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).