Perspective

In this country it is not uncommon for people to judge a restaurant run by members of an ethnic minority by the number of people perceived to be from the same ethnic minority who are eating there. "That Chinese restaurant must be good," we say, "it's full of Chinese people."
Of course such a crass distinction has two fundamental problems. The first of these is our ability to accurately define someone's ethnic origin on sight, something that is actually very hard. I once took a friend to a Thai restaurant in Brighton shortly after he had spent a number of years living in Thailand. He greeted the waitress and asked how she was in what I assumed to be pretty good Thai, but the waitress just looked at him baffled for a moment, before explaining that she was Japanese and didn't speak a word of Thai.
The second problem is the idea that all the people of a certain race are expert in all food associated with that race. This is patently nonsense: firstly it assumes a uniformity of cuisine across vast diaspora, and secondly it assumes that all the people of those diaspora to be gourmandes. In fact it assumes all people of another ethnic background to have some sort or innate 'food knowledge', which is dangerously close to the patronising notions of the 'authenticity' of ethnic minorities, itself an ugly hangover from the Enlightenment.
So these prejudices exist, they pervade our attitudes and society without us even knowing it, but do they have negative effect simply because they have negative associations, or am I just making an excessively PC point about something that is simply a result of ethnic diversity and lazy stereotyping? Because any 'other' is ultimately unknowable, are we to be forgiven for assigning group attributes to those less familiar (especially when those attributes themselves are not negative)? I really don't know.
Perhaps it is more about approach: if I don't intend to apply lazy stereotypes based on race, am I to be forgiven when I occasionally do due to tiredness or thoughtlessness? Where do we draw the line? Such cutting of slack very quickly leads to 'casual' racism, usually when people think any potentially injured party cannot hear. Outwardly tolerant people can  suddenly reveal hidden intolerance through racist jokes when in private and 'amongst friends' (i.e. people apparently of the same racial background). The argument in defence of such behaviour is that it's harmless fun and no one is hurt, but it cannot be harmless, no repressed opinion can. The very fact that it only occurs in private makes it potentially even more problematic than overt racism, as the sense is that it is only society that is preventing the covert racist from revealing their true feelings. In such cases, the 'save me from what I want' aspect is about avoiding conflict: I am guilty of letting these comments slip in the past in favour of a 'quiet' life, in order not to upset the 'flow' of a social event. My intention is to challenge such comments in future, whatever the situation or possible outcome.
This brings me back to my original observation though: if someone says we should go into a restaurant because it's full of people from the associated diaspora, do I point out the potential negative associations in such a comment? Maybe I will. Maybe just to revisit this whole argument and see if I get any further.