On Stereotypes

  I remember a time a couple of months ago when I was sitting outside a bowling alley waiting for some friends. Next door was a skate shop, and for some reason or another a large crowd of teenagers were gathered outside. They were loud and obnoxious, yelling things and talking trash and being, well... Skaters (or is it Sk8ers?). And I thought about stereotypes, and how each stereotype really does have some kind of basis. But at the same time, there's always some kind of exception.

  Last Saturday, I was at the library. I put my stuff down on a chair in the study section, and at the nearby table sat a teenager. His face was riddled with acne, his hair was spiked, and his ears were studded. And maybe if I had seen him walking down the street or hanging out with other kids like him, I might have judged him a little harshly. But he sat at the table with his two little sisters, both much younger than he was, reading magazines to them. And something about the way his eyes looked, and the way he talked to the little girls, made me trust him. So I asked him to watch my laptop and my backpack while I went to the restroom. He looked a little surprised when I asked him, but nodded and said "Yeah, sure." I went to the restroom and then went to look at some books. He came and found me in the shelves, to tell me that he had to leave, but that my stuff was still there. I went back to my chair and finished my studying by myself.

  So where do we draw the line with stereotypes? There's no doubt that they can be very hurtful. I often feel like a victim to stereotype sometimes, and I hate it. But making judgements is necessary, sometimes. For example, not all Muslims are terrorists. I know several who are intelligent and sensible. And it's not fair to discriminate against them. But despite it's unfairness, is it perhaps reasonable to the common good? After all, Al-Qaeda is based on extreme Islamic values. Which, unfortunately, puts statistics against anyone who is a Muslim. So do we tighten our securities against Muslims, and discriminate the good with the bad? Or do we try to treat them fairly, and be more lenient to the bad as well as the good? Neither choice is ideal.

  The other question I've pondered about stereotypes is this: Do stereotypes affect people as much as people affect stereotypes? For example, let's say the stereotype is that male fashion artists, stylists, and hairdressers are gay. Let's even say that this stereotype has an original basis in that many stylists came out and said they were gay. But now that the stereotype has been established, do men that want to be hairdressers think they must be gay? Or do men who think they are gay feel like they should go into those fields? Are there people that are driven to certain beliefs about themselves because of what society thinks about the group they belong to? I think it happens all the time. But this only makes things worse, because then the number of people proving the stereotype only increases, which drives home the stereotypical belief. It's a continuous cycle that will never stop until the entire culture decides it wants to be different.

  So ponder on these things, but make sure that, if it is at all possible, you get to know how someone really is before you slap a stereotype on them.