Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Gopher]

People often accuse one or another national culture, race, ethnicity, sex, what-have-you, of stereotyping them. And that this makes the stereotypers bad, bad people.

Conversely, those who do not stereotype are good.

Just curious to know if there is anyone on the planet we can point to and say, yeah, they have never unfairly reduced the Other to a stereotype. As the Holy Bible says, I think: let he who has not sinned cast the first stone.

Well, then, who has not sinned on this issue? The Chinese, the Koreans, the Brazilians, the Congolese, Christians, Jews, Muslims, men, women, heteros, gays, whites, blacks...who exactly are the righteous ones?

Anyone have any specific examples that they are prepared to cite and defend here?

[twg]

There are no perfect human beings.

But that doesn't mean we shouldn't put in the minor effort it takes to not reduce the world to a simpleton's explanation just for the convenience of our prejudices.

So if the point of this exercise is to suggest, "They do it, so it's okay for us to do it too." then I'm afraid it's morally incorrect from the get go.

[JMO]

I've stereotyped you as one of those people who posts idiotic questions.
You know the answer.

[Gopher]

Thanks, JMO. I in turn have stereotyped you as one of those posters who tries too hard to be witty.

[JMO]

I wasn't trying to be witty. It is an idiotic question because you already know the answer. Why not come right out in the first post and give your argument?

This should have been your first post.

[Gopher]

Here, Twg, is the report my question responds to, by the way...

[Gopher]

[JMO]

[Gopher]

[JMO]

[Satori]

If you're saying that we should refrain from criticising the act of stereotyping just because it's widespread then I don't agree. Neither do I think that all groups stereotype to the same degree and with the same level of perniciousness. Neither do I think all generalisations are wrong or invalid if they are based in some kind of assessable factual reality. So, to say "Koreans are racist nationalistic xenophobes" is a ridiculous statement, but all you have to do is add "A large proportion of..." to the sentence and you are making a reasonable statement based on factual data.

[Gopher]

[Cerriowen]

Humans stereotype.

In order to cope with the constant barrage of new information and new situations, our minds try to recognize patters, which will enable us to predict the outcome of a given situation. We need a sense of security.

In order to do that, our minds naturally put every person, place, and thing in to a category of accepted outcomes.

This lets our brains dismiss a lot of the information and decisions that it would otherwise have to make.

So every person, no matter how "enlightened" they think they are, have stereotypes about people they may not even know about.

[Big_Bird]

[Alyallen]