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Is it *ever* okay to negatively generalize people based on a group they have no control over belonging to (for a roughly neutral example, "red headed people get angry so fast")? || Is it okay for women to talk about how scared they are of men?

Yes || Yes
58.7%
Yes || No
4.4%
No || Yes
23.4%
No || No
13.5%

2,638 votesFinal results

3:14 AM · Dec 24, 2019

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West Africans are very poor distance runners and East Africans are very poor sprinters.

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😂😂, so glad you added that last part

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Yes in principle, but it can potentially be taken to an unreasonable degree

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"Sick people get cranky."

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As long as it is true. Negative quality is negative quality. Then having no control over it does not change the reality that it is negative quality. Reality is cruel. Reality does not give a shit about fairness. Reality is indifferent.

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Is it okay for people to talk about how afraid they are of black people?

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Generalizations are helpful for communicating expediently, but it's good to avoid causing unnecessary offense or reenforcing negative feedback loops. Knowing your audience helps. It's usually safer to take shortcuts with people that already know you and your views well.

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Whether something is ok depends on context and it's going to depend on who is experiencing it. Better questions: what are the effects of doing x and am I ok with those effects. Whether other people are ok with it may or may not figure into it.

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If done in a rational way generalizing according to groups is useful for predicting probability of behaviour in people. This is done often in insurance and marketing as much as is possible before it conflicts with PR and PC. However people don't always think about it rationally.