Stereotyping

Omg, I haven't blogged in so long but I have a sudden urge to because I am soooo free right now. So, I noticed that most people's view on "stereotyping" is bad. In fact, it's like a taboo. Imho, I personally think that stereotyping COULD be ignorant, but I do not particularly find it offensive. Honestly, living in Malaysia, I've never got the vibe that stereotyping is that big or bad of a deal. Only in America do I get a lot of crap that stereotyping is "evil" and wrong and thus, a taboo. The moment I make comments like, "Oh, yaaa, most Asians have yellow undertones blablabla" on some post about skin tones, some anonymous person would come and say, "Oh, that is such a generalized statement and it is ignorant of you," and keep slashing you until they make sure that you acknowledge or understand that you are a lowlife provincial scumbag or prick for making that kind of comment. I mean, yes stereotyping is ignorant because it basically means that you observed a certain group of similar people (e.g. race and culture) and then generalize that everyone similar to that group would look/behave/think etc. the same way. It's bad because you didn't take the time to go and meet everyone from that race/culture/(insert anything) yet assume a certain trait or aspect from them (according to some people from Yahoo! Answers). But, seriously, is it really that bad? So offensive that we must somehow terminate stereotyping?

Adam has 100 Chinese friends, and he works in an office dominated by Chinese. All his Chinese friends and colleague tell him that they have natural dark brown or black hair. He lives in a town dominated by Chinese as well, and notices that most Chinese have dark colored hair. One day, one of his friends say to him, "Hey, you need to meet my girlfriend. She lives nearby and her name is Anna and she's Chinese." If Adam assumes Anna's hair grows naturally dark colored too, does that make him an ignorant scumbag and a lowlife? I don't think so!

If anything I think it is quite likely that Anna would have natural dark colored hair. And if she doesn't, so what? She is unique! Must Adam feel so bad like he committed a crime for picturing her to be a brunette? Should Anna feel offended that Adam didn't think she would be a natural blonde? Now, of course she can be offended, but at the same time I think she could be a little more understanding as to why Adam would assume otherwise. I mean, hello, if she is walking through that town and she saw that most of the Chinese have dark hair, her boyfriend has dark hair, and her boyfriend's Chinese friends have have dark hair, why is she getting all riled up and angry that Adam assumes that she would have dark hair, too?

If she gets all mad and call him out, I think someone should B-slap her because she is RUDE and ignorant to her surroundings. Yeah, sure, if you want to judge Adam for being ignorant because he stereotyped I think Anna should be judge for being ignorant as well.

Take me for example, I am Asian and from Malaysia. All of my girlfriends from GRSS and most of my schoolmates were shorter than me, but they all were about the same height, lets say 5'4. Now if someone came to visit my school and after some observation said, "Most girls at GRSS are around 5'4," am I supposed to be offended and be like, "HOW DARE YOU MAKE SUCH A GENERALIZED STATEMENT. IN FACT, YOU ARE STEREOTYPING. I AM SO OFFENDED BECAUSE I'M 5'8"?? That would make me a class-A jerk. Why should I be offended? I know that I'm the odd one out. Couldn't I just give the guy a break?

The reason I brought this up is because while watching some makeup tutorial on YouTube, I stumbled upon a video called "Makeup for Monolids/Asian eyes." Now the lady doing the tutorial doesn't have monolids and is not Asian, but I thought it was nice of her to make a video in consideration to anyone of us who fall into that category. But then the poor lady got slashed by a whole ton of people saying she is stereotyping Asians and she is so ignorant....racist...and blablablabla and a whole bunch of comments making her sound like she committed the crime of the year or something. It is offensive that she assumed that Asian people have monolids or whatever. And the funny thing is, if you read a lot of the comments, you see a whole ton of comments that go something like this, "I'm Asian but I am not offended by it." And the ones who wrote nasty stuff? They never mentioned if they were Asian or not. So for all I know, they could be Asian and non-Asian as well. And that's another thing, if you're not Asian, WHY THE HECK ARE YOU SO UPSET FOR!? I don't need you to advocate for me. I can do it on my own. Oh, what's that? You're upset because people are so ignorant for stereotyping? Well, guess what, I'm upset that people are so nosy as to judge on behalf of my nationality/ethnicity if what a person is doing is stereotyping or not. Do you care that I'm upset? No. So, do I care if you're upset? No!

I can go on and on about a whole bunch of other things but I realized that my frustration has abated so I shall just end my rant abruptly.

Honestly, I think stereotyping has to be somewhat true otherwise people will not be able to come up with the stereotype in the first place. Cuz if it's not somewhat true, how can anyone somehow get a significant amount of people to mutually share that same point of view? If anything, I think prejudice and discrimination is worse. Prejudice and discrimination involves your attitude and action toward another person, whereas stereotyping is generalizing. When you get to know a person better, your generalization of him or her will change to become more specific.

So chill. I don't care if you say most Asian women can't drive cuz from my experience with Asian women drivers, it's true. So if you see me on the road, stay clear or I might run you over. Ho ho ho. Have a nice day!

:D