Very Annoying Racial Myths. Discuss it.

In My Humble Opinion
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What are some racial stereotypes and myths that bother you?
Well here are some of mine. For one I hate it when people associate a country with a race. Like when people say MEXICANS. Mexico is a diverse country, and it even gets immigrants from Asia, and the Middle East. There are mixed Mestizos, as well as pure Europeans, and pure Native Central Americans, even black people. I once had an argument with somebody that actually thought Mexican was a race.

Another racial thing that ignorant people believe is that Hispanic is a race. By definition, being Hispanic means you originate from a Spanish speaking country that was once a Spanish colony. Therefore Cubans, and Dominicans are also Hispanic, despite being different in races, and cultures.

What’s more annoying is how people refer to Africa as if it were one huge country. Many people including black people don’t understand how diverse Africa is.

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I’m putting this on a new post so I won’t time out and lose everything I’ve typed. And to make this easier for you to read.

Back to Africa, there are extremely annoying things that some black people that are ignorant say about Africa.
One of those things is that some say is that the original jews that escaped Egypt, crossed the Red Sea, and went to Israel were ALL BLACK.

For one, just because they were slaves doesn’t mean they were all black. That is being racist toward your own kind. Next, the Egyptians could’ve took slaves from many different places, such as Souther Europe, just across the Med. sea, Nubians from the Nile river, and other egyptians, so the Jew were probably DIVERSE.

Most black people that say those thing are African Americans and they their ancestors were West Africans, not Nubians.

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But it is. It’s a case where “race” has kept its old meaning: once upon a time, “race” and “culture” meant one and the same; while there are subdivisions within La Raza, yes we are one culture.

It’s a culture-based race, not an ancestry-based one. Ex-president Fujimori is a Hispanic of Japanese ancestry. My Dominican coworkers were Hispanics of ancestries ranging from Germanic to about-100%-Subsaharian. Shakira is a Hispanic of (among others) Lebanese-American ancestry. And yes, we are all Hispanic.

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It’s not the ignorance that troubles me, it’s the clear attitude amongst so many people that they have no interest whatsoever in reducing their ignorance. They are happy to keep their myths, about India in this case. They come to me eagerly with stories. “Look! A woman had to marry a dog!” And never, ever bother to look any further into anything about India and what a beautiful, distinguished country it is. They say “Your country is so backwards!” And then don’t even want to hear it when I remind them we only achieved independence in the last century after four hundred years of being ruled by a people who thought we were only marginally better than the black people, in their eyes. That means “Not actually animals, but just above.”

It takes time! But people would rather stew in their own ignorance.

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Race is a social construct, not a biological one. Some cultures use skin color to construct races, but there’s no reason why we should expect that to be universal.

Even English-speaking American culture doesn’t completely rely on skin color for race. We consider Asian to be a race. Are Indians (people from India) Asian? Most of us would probably say yes (and they’re supposed to check the Asian box on the US Census form), but they don’t have the same skin color as, say, Chinese people.

The US Census considers whether or not you are Hispanic to be a separate question from your racial background.

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You should bring up snake handling when they do this. They might object that this is something that a tiny minority of Americans do. Then you tell them that the same applies to whatever practice they told you about in India.

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I’m not an Asian female in the United States, but if I were I imagine the constant sexualization of young Asian girls in media such as anime and porn would drive me up the wall. Especially because so many are portrayed as subservient and domesticated. I would be really wary of any guy who expressed interest in me on that basis alone.

So I assume.

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Appropriate Abstruse Goose

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I agree with you in general but in anime don’t most of the people look white? My daughter is really into anime and that’s what I’ve noticed anyway.

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About the Asian porn thing… They’re not always portrayed as subservient, sometimes they are portrayed simply as promiscuous women having fun.
For now, I’ll discuss the myths that black people have given to themselves. I’m not being racist but ignorance sometimes pisses me off.

Another myth is that black people were the first humans. The first humans were the Bushmen, and the most closely resembling people to them today are the Khoisan Africans in southern Africa. It is wrong to simply say the Khoisan or Bushmen as black, because they are a distinct group with differnces in language, culture, and genetics than the rest of Africa.

They belong to a differnt haplo-group, and have the widest gene pool in the world, but only 100,000 of them are left. After the bushmen came East Africans, and West Africans. Using words like black and Asian can be pointless. I believe in Ancestry not Race.

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This next one involves sexual feature that people develop during puberty. Now even though I’m niether black nor Asian, I find these stereotypes annoying as well.

One stereotype is that black men have huge penises, and Asian men have tiny penises.
This stereotype has been pushed by porno, movies, such as Fullmetal Jacket, in which a prostitute was scared that 8ball was too “big” for her.

For one, penis length usually depends on the height of a person. So while many African Americans may be big, some are small, and the people of the Congo are small people, so they are probably small in condom size as well. East Asians are a little bit shorter than Americans, but they are gaining in height, so they will also gain in penis length. The height of a person is not related to their race, but it depends on their individual genes, and their lifestyle and diet, staritng before they are even borne.
2. Black Women have big booties. This stereotype is mostly false considering most black women don’t have big booties, most women despite their race don’t have a big booty. Many have a well shaped butt, but one that is actually big is rare. Also Asian women are not flat like pieces of cardboard. Some black women think they have a big beautiful butt, and they eat a lot to make it bigger, yet most of the weight is going to their belly.

Now, the stereotype is not completely wrong I notice when women do have a big butt, they’re more likely to be black, but having a big booty is rare in all women.
Another myth is one about breast. I once eaves dropped on a Mexican girl having a conversation with her friend. She said " These shade make me look Asian"
“What’s so bad about looking Asian?”
“Asians have small titts”

What she didn’t know is that she was atleast partly Native American, and most NA’s descended from Asians as they crossed over Alaska. She also doesn’t know that there are just as many flat chested, white, and black women as there are flat chested Asian women.
Most Asian women I’ve seen are the same as other women in breast size.
Now, the reason why we notice these “differences” in different backgrounds of people, is because these people people have different life styles, diets, and up-bringing.
For example, much of East Asia used rice as the their main source of food, and rice is deficient in certain nutrients, so the people will be smaller and underdeveloped due to their diet. This also the case in parts of Africa where there is famine, the people are under-developed and smaller.
3. Asians, and Mexicans are short. I will sum this one up quickly, it is not their genes, it it thier diet, and their life style during their up-bring, as well as the the diet of their mother that will affect their body proportions. Like wise, in Nigeria the average man is only 5’4" that is due to their lack nutrition, and their mother’s lack of nutrition.

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This one really pisses me off. Asian men do not have tiny penises.

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Stereotyping is based upon ignorance. My son came to visit us in West Africa and took away some lifelong impressions. When he returned to the Midwest, his friends kept asking him things like “weren’t you afraid of the gangs?”, and “were the ghettos really bad?” No matter how he tried, he could not convince them that American subculture is not the same as African society.

Some people who have heard me talk about our postings to African countries have been unable to accept that we weren’t terrified to live in a Muslim country, or that said country (Mali) was far more peaceful and non-threatening than the so-called Christian country we lived in (Uganda).

It’s been my experience that you usually can’t change a person’s perception of the world around him. That sort of change has to come through experience on a broader scale than that person has had to date. In most cases, they will never have that opportunity and thus will keep their ignorance and prejudices intact throughout their lives.

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But everyone is equally closely related to the first humans, by definition. The Khoisan can’t be more closely related to the first humans than any other group of humans is. They might resemble the first humans physically in some ways more than some other groups do, but that doesn’t mean they’re more closely related. A Khoisan person born in 1975 has about the same number of generations between him or her and the earliest humans as I, an American of mostly European descent born in 1975, do.

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Ok, that makes since, but the point is that no one can claim they were the first humans, because we all descend from the first humans. No one is really more human than anybody around them.

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Good lord, around here stereotypes run rampant, and the people they’re attributed to make fun of it themselves. Someone’s 3 hours late to a function for them? That’s just mexican time, baby!

And as far as Asian women being sexually stereotyped, don’t watch ANY American television or commercials. Apparantly American women are all sluts who will give it up for the right look. Oh, and we all have bad crotch odor, judging from the commercials, anyway.

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No group can claim to be the first humans, unless there is a group of immortal early humans around somewhere. I have seen no evidence that this is the case.

You can live on the same continent that early humans lived on, but I live on the same continent that Tyrannosaurus Rexes lived on. That doesn’t make me a T. rex, or make me more closely related to T. rex than any other human is (though I do have short, weak arms- hmmmm…)

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Correct me if I’m wrong (like that even needs to be said on this board :dubious:), but isn’t is true that, while it may a myth that Asian men are tiny and black men are huge, there is a tendency away from the mean for both groups?

And I’m always annoyed at the stereotype of the Swedish Bikini Team. It seems that Swedish women tend away from larger cup sizes.

I’m sure a Swedish woman will also correct me on this.

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Well, I wasn’t going to say anything. . .

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This isn’t at all true in my experience.

Is there any reason to believe this is the case? Nutrition is definitely a factor in height but that doesn’t mean it has to be for penis size too.