It’s rather telling when people consider Russian a “race” with its own personality traits and physiological characteristics. You know, kind of the way the world looks when viewed through the character select screen of Street Fighter 2. I think most Americans are conditioned to repress these thoughts, even if they occur – though I confess I still somewhat associate Brazil with fanged savages and static electricity. This process of repression is often derided with the term “political correctness”, but I think we’d find it rather hard to live in a society with such a number of different brands of people, and even more stereotypes about those people, without the knee-jerk negative reaction to stereotyping and generalizing that prevents us from offending those around us nonstop. Now, Americans do get offended a lot still, but imagine the chaos if we all actually said it out loud every time we thought “wow, a black guy on campus” or “those asians probably ate rice for dinner last night”.

If you visit a society without such a diversity coping mechanism, it can be astounding to hear what people will say about other groups they safely assume are out of earshot.