa has the perception that, say, all Caucasian people speak English, you can’t blame him/her for not knowing. You can’t look down on a person for being stupid.
But if a person is being mean/nasty when he/she knows better, then I can’t take that. If a person has access to newspapers, TV, and (especially) the Internet, yet forms a negative or narrow-minded view of a certain group of people, then, really, there’s no excuse for pleading ignorance. In this case, you can look down on a person for being an A-hole.
It is better to be an *** than an A-hole.
With regard to people making jokes which accidentally offend people, again the “ignorance rule” applies. If the person didn’t know that his/her audience takes offense, then it is a forgiveable mistake. But if the person repeatedly does it to annoy someone, or approaches someone who he/she knows will take offense, then that person is being rude.
And I haven’t encountered anyone making a pass at me with a stereotypical joke (“Hey TDIT, you wanna solve my quadratic equations, you handsome nerd?”) but I can imagine it would be pretty irritating!
Well, because probably that happens mostly (if not exclusively) to women. Especially with certain stereotypes. I made the case of hair colour in my first post, but there are others.
For me, i fall under the nerd/geek category. As well as the hillbilly or country bumpkin one (ironic i like bluegrass too).
I don’t look like them though. I don’t wear glassesor suspenders or plaid shirts and straw hat’s. maybe a fedora from time to time (in private…because fedora’s are very atypically seen in public nowadays) and a trench coat every now and then. But i look relatively average and plain at a glance.
I really don’t know anyone who wears suspenders or plaid shirts. I do wear glasses because both my parents nave bad eyesight, the funny thing is somepeople look better with them then without, when it coems to looks I will never understand why people wear contacts. If they loose them easily or break them alot I can understand but looks?
I wish I had a pair of suspenders for the novelty look. And I’m a fan of plaid shirts, have a few of them!
I dont have bad eyesight but if i ever wear glasses (more particularly rectangle framed ones), i will probably rue the day i start wearing them. 
(Why? You ask. Because i apparently have the cursed expectation i own a TARDIS and wear a long brown duster and blue suit in my off time. The glasses will increase this expectation sadly).
From my experiences traveling in the United States, I have become to be familiar with how other people see Californians.
*Do you surf? (No, the water is too cold in Northern California!)
*California, wow they do a lot of pot there! (Very true, but I don’t!)
*Have you been to Hollywood? (Nope!!! Again, I’m a Northern Californian)
*Do you know celebrities? (Nope! But the likes of John Lasseter and Lady Gaga have been 'round these parts)
*You must be super familiar with earthquakes! (Not really, only a couple in my 20 years!)
*You must be rich! (No, but I see where this comes from. California is so expensive)
Most people expect me to be a super liberal surfer dude that kicks it at the beach with celebs. Basically a Southern Californian stereotype. Lots of people don’t realize that there’s enough of a difference between the two, where several attempts have been made to break the state up! Lifestyles are kinda different.
I live in southern california and even I don’t fit any of these. 
Exactly! But it especially bothers me when people attribute things Socal is known for to Norcal. Like Hollywood (lots of people here haven’t been there, in SoCal due to being closer, there’s a larger chance). And the surfer/beach thing (There are a lot more surfers down there than up here). That never made sense to me.
Well, a lot of people in Southern Tucson seem to be bothered by the fact that (supposedly) we’re looked at as uneducated multi-racial people who are not likely to get very good jobs nor would we care to. Even if people do think that, I really don’t care because I am my own kind of person altogether. I could have been born in Texas, California, or New York for all I cared. My constant desire to to learn and discover patterns and statistics has always been in my DNA. Personally, if someone thinks that about me, I’ll just carry on with my life and enjoy the things I like doing best, and have fun doing it.
I have never seen a tornado in my life, they always seemed to pass my city. I think that’s a good thing though. 
When the movie night starts I’m kinda exited to hear what you guys sound like.
Here’s a pretty cool forum about different places. People talk about cities, states, countries, culture, accents, food, and much more. I like seeing quite a few post are about the midwest seeing as how everyone else sees as as “flyover country”. It’a also cool seeing people talk about other countries and other countries talking about America. I’m thinking about joining.
Here’s another similer forum except it’s mostly British people. Hince the name Britishexpats
Those people are more popular i guess.
I’m from Scotland. I don’t have an accent. I’ve never worn a kilt. I think haggis is repulsive. I don’t hate the English, I’m not an alcoholic (would be weird at my age) and my skin is a tan, I repeat, tan, not blue, colour. And finally, no, I’ve never encountered a demon bear. Thank you.
… I love stereotypes of Scottish people! They’re fun to play around with.
I was referring to the obvious “dumb blonde” stereotype in my previous posts (I wonder if any other blond here has gotten that too?), but there’s also other kind of stereotypes I’ve noticed.
It has to do, I suppose, with the absurd belief that “blondes are fun”. That’s just another way of saying that blondes like to party and be promiscuous.
Even worst, is that it’s couple with other features, like blue eyes, and the fact that I’m somewhat tall and willowy, which more or less appear to have the same connotations. That apparently makes they think you must be a “wild” and “easy” girl, which is even farthest from the true than saying I’m a giraffe.