Cultural Stereotyping
It’s impossible to deny that each country in the world is made up of a groups of people who tend to be defined by a certain culture. While different countries can include a mixture of cultures, especially today, we normally have a general idea of the key factors of cultures. If you stop and think about it, you could probably list a few things about the cultures of certain countries even though you have not necessarily been there to see it first hand! A list you might come up with could look something like this:
German culture: Very strict and punctual people. Enjoy drinking beer. Somewhat of a cold culture in the sense that the people are not extremely friendly. Very strong accent when speaking English.
Spanish culture: Lazy people who like to take naps and drink beer. Bull fighting and dancing is super common.
Russian culture: Drink a lot of vodka. Not the nicest people. Very cold country calls for cold culture.
Australian culture: Loads of expressions having to do with animals. They hang out with kangaroos and do a lot of water sports. Crazy individuals.
British culture: Very posh and formal. They have tea time every day. Always rainy, never sunny and they are very white.
Italian culture: They talk with their hands and eat a lot of pizza and pasta. The Italian mafia.
French culture: French boys are the most romantic. French woman are extremely delicate and formal. The language sounds beautiful. The people are a little stuck-up.
American culture: They eat a lot of fast food and love hamburgers. They think they are the best and are very patriotic.
I’m sure that, even if you don’t necessarily think of the exact things that are on this list, that your general thoughts on these cultures are similar. This is because a lot of our knowledge of these cultures comes from movies, music and social networks that we are all connected to. It is not until we go to the country and experience the culture first hand that we can see how it is in reality. The issue is that, at that point, we already have an idea in our head of how the culture is and instead of walking in with an open mind and allowing a new image to form, we try to fit our experiences into the cultural box we have already created in our mind.
All the factors we consider when thinking of cultures are not just ways of defining a culture, they are stereotypes and we are creating and using them all the time without realizing it. It is important to realize that these stereotypes do have to come from somewhere, that is to say that there is absolutely some truth in them, but normally they are extremely exaggerated. While in many situations these types of stereotypes can be harmless, it is important to be careful when using them so that they do not get out of hand.
Stereotyping, Prejudice, and Discrimination. (n.d.). Retrieved March 18, 2019, from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/1973019/modules/items/25635726