Once, in a conversation with my then-(Singaporean)girlfriend, I brought up the old joke about how, if a white guy wanted to break up with a Japanese girl, all he had to do was just ask to meet her parents. Was this true of all Asians, I wondered?
She thought for a minute, smiled slightly, and said, "for my parents, not so much. They wouldn't be happy if I brought home a white guy but they wouldn't make a big deal out of it." She paused, then continued, "well, maybe if they thought it was really serious, like marriage. But my grandmother? Forget about it! That would be IT!"
After a lively and largely hilarious discussion of white racial stereotypes as held by Asians, I finally asked, " well then, why would you date white guys?"
She giggled. "Have you ever seen a chinese guy's dick?"
She said it loudly enough that people on either side of us looked in our direction with expressions of did that girl just say what I think she said? while I stammered out "uh...well...no...uh, I mean...NO...not like that."
She looked at me, gave me a sweet this-conversation-is-over smile and we moved on to other, ummm...details. A whip-smart, sassy and sexy young Asian woman who certainly brightened my life while we were together.
My point is not to repeat a racial stereotype in front of my Asian brothers on this board, only to point out that non-Asians are not the only ones to hold them.
Humans are social animals. They group together almost as naturally as they speak. The minute a group is formed, the members of that group begin--naturally or not, consciously or unconsciously--to draw distinctions between themselves and those not in their group. Inevitably, these become generalizations-some benign, some not--held as truths by members of that group. Ethnicities, nationalities, religions (especially religions), it's all the same: "this is us and that is them."
To deny this is simply to deny reality; just the silliest, most vapid hippie nonsense imaginable.
It's how--while knowing and acknowledging this and living with such ambiguous self-knowledge--we then behave and conduct our lives and actions toward others that either distinguishes and lifts, or demeans and degrades, us as human beings.
Of course, I've been wrong before...
BTW - the primary (though not the only) means by which forensic pathologists determine the racial affiliation of skeletal human remains is by examing the skull and...(envelope, please)...the pelvis.