# What stereotypes have you found to not be true? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 25, 2026, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stereotypes-have-you-found-to-not-be-true/1029553 "2026-04-25T19:12:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![WildaBeast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wildabeast/32/6_2.png) [@WildaBeast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WildaBeast)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2026, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stereotypes-have-you-found-to-not-be-true/1029553/41 "2026-04-27T18:22:59Z")
I agree with the people early in the thread who said “pretty much all of them”, but if you want a specific stereotype: “New Yorkers are rude.” I’ve visited NYC several times and I’ve found the people at worst no more rude than people anywhere else, and I’ve encountered people there who are polite and helpful. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2026, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stereotypes-have-you-found-to-not-be-true/1029553/42 "2026-04-27T19:08:31Z")
One stereotype this reminds me of that I actually tend to put stock in: Nigerian immigrants to America seem to very strongly push their kids up the education ladder, with an emphasis on professional degrees. I’ve yet to meet a first generation family for which this isn’t true. Selection bias I am sure. And admittedly the n of my experience is not vast. ---
**Author:** ![GESancMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gesancman/32/2923_2.png) [@GESancMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GESancMan)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2026, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stereotypes-have-you-found-to-not-be-true/1029553/43 "2026-04-27T19:17:54Z")
I’m a math teacher at a community college. None of the stereotypes of who is and isn’t “good at math” are true. In my experience, a person’s gender, race, sexual orientation, age, or whatever has fuck all to do with their ability to comprehend and/or excel in math. ---
**Author:** ![Roderick\_Femm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/roderick_femm/32/14875_2.png) [@Roderick\_Femm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roderick_Femm)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2026, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stereotypes-have-you-found-to-not-be-true/1029553/44 "2026-04-27T19:18:55Z")
That sounds like the Venn diagram junction between logic and statistics. Or anyway something they have in common. Thank you for teaching that. ---
**Author:** ![WildaBeast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wildabeast/32/6_2.png) [@WildaBeast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WildaBeast)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2026, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stereotypes-have-you-found-to-not-be-true/1029553/45 "2026-04-27T20:01:43Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > One stereotype this reminds me of that I actually tend to put stock in: Nigerian immigrants to America seem to very strongly push their kids up the education ladder, with an emphasis on professional degrees. I’ve yet to meet a first generation family for which this isn’t true. Selection bias I am sure. And admittedly the n of my experience is not vast. That reminds me, I once heard somewhere that the likely reason for the stereotype that Asians are smart, good at math / science / STEM fields etc. is because our immigration laws make it difficult for people from those countries to immigrate here unless they have those skills. So the Asian people we’re likely to encounter in the US are the ones who are good at math / science / engineering. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2026, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stereotypes-have-you-found-to-not-be-true/1029553/46 "2026-04-27T20:07:13Z")
On top of that, STEM is or was one of the few “reliable” ways for Asians to go upward the mobility ladder. In most other fields, there can be invisible barriers to success, such as people not wanting to promote an Asian to management, not liking Asians, Asians not doing well in sports, Asians not being seen as the ideal ethnicity for this or that (Hollywood or PR), etc. But STEM is a very results-oriented, fact-based field. If someone is good at calculus, he’s good at calculus, period. There is no if or but about that. If someone can engineer very well, then he’s who you need for your tech company, regardless of any bias about his race. Etc. The barriers mostly fall away for practical reasons. But back to the main thread topic; to add to what someone else said above, I, too, have never found New York City folks to be rude according to stereotype; they were as nice as anyone else. ---
**Author:** ![WildaBeast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wildabeast/32/6_2.png) [@WildaBeast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WildaBeast)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2026, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stereotypes-have-you-found-to-not-be-true/1029553/47 "2026-04-27T20:31:31Z")
I moved to California in 2005, and I definitely have not found the stereotype that Californians are all extreme liberals to be true. _Maybe_ that’s _somewhat_ true of Los Angeles and San Francisco, but California is a very large, diverse state. I’ve found that the rural parts of California are just as much Trump country as any other rural part of America. Heck, one of my neighbors had a “Let’s Go Brandon” sign in his yard for a while. Oh, and a few weeks ago I overheard an older man telling his companion about how the great thing about Trump is speeches sound like he’s actually talking to you – this was in Berkley of all places. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2026, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stereotypes-have-you-found-to-not-be-true/1029553/48 "2026-04-27T20:35:24Z")
> [@WildaBeast](#): > > I agree with the people early in the thread who said “pretty much all of them”, but if you want a specific stereotype: “New Yorkers are rude.” I’ve visited NYC several times and I’ve found the people at worst no more rude than people anywhere else, and I’ve encountered people there who are polite and helpful. And the reverse stereotype is also highly suspect - the one that claims people from a particular region/country (example: the U.S. South) are super friendly/genteel. Apart from a lack of non-anecdotal evidence, the vehemence with which boosters insist on this makes you wonder if they’ll whup you upside the head if you question whether they’re actually ultra-nice. 😵‍💫 ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2026, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stereotypes-have-you-found-to-not-be-true/1029553/49 "2026-04-27T20:36:16Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > STEM is a very results-oriented, fact-based field. It also doesn’t necessarily require a native command of the local language, making it more immigrant-friendly than (e.g.) law or journalism. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2026, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stereotypes-have-you-found-to-not-be-true/1029553/50 "2026-04-27T20:40:59Z")
What a lot of people mean about Southern folks being nice is often that they do their meanness more indirectly. Someone from the northeast may be rude in the “Fuck you” way, while a Southerner may do it in the “bless your heart” way. ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2026, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stereotypes-have-you-found-to-not-be-true/1029553/51 "2026-04-27T20:49:45Z")
I’ve always heard that American kids are uniquely bad at geography, and that Asian kids are focused little geniuses. 17 years in Korea and China have taught me that American kids are not unique and Asian kids, while better at picking up a second language, have more behavioral and intellectual similarities than dissimilarities to American kids. ---
**Author:** ![jjakucyk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3d9bf3/32.png) [@jjakucyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjakucyk)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2026, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stereotypes-have-you-found-to-not-be-true/1029553/52 "2026-04-27T20:54:06Z")
> [@Moriarty](#): > > _Women are too emotional to be effective managers_ > > This is an odd one, but something I’ve periodically heard. > > Yet, in my professional career, any time a boss has lost their shit, and screamed and yelled (or threw things), it was a man. Meanwhile, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a female supervisor cry about something that happened on the job. > > In my experience, men tend to be more emotional on the job, since their emotional outbursts are tolerated. Relevant quote from Claire Willet: > Honestly the best marketing scheme in history is men successfully getting away with calling women ‘the more emotional gender’ for, like, EONS, because they’ve successfully rebranded anger as Not An Emotion." ---
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2026, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stereotypes-have-you-found-to-not-be-true/1029553/53 "2026-04-27T20:58:42Z")
> [@Horatio\_Hellpop](#): > > Asian kids, while better at picking up a second language Is that really true - or is it just that Asian kids start learning a second language at a younger age? American kids don’t usually start formal instruction in a second language until at least middle school. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2026, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stereotypes-have-you-found-to-not-be-true/1029553/54 "2026-04-27T21:13:07Z")
> [@GESancMan](#): > > I’m a math teacher at a community college. None of the stereotypes of who is and isn’t “good at math” are true. 20+ years math-professoring here, can confirm. Positive stereotyping is potentially even more pernicious than negative stereotyping in this case. When you have unexamined assumptions that a certain type of person is “supposed to” be able to understand this material just from natural ability, you can get frustrated with them faster when they don’t get it, and that’s very not good. ---
**Author:** ![fedman1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e495f1/32.png) [@fedman1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fedman1)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2026, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stereotypes-have-you-found-to-not-be-true/1029553/55 "2026-04-27T21:49:14Z")
yeah you basically have to divide Cali vertically when it comes to politics. And you weren’t there when the John Birch Society "formed’? in Orange County ---
**Author:** ![echoreply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/echoreply/32/3641_2.png) [@echoreply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/echoreply)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2026, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stereotypes-have-you-found-to-not-be-true/1029553/56 "2026-04-27T22:16:16Z")
> [@GESancMan](#): > > None of the stereotypes of who is and isn’t “good at math” are true. In my experience, a person’s gender, race, sexual orientation, age, or whatever has fuck all to do with their ability So you mean all of those education studies from 30+ years ago trying to figure out why white boys were better at math were either too chicken shit to say it was due to sexism and racism, or were just part of the problem? Sure would have made my undergrad social psych and individual differences essays much shorter if for every question of the from “why is group A better at this activity than group B” I could have just answered “racism and/or sexism.” Lots of us\[1\] thought the answer was racism and sexism, but the powers that be always went to great lengths to explain why it wasn’t so. * * * 1. I’ll include myself in that group through enlightened hindsight ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2026, 4:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stereotypes-have-you-found-to-not-be-true/1029553/57 "2026-04-28T04:06:09Z")
> [@echoreply](#): > > So you mean all of those education studies from 30+ years ago trying to figure out why white boys were better at math were either too chicken shit to say it was due to sexism and racism, or were just part of the problem? Eh, they had data supporting their hypotheses, natch. The trouble is that sociological data comes from people, and people are very unreliable when it comes to accurately reflecting their pure innate capacities rather than a very multilayered reality of tendencies, influences and beliefs. Math achievement tends to be very vulnerable to second-guessing oneself or “freezing up”, due to lack of confidence and willingness to just toss a few connections around in the ol’ brain without worrying whether you’re approaching the problem “the right way”. IME that sort of stereotype-threat-inspired timidity about math thinking is the biggest obstacle to learning. Paradoxically, math **seems** like it will be so algorithmically rigid and regular that if you just know how to carry out some standard procedures you’ll be able to get everything right. And bad math teaching does indeed proceed on that model. But if you really want students to learn and understand mathematics rather than just perform it, they have to be willing to loosen up and trust their minds to be able to comprehend some stuff that is unexpected and apparently opaque. And many people in groups that have been stereotyped as “bad at math” are really, really convinced (wrongly) that they’re fundamentally not capable of that. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2026, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stereotypes-have-you-found-to-not-be-true/1029553/58 "2026-04-28T04:20:02Z")
A hijack but curious - the average child has only some much intellectual capacity to divvy up. When they put more attention in one area well another gets less. (The early walker is often a slower talker, and the converse.) How much of the cause is discouraging math in girls relative to boys, vs a positive bias/expectation that girls will be more advanced in social and language skills? It seems like there is a gap favoring early grade level girl verbal skills, including reading, that is even larger than the boy math gap. ---
**Author:** ![echoreply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/echoreply/32/3641_2.png) [@echoreply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/echoreply)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2026, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stereotypes-have-you-found-to-not-be-true/1029553/59 "2026-04-28T04:46:35Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > they had data supporting their hypotheses, natch. The trouble is that sociological data comes from people, and people are very unreliable when it comes to accurately reflecting their pure innate capacities rather than a very multilayered reality of tendencies, influences and beliefs Yep, and when there is a real difference in the outcome—boys _really were_ doing better in math than girls—anything that is different between girls and boys (or Blacks and non-Blacks, etc.) can end up correlated with the outcome, and is supportive of a causal hypothesis. I remember dueling articles about boys having some innately superior ability, versus girls being kept down by teachers who don’t call on them, or whatever. > [@DSeid](#): > > the average child has only some much intellectual capacity to divvy up. When they put more attention in one area well another gets less. (The early walker is often a slower talker, and the converse.) How much of the cause is discouraging math in girls relative to boys, vs a positive bias/expectation that girls will be more advanced in social and language skills? It seems like there is a gap favoring early grade level girl verbal skills, including reading, that is even larger than the boy math gap. I’m not sure if I believe your initial statement, but I do acknowledge your vastly greater experience with kids, where I pretty much have an n of 1 for experience with kids (and one graduate level child development class from 30 years ago). See my previous post about the stereotype of single focus geniuses. I suspect, that on average kids who are exceptional in one academic area are also above average in the others. There obviously are differences in brain development timing between girls and boys, and that will change things. I’d expect that intellectual differences observed at age 10 will have vanished by age 25. To keep this on topic, the point is that even when a stereotype, like girls being worse at math or boys being worse at language are observed to be “true”, the reasons for that difference are usually extremely complex, and the inherent value judgement in the stereotypes (girls should avoid STEM, real men don’t need books) are false. ---
**Author:** ![needscoffee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/needscoffee/32/1076_2.png) [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2026, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stereotypes-have-you-found-to-not-be-true/1029553/60 "2026-04-28T05:18:05Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > **the average child has only some much intellectual capacity to divvy up.** When they put more attention in one area well another gets less. (The early walker is often a slower talker, and the converse.) (Bolding mine) Nonsense. I doubt any of our elementary school teachers here would agree with this. Maybe kids’ attention spans only go so far, but that’s not what you’ve stated. And the fact that some children walk/talk earlier/later is a complete non sequitur. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stereotypes-have-you-found-to-not-be-true/1029553.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-stereotypes-have-you-found-to-not-be-true/1029553.md?page=4)