Like, i can’t genuinely understand why I see so many post and memes about things like: “White people things that black people enjoy” “Black people things that white people should try” “Thing that Asian people should make others do”
It feels like people in the U.S. the moment they see someone skin color they immediately make sweeping generalisations about them (which sounds super racist to me but OK), which also makes integration more difficult, because instead of an interesting mixture of cultures it makes for immovable blocks of stereotypes
Am I just seeing a small bubble of content or missing something or what? Please explain it to me
So a tiger ate your friend and your brain goes Lion = Bad
That why humans tried to avoid predators for… the entire human history.
But the brain also does this for humans and skin color… so here we are… 🤷♂️
I’m Canadian and have known some very racist Canadians. In fact, the most racist man I ever knew was a Canadian. Far as I can tell, racism is everywhere and always an ignorant thing.
As an American that moved to Canada it was eye opening that a lot of racist Canadians direct the energy Americans point at black folks toward Native Americans. Canada absolutely has a problem with some deep seated racism.
Sadly, I’ve seen it aimed at pretty much anyone who’s of a different race. I don’t know how Canada compares to other countries that way, but I’ve definitely seen way too much of it in Canada.
Since you believe this stems from your personal perceptions and observations, the answer likely involves a paradigm shift that random people on the internet can’t realistically assist with beyond basic advice. Whenever I’m stuck on a problem and I don’t know where to go, a good place to start is collect more data and widen your research. Good luck o7.
It’s not American thing - it’s a human thing. We tend to group people into us and them.
But also, stereotypes don’t come from thin air. There’s usually atleast a hint of truth to them. However, where people go wrong with this is when they apply it to individuals. It doesn’t work that way. These are group differences. When speaking of individuals there’s a greater differences to be found within a group than between them.
It ain’t just race. Pop into one of the nuerodivergent (sp?) Subs on like reddit. So many posts like “I do X. Is it because I am Y”. And “why do we all do Y”. And “I hate that NT people do Z”…
in some people it is a racism thing, but generally it’s just a generalisation done either to ask a genuine question about a group or to facilitate a joke. while they may not always be true, these generalisations often are genuinely a thing that a group tends to do more than other groups.
US compartmentalizes based on race. It’s apparent in essentially all of the media they export to the rest of the world.
Historically American society operated based on a race based caste system and the consequences of that echo into the present day.
And they do it even if there’s not much difference between people. When I lived in Scranton I’d get asked what ethnic group I was a part of - Irish, Italian, Polish, Lithuanian, Welsh, etc.
To someone who didn’t grow up there I didn’t know what they were asking, but there was still in the early 00s different parts of town for different communities.
This all stopped when a significant Hispanic population moved in, and they stopped being Poles or Estonians and became “American” and the newcomers weren’t.
This is such a white person post, man
You can’t understand this? You just did it yourself…
“Americans” are not an ethnicity. Talking about the culture of a country is nothing similar to attaching innate characteristics to a person based on origin/skin color/etc.
Different category, same categorical error.
Most self-aware European
Edit: Well shit
Yeah really… because cultural divides and prejudice are a uniquely American thing! /s
Yes, text book case of how transparent projection is to us when we do it.
lol!
A mix of cognitive bias and systemic racism
But also stereotypes exists and can be true to some degree, often just cultural
It’s a culture that heavily pushes self identity. Then you combine that with poor schooling and a sheltered upbringing.
If you’re of limited education, means, and exposure, when it comes time to start outfitting that identity it becomes very easy to place yourself in a box. And that box becomes the lens you see the world through.
Our brains are masterful at categorizing information and externalizing information for efficiency (i.e. wow your car smells like my babysitter’s car from when I was 4—that’s weird, she drove us to the beach and we rode in rowboats in the pond and fed ducks that day).
If you want actual scientific discourse on this, I implore you to look into social psychology, which presents this in a brilliant little pipeline.
Stereotypes emerge from a “kernel of truth”—which may be false, socially constructed, or only true in a narrow context. When generalized, they become prejudice (pre-judging), which leads to discrimination. When embedded in systems, this discrimination reinforces racism, sexism, and other structural inequalities.
Thanks for coming to my ted talk.
Our brains are masterful at categorizing information and externalizing information for efficiency (i.e. wow your car smells like my babysitter’s car from when I was 4—that’s weird, she drove us to the beach and we rode in rowboats in the pond and fed ducks that day).
If you want actual scientific discourse on this, I implore you to look into social psychology, which presents this in a brilliant little pipeline.
Stereotypes emerge from a “kernel of truth”—which may be false, socially constructed, or only true in a narrow context. When generalized, they become prejudice (pre-judging), which leads to discrimination. When embedded in systems, this discrimination reinforces racism, sexism, and other structural inequalities.
Thanks for coming to my ted talk.
Importantly, this is not just a U.S. issue—it’s a human issue. Our brains naturally categorize to conserve cognitive resources, making this tendency easy to exploit without proper education. And it is exploited—everywhere. From the gendered pricing of products like women’s razors to the way news stories frame subjects based on race or class, these biases shape perception and reinforce systemic inequalities across societies.
Active Divide and Rule.
Last thing the government need is people using social media to realise we have more in common than differences, which social media naturally does.
So it’s managed.
Some people do think that way and we generally use the word ‘stupid’ to describe their behavior.
Some people act that way but don’t really believe it because for some reason it has become cool to be ’edgy’.
You’re referring to jokes that were commonplace until like 15 years ago. I’m not sure where you’re seeing that constantly but I almost never do.
