Generalizations and Idiocy
I recently read an acquaintance’s note on Facebook that included this observation: “…on the whole, women are not as funny as men.”
I immediately countered: “Joan Rivers. Carol Burnett. Bette Midler. Roseanne Barr. Whoopi Goldberg. Tracey Ullman. Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Janeane Garofalo. Margaret Cho. Chelsea Handler. Wanda Sykes. Sandra Bernhard. Sarah Silverman. Tina Fey. Amy Poehler. Kristen Wiig. And that’s just a few of them…”
But his comment stuck with me because it’s the kind of thing people say way too often.
There are two problems with sweeping generalizations like this:
1. They’re not true.
2. They make you sound willfully ignorant.
At its most harmless, saying that women aren’t as funny as men, or that black people aren’t as smart as white people, or that non-Christians aren’t as good as Christians (all of which have been idiotically repeated time and again), prevents people outside of the dominant group from having the same opportunities as those inside the dominant group. At its most harmful, ideas like this lead to things like slavery and genocide.
The only thing that is true “on the whole,” is that generalizing is stupid.
