I'm in America and i completely agree with his view. You're being overly sensitive.

Generalizations aren't bad, they're just one persons understanding of a group of people. Clearly, based on his/her experiences he is able to generalize the above statement, and that isn't incorrect - it's just his/her generalization. We all have them, and they just represent our combined experiences.

Generalizations are only bad if you condemn others based on them - but that's not the fault of the generalization, but rather the fault of the person. Generalizations are how you live life. You get mugged 10 times by the same race/class/location/etc, you might start to generalize against that combination, and you're not wrong, it clearly happened. That's not to say that all of that race/class/location will be the same way. Same goes for animals. If i get bit by a snake 10 times, i might start to fear snakes. Are all snaked bad? No, but my experience with them is bad, so rightfully i have a bit of a stigma and fear towards them.

This culture of fearing assumptions is bewildering to me. Can we just blame the actual actions of people, and not assume that because they generalize that might, at some point, be classist/racist/etc? Can we have some sanity here?

I am sorry if I accidentally hurt your feelings or slighted your national pride. I am simply making an observation based on my general experience with Americans on the web and the sentiment I've noticed. My experience certainly is biased, as people commenting on the Internet do not equally represent whole American nation but I don't feel I need to interview every single one of those 350 millions to make my remark.

This is the most unfortunate part. You think that I've picked some side in this; that I'm defending the concept of being American or the things these people are saying.

I'm saying you're generalizing. This behavior is toxic. Instead of saying, 'You know what, you're right, that's really not a representative sample size and I shouldn't have made the generalization.', you doubled down on making it about generalizations.

But at the end of the day, the only person that behavior hurts is you. So, sorry man.

> This is the most unfortunate part. You think that I've picked some side in this; that I'm defending the concept of being American or the things these people are saying.

You have, though, have you not? You have picked the side of "don't generalize people ever", clearly, no?

I'm on the side of "generalizations and stereotypes are not inherently bad, it's the actions of the person that are bad"

Do you disagree with that?

You call my actions toxic, but what exactly did i do that was toxic? I'm advocating that we judge people by their actions, not their beliefs. What is so wrong with that?

In other words, Don't assume i'm somehow "against" a group of people just because i have assumptions towards them. My dad is heavily religious, i assume and generalize that most religious people don't want me swearing heavily around them - so what! Generalizations aren't bad. Actions are bad. I don't get your view point, clearly.

Your comment did come off as very defensive, at least to me, and presumably to dagenleg as well. I don't think dagenleg is saying that all Americans have this view. (The comment even says it's a stereotype.) I certainly see this thinking all the time in America. It seems that many people's greatest fear is that they will have to subsidize someone else's life in some way. I don't have much direct experience with European culture, but this type of thinking seems less prevalent in Western Europe.

I mean, this same mindset did win the election...