When it comes to racial stereotypes I tend to over think somethings......or so my loved ones say.
There are many times I find myself feeling very bothered when I see a person of color living up to negative stereotypes we fight so hard to overcome. Now I don't praise the so called "good" stereotypes because it could actually backfire in some cases. What I'm talking about is when I see a Black woman who's more than overweight yelling at a sales clerk for a register not working, or that Hispanic man who actually is that illegal immigrant working behind the scenes at Home Depot, or even that unattractive Asian guy who's more than just an intelligent nerd but also very anti-social and for some reason does know a martial art, It just makes me think.....you're making the rest of us look bad.
Now I know everyone isn't perfect and it's not fair to look at an individual and make them speak for the rest of us but I can't shake this uneasiness I get when I see it.
Many times my friends would say "You know not all of us are like that, so why feel ashamed when one of us do?", and I can't do anything but agree because they are right. An individual should not represent the whole but in this society and especially American society it's hard to do that and not feel like the majority will see you as that caricature. There are times I see myself not only blaming the majority for being racist and ignorant but sometimes in the back of my head, a voice puts some of the blame on people like me for giving others a reason to think of us that way.
This is a dilemma I've been faced with for years and I'm still trying to break myself of this feeling. I guess I can say today's menu at the cafe is a little bitter on the tongue.
Okay. So. I'm really looking forward to more posts from you.
ReplyDeleteI love the bit at the end. It's awesome. It'll be cool if you had an ending that assigned a flavour....but that's probably what you had in mind anyway. *Ahem*
About the issue that this post deals with, I agree that people still overuse stereotypes, even if they have experiences that prove the stereotypes wrong. I also agree that "positive" stereotypes can be as bad as the "negative" stereotypes because they can give people unrealistic expectations.