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Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

> For example, I've seen a few of them around ticket machines in Bologna railway station, Italy - trying to extract some forgotten change from the machines or harrass it off passengers.

I've directly witnessed lots of white Americans do lots of horrible things, in many cases horrible things I've never witnessed people of other ethnic backgrounds doing.

If I then decide that white Americans as a whole are horrible people who do those horrible things, its still prejudice -- I am prejudging individuals based not on nothing but their ethnic similarity to people I've witnessed doing bad things.

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What kind of horrible things have you witnessed white Americans do that you've never witnessed any other race do?

There are patterns on Roma people. They don't integrate locally, that's why they're all the same.

The same thing is by Albanians who emigrate, if they keep their local culture they mostly ~suck (really, ask ANY Albanian). ~Most Roma people don't integrate therefore they suck (their original culture does).

Americans integrate locally (redneck, bible belt, etc) and are different between states/cities/etc.

If Americans start to come to other countries and behave obnoxiously, those countries definitely have rights to kick them out and prevent any more americans from coming.

> If Americans start to come to other countries and behave obnoxiously,(...)

I believe you just described a good chunk of American tourists. :)

And a good chunk of all people, everywhere, for that matter.

While I interpret both as signs of overconfidence, there is a difference between talking to loud in public and throwing trash on the streets of your state supplied house.

I think the point is how much does the behavior of one American tell us about how a second, separate American, will behave?

On an individual level, not a lot. So it would be lazy to bake-in prejudice based on a single bad experience.

At the same time, prejudices (pre-judgements) of particular populations is common sense and statistically logical. For example, from a random pool of 1000 Swedes and 1000 Saudis you could guess with a fair deal of confidence which group has the more enlightened view on women's rights.

An interesting topic that tends to result in well reasoned, respectful, and enlightened points of view. /s

But you don't go around and think "this is an American" and "oh, here is another American, she will act the same as the guy before". Instead your internal heuristics notice more markers like age, gender, clothing, dialect, socio-economic status and class. An older person in a suit will be approached differently by you than a drunk redneck/ghettokid/punk/hells angels, even when they are the same ethnicity.

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