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Anything Goes
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To be perfectly honest, I am somewhat intolerant of some sub-cultures (which includes caucasians).
Every culture has it's good and bad right? When we stereotype we are usually taking the less attractive attributes of certain sub-cultures and generalizing.
For instance we say "drunken Irish" This type of term came about during/after the great immigration of Irish between 1850-1930. Some of the Brits that already occupied America resented the huge influx of lower class of Irish and dubbed them "Paddy's and drunkards" and would not hire them unless desperate for workers. This stereotype about Irish has lessened dramatically, but still remains a stereotype to some degree.
The same can be said about the way people felt about blacks in the south.The white southerners resented the black race being as their "equals". For so long they had been slaves and property of whites.They wanted the blacks there, but not as members of the community. They resented blacks becoming their neighbors instead of their property.
They were thought of as stupid and criminal, mostly because the black slaves often had to resort to stealing once the civil war was over. For many years afterward there was much tension within the "new black community" because unless they went back to work for the whites in the fields, there was not much else for them to do.
When laws were passed the black children would be schooled with whites, thats when the uproar started happening. Since blacks were looked upon as animal-like by the majority of southern whites there was a revolution.
Up here in the North blacks had already integrated into the community for a hundred or more years before the civil war. They had already been schooled here since the 1700's.Blacks in the north were never field workers, but generally house servants before the civil war. They were still not looked upon entirely as equals by whites, but were treated respectfully, educated by white families and given jobs that required thought instead of labor.
My point is that within each race there are different sub-cultures. In the 1800's Northern blacks looked down on their southern counterparts as "niggers". Among the Asian community there are productive citizens and gangs to the other extreme. With whites you have Albert Einstein and you have "trailer park trash" or "crackers".
When some people think of white anglo saxon protestants (wasps) their image is upper middle class , white suburban families that would drop over dead if their 17 year old daughter brought home a black boyfreind who lives in the housing project on the other side of town.
That assumption is more than a little true. We ALL make assumptions about people and categorize them immediately.
That is an intregal part of what makes us human. Birds of a feather should flock together. Sometimes that can mean of a different race or culture if the minds are alike and are equals. But on the assumption that we all stereotype, you would not see Prince William with a girl from an Alabama trailer park.
We ALL stereotype to some degree. I like to call it judgement. We look at say, a black man. Immediately we note his mannerisms and his speech. We know in 2 minutes what kind of person he is. Same with a white man. We look and listen. Is he intelligent? Does he say the "F" word every other sentence? Is he dressed like a slob? We make an assumption in 2 minutes.
If we just accepted everyone ALL the time without judging a book by it's cover, we would probably get in a lot of trouble before we figured out who was not our equal.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I beleive stereotyping is healthy to some degree.
Every culture has it's good and bad right? When we stereotype we are usually taking the less attractive attributes of certain sub-cultures and generalizing.
For instance we say "drunken Irish" This type of term came about during/after the great immigration of Irish between 1850-1930. Some of the Brits that already occupied America resented the huge influx of lower class of Irish and dubbed them "Paddy's and drunkards" and would not hire them unless desperate for workers. This stereotype about Irish has lessened dramatically, but still remains a stereotype to some degree.
The same can be said about the way people felt about blacks in the south.The white southerners resented the black race being as their "equals". For so long they had been slaves and property of whites.They wanted the blacks there, but not as members of the community. They resented blacks becoming their neighbors instead of their property.
They were thought of as stupid and criminal, mostly because the black slaves often had to resort to stealing once the civil war was over. For many years afterward there was much tension within the "new black community" because unless they went back to work for the whites in the fields, there was not much else for them to do.
When laws were passed the black children would be schooled with whites, thats when the uproar started happening. Since blacks were looked upon as animal-like by the majority of southern whites there was a revolution.
Up here in the North blacks had already integrated into the community for a hundred or more years before the civil war. They had already been schooled here since the 1700's.Blacks in the north were never field workers, but generally house servants before the civil war. They were still not looked upon entirely as equals by whites, but were treated respectfully, educated by white families and given jobs that required thought instead of labor.
My point is that within each race there are different sub-cultures. In the 1800's Northern blacks looked down on their southern counterparts as "niggers". Among the Asian community there are productive citizens and gangs to the other extreme. With whites you have Albert Einstein and you have "trailer park trash" or "crackers".
When some people think of white anglo saxon protestants (wasps) their image is upper middle class , white suburban families that would drop over dead if their 17 year old daughter brought home a black boyfreind who lives in the housing project on the other side of town.
That assumption is more than a little true. We ALL make assumptions about people and categorize them immediately.
That is an intregal part of what makes us human. Birds of a feather should flock together. Sometimes that can mean of a different race or culture if the minds are alike and are equals. But on the assumption that we all stereotype, you would not see Prince William with a girl from an Alabama trailer park.
We ALL stereotype to some degree. I like to call it judgement. We look at say, a black man. Immediately we note his mannerisms and his speech. We know in 2 minutes what kind of person he is. Same with a white man. We look and listen. Is he intelligent? Does he say the "F" word every other sentence? Is he dressed like a slob? We make an assumption in 2 minutes.
If we just accepted everyone ALL the time without judging a book by it's cover, we would probably get in a lot of trouble before we figured out who was not our equal.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I beleive stereotyping is healthy to some degree.
