Why do i see so many americans obsessed with the concept of "this is a thing that [Ethnicity] does"

Submitted ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Clear@lemmy.blahaj.zone⁩ to ⁨nostupidquestions@lemmy.world⁩

Like, i can’t genuinely understand why I see so many post and memes about things like: “White people things that black people enjoy” “Black people things that white people should try” “Thing that Asian people should make others do”

It feels like people in the U.S. the moment they see someone skin color they immediately make sweeping generalisations about them (which sounds super racist to me but OK), which also makes integration more difficult, because instead of an interesting mixture of cultures it makes for immovable blocks of stereotypes

Am I just seeing a small bubble of content or missing something or what? Please explain it to me

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Comments

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marble@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
You can’t understand this? You just did it yourself…

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- CluckN@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Most self-aware European
  
  Edit: Well shit
  
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- ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  lol!
  
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- Solumbran@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  “Americans” are not an ethnicity. Talking about the culture of a country is nothing similar to attaching innate characteristics to a person based on origin/skin color/etc.
  
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  - Tedesche@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Different category, same categorical error.
    
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- ghostrider2112@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Yes, text book case of how transparent projection is to us when we do it.
  
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- scarabic@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Yeah really… because cultural divides and prejudice are a uniquely American thing! /s
  
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gedaliyah@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
America is a nation of immigrants and mixed cultures. In the early 1900s, there was great pressure to acculturate to the “American” way of doing things. Immigrants changed their names, clothes, foods, and language to match the “mainstream.” There was a push to build a “colorblind” society.

By the 1960s-70s, younger people began to realize that “acculturation” really meant erasing cultural heritage and acquiescing to white, Anglo, male-dominated culture. So there was a movement to preserve, celebrate, and empower differences between people.

This gave rise to the Black Power movement, creation of the term “Hispanic” and the Latin American ethnicity, Women’s Lib, Gay Pride, and even the rise of pizza delivery chains (which was regarded as a somewhat exotic ethnic food at the time).

That tension continues in the USA between recognizing and celebrating cultural differences, and becoming a melting pot of many cultures becoming one.

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- fieryhamster007@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  The melting pot idea was all over news and media back in late 70s and 80s. Gen X has forgotten what it was like when America was great and not this demon filled hellhole that was elected.
  
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  - Dagwood222@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    America wasn’t great, it was just a lot cheaper to live in.
    
    The economy tanked when Nixon kept paying for the Vietnam War by printing money without raising taxes. That and the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973 crashed the American Dream. Jimmy Carter hired Paul Volker to fix things. Jimmy got kicked out before the plan started kicking in and Reagan got the credit. Then Ronnie turned the money spigot on extra high for the rich and that’s how it all went to hell.
    
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- wjrii@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  
  That tension continues in the USA between recognizing and celebrating cultural differences, and becoming a melting pot of many cultures becoming one.
  
  This is the crux. It’s a uniquely American take on how you deal with a country that has seen dozens of waves of immigration (starting with the illegal immigration of colonization) from many different places over a fairly short timeframe. American culture is kind of like a fork, with a unified base that has integrated but very distinct tines (bear with me… combining the “melting pot” and “salad bowl” tropes is HARD!). At their best, memes and jokes like that can be an invitation to genuine dialogue. At their worst… well… not that. A lot depends on who is putting them out and with what agenda in mind.
  
  Statistically, most European countries seem to be estimated at somewhere between 80%-90% “white,” likely to mean “of exclusively European extraction beyond any sort of family memory,” and I wager the vast majority of those people are from the core borders or frontiers that might well have shifted in the last few centuries. America hasn’t had that sort of percentage for over 40 years, and even then the white population was more “assorted crackers.” Even back into that era, most areas will have had at least two and likely three to five statistically significant populations that would have been visually and culturally distinct (not that this in ANY way implies that these groups were treated equally by the power structures… OMG far, far, FAR from it). These people don’t have to give up their distinctiveness to remain American, and when considered in good faith, particularly by those who mostly live in the base of the fork, the sorts of things you’re describing can be more celebratory than divisive.
  
  I’m not going to suggest Americans are particularly good at multiculturalism (another understatement), but we’ve been at it a long time and specific practices and trends have grown up around it. The balancing act of racial and ethnic awareness without descending into judgment is probably one of the more complicated aspects of navigating American culture, regardless of whether you were born to it or looking on from the outside. So much so, in fact, that certain small-minded people think we should just snap the tines off the fork and pretend the nub was always a spoon.
  
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RedditWanderer@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
A mix of cognitive bias and systemic racism

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- SpruceBringsteen@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  It’s a culture that heavily pushes self identity. Then you combine that with poor schooling and a sheltered upbringing.
  
  If you’re of limited education, means, and exposure, when it comes time to start outfitting that identity it becomes very easy to place yourself in a box. And that box becomes the lens you see the world through.
  
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shawn1122@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
US compartmentalizes based on race. It’s apparent in essentially all of the media they export to the rest of the world.

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- Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  And they do it even if there’s not much difference between people. When I lived in Scranton I’d get asked what ethnic group I was a part of - Irish, Italian, Polish, Lithuanian, Welsh, etc.
  
  To someone who didn’t grow up there I didn’t know what they were asking, but there was still in the early 00s different parts of town for different communities.
  
  This all stopped when a significant Hispanic population moved in, and they stopped being Poles or Estonians and became “American” and the newcomers weren’t.
  
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Opinionhaver@feddit.uk ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
It’s not American thing - it’s a human thing. We tend to group people into us and them.

But also, stereotypes don’t come from thin air. There’s usually atleast a hint of truth to them. However, where people go wrong with this is when they apply it to individuals. It doesn’t work that way. These are group differences. When speaking of individuals there’s a greater differences to be found within a group than between them.

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BillDaCatt@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Most Americans do not live in or near a big city. We tend to live in towns that have a majority of only one or two ethnic groups. My town has whites and latinos but very few black people. I personally know only two black people and neither one lives near me. The only Chinese people I know are the ones who operate the Chinese restaurant in town. My experience is not unique.

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- Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Similar small town experience here.
  
  I grew up learning that racism is bad, and that everyone’s the same and I truly believed in that idea. I thought I was very not racist, but when I had a job that moved me to a few big cities for a few years, I realized that I had a different kind of racism.
  
  It’s easy for all these small town white people to “never do anything racist” because they rarely encounter different people. When they do, they feel like they can pat themselves on the back, because they didn’t shout slurs at those people. But, I guarantee that when any one of them travels to the city and sees a group of black people standing outside of a gas station, they’ll keep driving until they find a “less shady neighborhood”.
  
  These people don’t “feel” racist, and they don’t want to be racist, but they consistently reinforce racist laws because they have no understanding of how different cultures are affected by them.
  
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- 4am@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  80% of Americans live in urban areas
  
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  - ryathal@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    This is based on the census bureau definition, which is much more inclusive than just large cities. 84/510 urban areas have a population greater than 500k. 198/510 have sub 100k population.
    
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alykanas@slrpnk.net ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Active Divide and Rule.

Last thing the government need is people using social media to realise we have more in common than differences, which social media naturally does.

So it’s managed.

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foggy@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Our brains are masterful at categorizing information and externalizing information for efficiency (i.e. wow your car smells like my babysitter’s car from when I was 4—that’s weird).

If you want actual scientific discourse on this, I implore you to look into social psychology, which presents this in a brilliant little pipeline.

Stereotypes emerge from a “kernel of truth”—which may be false, socially constructed, or only true in a narrow context. When generalized, they become prejudice (pre-judging), which leads to discrimination. When embedded in systems, this discrimination reinforces racism, sexism, and other structural inequalities.

Thanks for coming to my ted talk.

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ehpolitical@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I’m Canadian and have known some very racist Canadians. In fact, the most racist man I ever knew was a Canadian. Far as I can tell, racism is everywhere and always an ignorant thing.

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- xmunk@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  As an American that moved to Canada it was eye opening that a lot of racist Canadians direct the energy Americans point at black folks toward Native Americans. Canada absolutely has a problem with some deep seated racism.
  
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  - ehpolitical@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Sadly, I’ve seen it aimed at pretty much anyone who’s of a different race. I don’t know how Canada compares to other countries that way, but I’ve definitely seen way too much of it in Canada.
    
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IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
So a tiger ate your friend and your brain goes Lion = Bad

That why humans tried to avoid predators for… the entire human history.

But the brain also does this for humans and skin color… so here we are… 🤷‍♂️

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AFC1886VCC@reddthat.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
This is such a white person post, man

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Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
It ain’t just race. Pop into one of the nuerodivergent (sp?) Subs on like reddit. So many posts like “I do X. Is it because I am Y”. And “why do we all do Y”. And “I hate that NT people do Z”…

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meyotch@slrpnk.net ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Some people do think that way and we generally use the word ‘stupid’ to describe their behavior.

Some people act that way but don’t really believe it because for some reason it has become cool to be ’edgy’.

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Blaze@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
!askusa@discuss.online

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L0rdMathias@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Since you believe this stems from your personal perceptions and observations, the answer likely involves a paradigm shift that random people on the internet can’t realistically assist with beyond basic advice. Whenever I’m stuck on a problem and I don’t know where to go, a good place to start is collect more data and widen your research. Good luck o7.

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TrickDacy@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
You’re referring to jokes that were commonplace until like 15 years ago. I’m not sure where you’re seeing that constantly but I almost never do.

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