Yet another thing Canadians and Europeans have in common is an obsession with the United States, and with distinguishing themselves from it, often by crude stereotyping.
If you don't acknowledge differences, it's as bad as stereotyping or reducing someone.
The funniest racism is the racism between minorities. It's something you don't see dramatized, but almost every minority I know who's my age, they have these funny stories about their parents stereotyping other minorities.
After I quote unquote came out as a Republican, one of my dearest gay friends said to me, 'You've got to go on a T. V. show and tell everyone you like gay people. ' I was like, 'Why?' He was like, 'Because you're a Republican. ' I was like, 'I'm sorry who's stereotyping who?'
Sometimes stereotyping happens not because of any nefarious reasons but rather because people dont know who you are or where you come from, so they go for the broad strokes about you, your culture, your faith, all that.
I think any stereotyping is too much.
[On stereotyping:] It's the mind's way of processing a lot of information quickly. If we had to sort through every bit of data before making a decision, most folks would still be going out the front door when it was time to come home for the night.
The problem of unmet expectations in marriage is primarily a problem of stereotyping. Each and every human being on this planet is a unique person. Since marriage is inevitably a relationship between two unique people, no one marriage is going to be exactly like any other. Yet we tend to wed with explicit visions of what a “good” marriage ought to be like. Then we suffer enormously from trying to force the relationship to fit the stereotype and from the neurotic guilt and anger we experience when we fail to pull it off.
