Lumping people together as "white" is as ridiculous as doing the same for other races. Think about the within-cluster variation inherent in such a group for a second, it's mind-boggling.
When I first heard from a Chinese friend that they label all Westerners into a single group, I first laughed at the naivete, then sobered up at the cluelessness of the assertion. Of course, there's some truth to it: From a super high level perspective all non-Chinese to the West are a single group (defined by their non-Chinese-ness), question is: in what context is such a crude abstraction useful?
But, worse, aside from being non-useful, such stereotyping by (some) thinkers is the very thing they criticize in despise in others, so it's an error in thinking, too!
When I first heard from a Chinese friend that they label all Westerners into a single group, I first laughed at the naivete, then sobered up at the cluelessness of the assertion. Of course, there's some truth to it: From a super high level perspective all non-Chinese to the West are a single group (defined by their non-Chinese-ness), question is: in what context is such a crude abstraction useful?
But, worse, aside from being non-useful, such stereotyping by (some) thinkers is the very thing they criticize in despise in others, so it's an error in thinking, too!