Racial Stereotyping and Generalizations - Not Necessarily A Bad Thing

Last night, my brother, along with my Dad, came out to my son's Christmas concert. The concert was pretty funny, and lots of fun, watching the school staff trying to co-ordinate the singing and maintaining the enthusiasm of 90 kindergarten kids on stage, most of them, I am sure, were ready for bed, based on the sleepy faces and the confused "deer in the headlights" look. I enjoyed watching my son sing along with his fake antlers affixed to a headband that he wore, tambourine in hand. He did a fabulous job, as did all the kids.

After the concert, and a short visit to our home by my brother and Dad, I drove my brother home (about 45-50 minutes away). We had a chance to chat, and I remarked that earlier, before the concert, as we were getting our Festive Family Dinner meal at Swiss Chalet, he seemed rather irritated. He said at the time, it was possibly work related, but in discussing it all, he said that he was able to pinpoint the cause of his frustration and mood. It was because of the Toronto people in general seemingly losing all manners during the Christmas holidays, particularly on the roads and in the malls. Now, this came as no surprise to me, since, as I had previously stated in this here blog, that people in general seem very fickle during this time of year, turning on the good vibes seemingly at will, with this "Christmas spirit" crap, while they selfishly plow themselves through a mall, pushing and shoving like a bunch of refugees in seeing a box of goodies from the Red Cross. I mentioned to my brother that what he is experiencing is not unusual, since I generally avoid the malls as well for this reason, and save myself a lot of headache and aggravation.

My brother, however, added some other comments, which I found both interesting, and surprising, coming from his mouth. He indicated that people in the Toronto area are ruder in certain areas. He recently did a favour for a colleague of mine (and a former colleague of his) in getting her the much-sought-after Nintendo Wii system. As a favour to her, he delivered the unit to her in Brampton, where she lives. My brother had indicated that "I don't want to be stereotypical, but those people in Brampton are very rude - they cut you off, and don't even exercise the simplest of courtesies!" Now, I knew what he was getting at, and since him and I were in the car and could talk without the ears of bleeding-heart liberals listening, we were able to have a frank discussion. Brampton, you may not know, is a suberb of Toronto, and is populated by a heavy East Indian/Pakistani population. Just look during a general election in any Brampton riding, and you'll invariably see that all the candidates for the various political parties are East Indian or Pakistani or Tamil. Obviously my brother was talking about those people, even though he didn't name. I, of course, don't really give a rat's ass about being politically correct, so I said, "Why don't you just come out and say that you're irritated by that ethnic group?" Interestingly enough, my brother's roommate and long-time friend from university, is of East Indian background, but he is quick to indicate that she is different than the rest of them. He was careful not to sound stereotypical and I said it's OK if he stereotypes, since we live by what our experience tells us. It's not like he's riding with an NDPer left-wing "tolerance for everyone" type of person here...

I told him of my own opinions on this subject, and in particular, how I wasn't all that far off in terms of my own perceptions. I sell a lot of stuff on craigslist. And as is the craigslist method, everything is paid for during local pickup. I meet a lot of people from a lot of different demographics, and the one thing I have noticed is that people of East Indian or Pakistani (that were not born here) tend to be irritatingly hard to deal with when it comes to making the sale. Nine times out of ten, they will try to haggle the price with me, and not a reasonable haggle, but a ridiculous offer that is insulting (ie. I sell something for $60.00, which is fair market value, and they offer $15.00, at which point I tell them to go take a hike). Now, am I being stereotypical and racist? Yes, I am being stereotypical, because I go by what my own experience tells me. If I get mugged nine separate times by nine separate guys who happen to wear Toronto Maple Leafs jerseys , you'd be an idiot to not feel apprehension the next time a guy is walking behind you at night with a Toronto Maple Leafs jersey on. Now, I don't believe it's racist, because I haven't (as of yet) gotten to the point where I will tar every single person with the same brush. I do know of a few very nice and kind East Indian guys and gals, so I know better, even though I do have some formed opinions already. I think in this sense we all do.

My brother also mentioned how he detests riding the subway to certain parts of Scarborough (not the greatest part of Toronto, since there are very crime-ridden pockets of it). Again, he didn't come out and say this, so I said it for him, but there are some subways stops which are in some fairly Black-populated areas. He said that the kids there lack respect, manners, and so forth. That's generally been my experience as well with Black youth in Toronto, but again, this can be attributed primarily to the type of family structure you see in these communities (and I've discussed this before so I won't bother rehashing it) with generally no fathers present, a great deal of poverty (some of it may be residual from racism in the past, but much of it I believe continues to be self-inflicted through lack of self-responsibility, initiative, and wallowing in one's guilt and blaming everyone else. I know I'm not the only one who holds this view. Is this stereotypical? Perhaps. Generalizing? Of course. But that's been my experience, all the way from grade four, when the only black guy in the class stole my coveted video game system, to when I was bowled over by this huge black guy running down the hall in high school and not watching where he was running. He never apologize, but just laughed. To an extent, I may still carry some of the residual avoidance of coloured people that my parents harboured. However, despite my generalized perception, I know that it is unfair to paint all Black people with the same brush (as racists like to do) since I know of many Black folks who don't fit that stereotype at all (interestingly enough, some Blacks may consider these folks "trying to be White"). The best boss that I ever had was a Black man (and a very strong Christian), who took care of me
at work and helped my career progress. Two of our close friends are Black. There are a number of Black people at our church with whom I get along very well. So I know that while I still may have some perceptions based on what I see, I warned my brother not to let his observations cloud his general opinion. Now, if you have not ever met a Black person that was nice to you, then I certainly don't blame you for not being comfortable around them.

Generalizations can cause problems sometimes. This became abundantly evident a couple of months ago at my son's school. There was this kid, who was picking on my son (and many others). My son told me his name and I got pretty pissed, since to me, it was a Middle-Eastern type of name. I remember remarking to my wife, "Those stupid damn Arabs, causing trouble again", (to my shame, what I actually said was considerably worse, and I won't brother repeating it here) to which my wife responded by reminding me that as a Christian, I should have love in my heart and forgive people. She is right, and I felt bad in saying that. However, I felt even more bad the day I walked my kid to school, and he pointed out at that bully kid, and he was a white kid from Eastern Europe. Well, I learned a lesson that day about assumptions and the problematic aspects of generalizing. I have, over the years, developed a lack of fondness for those from the Middle East (and it has nothing to do with 9/11, which seems to be the catalyst for a lot of anti-muslim sentiments). It's funny, because I have known Jews over the years, and they have never been pushy to try to force their beliefs or way of life onto others. Muslims, though, I find, seemingly like to complain about Canadian society and in particular, the Western way of life, since there is much cultural clash between that and their own lifestyle. My brother and I discussed this last night and we both agreed that there should be something instituted in becoming a Canadian citizen that makes you swear off any problems you had back in your former life in your former country. Please...don't bring your shit to Canada. In Scarborough, I see all these conflicts between East Indian and Sri Lankan gangs, the origins of which came from the other side of the world. I have seen first hand that the Jewish and Palestinian conflict is well and alive in Canada. There are Asian gangs that run amok certain parts of Toronto because of conflict and irritation started back in Hong Kong or Vietnam.

I've been involved with sport shooting for almost a year now. I've discussed airgunning thoroughly here on various articles and will continue to do so. However, getting into the sport/hobby has caused my fair share of apprehension. This was due to perceptions (by others, and to a lesser extent, by me) and generalization that the shooting sport hobby is something that is enjoyed exclusively by gun-toting, loner, anti-government Caucasians. This may be, in part, fueled by stereotypes of a bunch of White guys at NRA meetings or people may attempt to make the following links:

Shooting = nothing to do = rural = farms = white guys

or

Shooting = gun nut = uneducated = trailer trash

or

Shooting = violence = video games = young white male

But as I got into sport shooting (not hunting), I realized that what the media (who typically has a hand in handing us these stereotypes) has historically depicted is simply not true. Many of the fellow airgunners with whom I correspond are very educated folks who are married and have families (in fact, the incidence of stable, married people) are much higher amongst outdoorsmen than the general population (ie. office workers and city people). All the airgunners I know have jobs. They are mostly articulate. Now, I have run into one or two stereotypical gun nuts who believe that the government is out to get them (which may be true!) and believe that they need to arm themselves to the teeth to overthrow the Zionist takeover in the future. Aside from these few glaring exceptions, having exposure to these folks has made me realize that much of the perceptions of them in the media are unfounded. And to boot, there are a lot of Asians and minorities who do sport shooting - I see them when I go into the gunshop at my local outdoors store. In fact, one of the local instructors for the Canadian Firearms Security Course in Markham is an Asian guy, who holds classes in Cantonese for his students and there is a growing interest amongst Asians in the outdoors. It's nice to see stereotypes dispelled.

Now, I don't want to leave this entry with you thinking that I have a problem with minorities, per se. As an Asian guy myself, I should be more understanding, right? Wrong. I am not a bleeding-heart liberal who expects handouts from others or the government. If my life sucks, it's because I've at least in part contributed to it. Everyone has a choice, and you look at people who have come from similar situations who have pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and refuse to be a victim of generalization, you can see that hard work, initiative, and taking responsibility are not unique to any one racial group. They may even fight to show that they do not fit the stereotype. I applaud these people.