A Lighthearted Look at Sterotypes
But first....a joke.
Two men walk into a laundry owned by a Chinese family. The first man asks for his shirts, but is unable to provide the ticket that he received when he dropped them off. The laundry owner explains that without the ticket, there is no way to determine which shirts belong to the fellow.
Upon exiting the store, the first man says to the second "Those damn Jews!" The second fellow responds "But that man was Chinese!" The first fellow replies "I know, those are the worst kind!"
The moral of the story shows the benefits of stereotyping. It is a great time saver. Stereotypes enable us to know all about large groups of people without ever having to waste time, you know, actually MEETING them. That can only add time to our days.
The second advantage to stereotypes is that, when we encounter an inconvenient fact, we can ignore it. Or better still, turn it into a part of a vast conspiracy theory.
So, Jews are cheap. They don't like to spend money and NEVER give it away. Facts to ignore- David Geffen, born to Jewish Ukrainian in Brooklyn, NY, contributed $205 million to the University of California at Los Angeles' School of Medicine in 2002, the fourth largest contribution made that year. Source: http://slate.msn.com/id/2078472/ (It must be part of a plot!)
Men in general and European men in particular are smarter than others. Despite the best efforts of scientists and pseudo-scientists to prove this theory, all evidence points to equality among the races and sexes. See http://www.rpi.edu/~eglash/eglash.dir/ethnic.dir/race/bio_det.html. Obviously the data was supressed by communists or the Elders of Zion or both.
People of African origin have a "built-in" sense of rhythm. Like those two boys who wrote the song "Hound Dog," originally performed by Big Mama Thornton (and later by The King himself.) Big Mama knew rhythm, you can be sure of that! Wait, you say that Hound dog was written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, two Jewish boys from LA? They also wrote Love Potion #9" (The Clovers), "Kansas City" (Wilbert Harrison), "On Broadway" (The Drifters), "Stand by Me" (Ben E. King). Plus the immortal greats of the Coasters, including Searchin'," "Young Blood," "Along Came Jones," "Charlie Brown," "Yakety Yak (Don't Talk Back)," "Poison Ivy." A plot, a devious plot! Why next thing you'll tell me is that Lenny Kravitz is.....wait, he is?
I am sure that others can contribute more "true" stereotypes to the collection.