This morning I'm proud to say I can scratch 2 items off my list.
5. Job Decision
Well, I made the decision, but I have yet to execute it. That'll come. But the calm of having made the decision is worth being able to cross something off my list ;)
18. Apologise to Kersh
He's my Gay Indian friend who wanted to be Jewish. Okay, that's just what I call him cause I think it's hysterical. How could any description be less stereotypical? Although he is a Gay Indian ... and last year he did try out being Jewish for a bit - he bought the little hat and everything (I know it's called a yarmulka ... although I don't know how to spell that and Wikipedia has about 18 different spellings, so I pick that one). Anyway, he's not really a friend in the close personal sense of the word but I guess at work he sort of is.
So anyway, that's done too ... he'd innocently interrupted my sparkling mood on Tuesday morning when I was trying to build a buffer between myself and the world with my iPod. Anyway, I vaguely remember being rather snappish with him, worse than the usual amount ;) Since generally I rip him off blatantly about all sorts of things - I'm convinced he lived in a box somewhere in Durbs before he moved to Jhb, he didn't know that when you put an offer in on a house you don't give the seller asking price. He's an Indian, surely haggling for a lower price should come naturally? And my personal favourite are all the words he's never heard before and has no idea what they mean. Frazzled being the most recent in my memory.
Which brings me to another question ... do people know when they're a stereotype? Anyway, that's a conversation for a different day, now I really have to get some work done.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
List Update
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Follow me on 
Like me on 
Follow me on 
5 comments:
Perhaps they know when other people MAKE them a stereotype?
Not sure what you mean by people making someone else a stereotype?
I think that it is something people do all on their own ... I just wonder if they ever realise that that is the life they've chosen. That they are one of a whole whack of people who perpetuate the mass-perception of their own race/culture/religion etc. by the choices they've made or the way they live their lives.
Stereotype definition:
"A generalization, usually exaggerated or oversimplified and often offensive, that is used to describe or distinguish a group."
This is why I say it's people who stereotype others, not people who stereotype themselves.
Putting your Indian 'friend' into a little box and labeling him a stereotype for being the way he is, makes you into a stereotype, not him.
Personally, I'd rather be a stereotype than one who stereotypes others.
@roxanne so you'd rather be a lemming than someone who calls a lemming a lemming ?!? put down the crack pipe and concentrate before you type hunny. oh and maybe, just for fun ,you can turn on the red light like sting said...
@roxanne - I think you'll find, if you read my post again, that what I said about my Indian friend was: "How could any description be less stereotypical?"
The closest I got to stereotyping him was "He's an Indian, surely haggling for a lower price should come naturally?". Which was merely to comment that again he did not fit the stereotype.
so clearly neither of us are stereotypes ...
All I did was ask a question at the end of my post about whether people realise they conform to a universal stereotype of their race / culture / religion. Which some people just do, whether it's offensive or not ...
That's how stereotypes came about. They wouldn't have if it weren't true for a large majority. I'm not making an observation on whether they're offensive or not. You can't just make up a stereotype, it has to be true for a majority and easily recognisable for it to work. If it's somehting like saying an Indian will find the lowest price, it's not offensive but a compliment if you ask me ... and half the Indian's I work with will agree. But I guess it depends on whether you can laugh at yourself or if, instead, you take yourself and the overly politically correctness of this country too seriously.
Post a Comment