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Japanese*. "Jap" is generally regarded as an ethnic slur in a lot of English-speaking places.

Stereotyping is not just dress or negative connotations. Ethnic stereotyping in particular is anything you describe as "s/he is (trait) because Asians are (trait)." Not all of a given group is a certain way. Even though a lot of Asians may come off as very intelligent, that doesn't mean every single one of us are.


Just because it's not necessarily offensive doesn't mean it's not a stereotype. This is a stereotype because you are assuming that ALL Asians are smart. You have to be very careful when assigning character traits because of things like stereotyping and troping.

It's OK to have a smart Asian, but if she's smart because she's Asian, that's stereotyping. If she's smart because she reads a lot, works hard, loves to learn, etc., that's different and that's fine.

References: Take a look at the TV Tropes pages for National Stereotypes and National Stereotyping Tropes.

If you don't want to offend ANYONE, I think you'll have a hard time. Sometimes, people will nitpick and find things to be insulted about regardless of medium. Just focus on telling a good story with solid characters.

Bottom line on racial stereotyping though, if you feel like you HAVE TO or CANNOT give a character a given trait because of his/her race, that's racial stereotyping.