Forgetfulness or racism?

[almostwitty]

The Evening Standard carries a story about a black couple, outraged that their waitress scribbled ‘black couple’ on their bill, when they were the only couple dining.

The thing is, I’ve kind of done this myself while running my parents’ Chinese takeaway, scribbling descriptive notes on their order because I have a huge tendency to forget which order belongs to which customer. I’ve even done it when there’s only one customer – after all, another one will inevitably walk in and I’ll get all confused.

I’m not so sure I’ve gone as far as just describing someone in terms of their race, but there have been other unflattering descriptions such as baldy, NHS glasses etc. But if I went to a restaurant, and saw that scribbled on my order was “fat balding Chinese man”, I’d be a tad put out to say the least.

It’s certainly racism in the sense of discrimination against or antagonism towards other races, but there are probably bigger battles to fight. Like the woman at Question Time taking Jack Straw to task over African-Caribbean versus Afro-Caribbean while one of Britain’s biggest bigots sits on a panel next to Jack Straw. And then there’s the controversy in China over a “Chinese Idol” contestant who’s half-Chinese, half-black…

Ooooh it’s complicated. But I’d rather we just end up dealing with people based on whether they’re nice to us or not…

Mirrored from almost witty.

Comments

[anivair.livejournal.com]

I have never really been convinced that positive stereotypes are even close to as harmful as negative ones. I just don't see why people assuming you're good with numbers is a negative supposition. if you're not, then big deal. it makes you just like almost everyone else. And if you are, I don't think it somehow minimizes our ability.

I think that the real problem with racism is seeing people as inferior, not superior in some way. Also, the really bad racists, IME, tend to view an entire race as not as good, rather than better at some things and worse at others (what I like to call the D&D racism).

I've heard it said that saying that Asians are good with math is tantamount to saying that they are physically weak, but I think that's more a cultural nerd stereotype than anything that is actually racism (because we tend to think of those two things as incompatible, when they are not. It would apply to anyone good with numbers (IT geeks get that same thing applied to them).

And to be fair, a lot of it is cultural. I've seen how schools in china and japan teach math and it pretty much blows the way most American schools teach it out of the water. It's hard to counter that stereotype when Asian countries seem to be kicking it's ass.

[almostwitty]

Well, one way where positive stereotyping backfires is when people start rebelling against it eg Asian teenagers forming gangs to try and dispel the model minority myth - ironically by emulating 'black' gang culture, to rather violent effect...

[anivair.livejournal.com]

That's a solid point, but to be fair, i'm not sure if that's rebelling against that specifically or if it's just teens rebelling because they're teens and that's the excuse they hit upon. But it is the most valid reason i've heard in ages, so it gets points.