Stereotypes rule

[aadroma]

A guy online asked me if I knew some other guy... when I told him I didn't, he seemed surprised ...

"and since he jewish.......I just jumped to conclusions."

Erm, no. :: laugh :: I don't know every Jew. I don't even know every GAY Jew. ^^;;;

Comments

[slavetoreznor]

wait, what? you don't? well that isn't very useful....

Oh! My roommate in college dated a guy in a wheelchair... Bob Smith.. Maybe you know him!

[dodgingwndshlds]

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!! Don't let them know you don't know every one!!! Paranoia is the ultimate weapon....

".... Oh sure! Bob Smith!! I'll tell him you remembered him at the next meeting!"

[theotherqpc]

i grew up an hour outside of NYC, so Jews were everywhere for me too. i remember the culture shock i got when i moved to WI for school and realized we still had class on Yom Kippur

[gullinbursti]

Strangely, the town I grew up in had almost no Jews; they only founded a synagogue sometime in the mid-'90s because there was finally a minyan. Even though I never met anyone Jewish until mid-way through high school, I never heard any sort of stereotypes about them until I moved East. Anti-Semitism floored me the first time I found out it existed, because I really had no idea of what the stereotypes were (pretty much until I read Othello in high school, I guess.) I still just don't. get. it. in the way that I "get" the bases of other forms of bigotry.

Maybe there has to be some sort of event horizon, where there's enough of a group of people to stereotype but not enough of them to actually know many of them. Or maybe it just takes a particularly stupid person to start breeding the stereotype memes.. I dunno.

[djmadadam]

Jews have horns on their heads. Trufax.

[sftekbear]

You mean you don't know gay Marc from New York? What about gay Maury from Los Angeles?

[danthered]

"Oh, you're from Toronto Canada? I had a friend from Canada, his name was Ben. Do you know him?"