Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Stereotypes

Let's face it. As people, we are wired to generalize. Its not our fault, its just that reality can be so overwhelming at times. For example, if you go to 5 different Best Buy stores and had a miserable experience with their customer service representative, and let's say for example that all of them happen to be Black, you will assume that all Black people are horrible with customer service. Is this true? Of course not, I'm sure somewhere out there is a Black person who is also good at customer service. These generalizations, can almost occur for anything. I"m not just limiting it to race. It can be generalizations about race, ethnicity, religion, and even sex. For example, all men are horny (okay, maybe this one is true).

For the last decade or so, Indians have been working very hard to wash off some of the generalizations and stereotypes made about us. Lets be honest. Everyone always would make fun of Indians and call them smelly, weird, or people who eat monkey brains (thanks Indiana Jones). However, in the last few years with Indians cracking the top 5 wealthiest people in the world, the emergence of Aishwarya Rai, and of course Slumdog Millionaire, Brown is the new Black. Thanks to Harold and Kumar Indians can be pot heads, and Dr. Sanjay Gupta even gives us a nice little advantage in making Indians look smart.

However, morons like this guy are really not helping our cause. If you read this story an Indian dad who fathered 7 daughters has decided not to wash himself in 35 years in an attempt to hopefully father a son! What the hell man!!!!! What are you doing?!!!? He supposedly takes a "fire bath" which in his own warped freakin opinion is just as good as a "water bath" for killing germs. Of course, the rest of society disagrees and the guy lost his job, and no one wants to be near him.

I'm pretty sure that this regimen will guarantee at least one thing. He probably won't give birth to another daughter. In fact, I'll be pretty freakin surprised if anyone gets close enough to him so that he has a chance to father anything else at this point. By the way the guy is in his 60's and still gunning for a son. I guess that's another stereotype of Indians - stubborn.

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