"They all look alike to me".
It's become a punch line that ethnic comics use in their routines. Heck, even White comedians use it. But there are those that still use it, and we as a country have come far enough to recognize the racism in that phrase and to rebuke those that use it disparagingly.
Or have we?
In Denise Oliver Velez's diary on North Carolina Amendment One she points out the fact that it wasn't a "Black vs White" situation that caused the amendment to pass, but rather an urban vs rural thing, and that urban African Americans voted NO on the amendment.
And yet all we heard was about how "It was the fault of African Americans because all African Americans are against LGBT people".
Which is utter BS, of course, but that's the narrative.
And that's the trap we all fall in.
It's a disconnect that says that only White straight people are allowed to have different sub cultures and different groups.
And even then it has limits.
We assign African American society stereotypes and often we don't know it. The "homophobia" meme, for example. We assign Hispanic society stereotypes as well. But it doesn't stop at ethnic divisions. We assign evangelicals and Catholics with stereotypes as well. We assign stereotypes to the LGBT community as well.
Don't believe me?
Ever heard about the evangelical left? How about anti-immigration Hispanics like Marco Rubio? What about the Log Cabin Republicans or GOProud? Or even Allen West?
We see it here every single day. Complete and total incredulity that THESE PEOPLE can believe these things. "How do the LCR live with themselves" and all that. We especially see it on the right: "Jesse Jackson speaks for all African Americans" and "Democrats are weak on national security".
We constantly fall into the trap of assigning stereotypes to people. And when people bring up these stereotypes such as the "Black homophobia" meme and we don't fight back, we do the work of groups like NOM whose mission is to divide and conquer. Because that's their purpose. To establish false stereotypes as "common knowledge".
Because they know the media is lazy and won't ask the questions. They'll just assign a set of beliefs depending on a person's self-identification.
And there's only one solution to that. Fight back against stereotypes. Talk to individuals. Recognize the diversity within the diversity and that "groups" themselves are breeding grounds for stereotypes.