Invented Stereotypes

So in the last three days, I have experienced something I would like to refer to as "Invented Stereotypes." This phenomenon occurs when someone accuses someone else of being racist due to a stereotype that does not exist (or at least in mainstream culture) until the moment it was uttered from their lips.

An associate of mine had taken a phone call about a loss prevention stop that was unwarranted. This is a bad situation in all senses of the word, however the woman said that she believed she was stopped because she was "Asian." 

Now I am not sure about you, but I feel that all the terrible stereotypical assumptions out in the word tend to be pretty well known. Regardless of their validity, they are fairly mainstream and are comically talked about in most circles. Most of which are either so outlandish, or simply accepted that they have never cause a race riot...maybe some tears in a toilet stall somewhere, but nothing that I have to subjected to on the daily news feeds.

Classic!

But unless you have a series of Yakuza tattoos (are those even a thing?), I highly doubt any trained Loss Prevention officer is honing in on asians as a group notorious for stealing. In fact, I will say that nearly all stereotypes (with the exception of those that negatively imply positive things "Asians are good at math"), I have personally witnessed by my own race...decisively more often than others. "Oh, black folks are all using welfare unfairly." Yeah...no...when I worked for Pick n Save, I watched more white folks using their quest card to try and buy high end protein (Crab, Lobster, and Steak) than anyone else...maybe its even worse because they are fulfilling said stereotypes with some unwarranted sense of deserving.

Yesterday, I had an man of clear Indian descent self-complimenting himself by declaring that "I know it seems like I had all sorts of money." Ummm...by a purely scientific standpoint: you are wearing worn denim, a stained t-shirt, you are shopping in a discount retailer, you haggles with me on every price, and you just paid for your entire purchase in coupons...but yes, that is the impression I got. Trust fund child FOR SURE. 

Case in point, if you have a race and/or exist, you don't get to reverse stereotype yourself by thinking that every crappy thing that happens to you is about race. I am sorry if you have not realized it yet, but it's about "people" as a race, one of which you are included...and we are pretty crappy creatures in general.

Um...some of the worst cooks I have ever known are women

To all my retail comrades,

Smile safe out there :)

-Milly