Stereotypes... I used to stereotype others when I was much younger. Especially when I was young and naive, I was easily influenced by the older generation in my family with their negative perceptions of the other races. When I was a child and would misbehave like other children such as running about, the adults would frighten me by telling me, "Later the Ah nei (Indians) will catch you and cook curry!" With a young and impressional mind, I was easily deceived and particularly afraid of the group of people whom they called "Ah nei" for fear that they would really capture me and add me as an ingredient to cook curry. I have tried to figure out what my family members said was really true while struggling with my logic that wouldn't the police apprehend the "ah neis" if they would capture children to cook curry?
Even being a Chinese, there were also sterotypes among the different Chinese dialect groups. Very often, I will see people sing praises for their own dialect group and criticise the other dialect groups. My grandmother was a judgemental person as she did not received any formal education and she tends to stereotype people easily. Her daughter-in-law is from China. Both of them have different habits, personalities and dialect groups that they did not get along well with each other. Based on her own experience with her daughter-in-law, she holds a belief that woman from China are materialistic and stingy, thus she will generalise the Chinese nationals behaving similarly as her daugher-in-law. Initially, I believed my grandmother wholeheartedly that I believed whatever she said was true and gradually have the perception that Chinese nationals are stingy and selfish.
However, from my interaction with my aunt, I find her a caring woman who has the family's welfare at heart by being thrifty. She cooks simple fare (her hometown cusinie) so that the family will have a healthier lifestyle, yet my grandmother will interpret her as being mercenary, I believe that my grandmother would have hurt her feelings by complaining her to the other relatives and often criticize her hometown food. Since then, I have tried to remove preperceptions about people whenever I interact with them. This has helped me in removing the barriers of communication and allows me to truly understand people from another cultural group naturally.
Based on my experiences interacting with people, I realised that people tend to be judgemental against negative behaviours and jump into conclusions very quickly in concluding whether a particular group of people is good or bad. Even for myself, I may sometimes be critical about a certain cultural group based on a negative experience with one person from that group. There was an Indian student who cut my quene and pushed me while I was trying to board the shuttle bus. Immediately, something came into my mind that I could not even control its entry to my mind, it is the perception that Indian guys are non-gentlemen. In face of such similar situations, I will try to let my rationality to sink into my mind and not let prejudices and biasness overtake it.
I believe that as long as people are willing to accept the fact that regardless of one's ethnicity or race, humans are not perfect beings and will make mistakes. Hence, one should open up their hearts and minds in accepting one another despite their differences.
