Over-generalizing, Accepting Stereotypes and Prejudices -- and Challenging A Few -- While Living Abroad

As an American ex-pat, journalist, and educator living outside the US, traveling to dozens of countries, I routinely heard racist, sexist, nationalistic, and judgmental statements about various nationalities, ethnicities, religions, and tribes in public or semi-public.

Traveling on three continents (North America, Europe, and Asia) over eight years, I heard or read bigotry expressed against nearly every religion, ethnicity, and nationality.

Particular targets of distrust or ire were Muslims, Catholics (in Northern Ireland), Protestants (in Southern Ireland), Jews, Arabs, Palestinians, African Americans, Christians, Turks, Kurds, Americans, Mexicans, Armenians, Germans, Greeks, Brits, Africans, Chinese, the French, Roma (gypsies), the poor, the rich, and homosexuals, to name a few.

No person, ethnic group, or ideology is immune from bigotry. I found myself from time to time thinking bigoted thoughts. For example, on a crowded ferry, I observed a French woman acting very selfishly, sprawling out on three seats, oblivious to the needs of a half-dozen people who had no place to sit at all. I thought of Mark Twain’s statement that the evolutionary scale is upside down. Actually, humans are at the bottom of the scale, he said, and below man, “there is nothing, no one — no one except the French.”

Now, if I actually knew a lot of French people,