Abbr. Enth.

Stereotypes.  I’m willing to bet over 90% of the people who read that word will be reading it with a negative connotation.  A few years ago while I was still at UNH I couldn’t help but notice how much of a big deal they were making about diversity.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with New Hampshire, we have three or four people in the state who are not Caucasian.  Somehow, the people at UNH in charge of distributing newsletters to the dorm bathrooms around campus had come to the conclusion that it was our fault.  Somehow, by being white we were interfering with the progress of every other ethnicity.

While the idea seems a bit ridiculous at first, as I thought about it more I could see myself forcing my black/asian/gay/female friends to be more white/blond/tall/blue-eyed because I’m Hitler.  No wait, the idea really is ridiculous.  Having very few people of color at UNH was not my fault just because I was white.  I ended up writing up a paper about it and left it in our lounge for other people to read if they wanted to, and it ended up getting some pretty heated discussion going a few times.  Anyway, it’s like five pages long, so you can skip over it and still be able to follow this post, but here’s a link to it in case you want to check it out.

One thing I didn’t touch on as much as I wanted to in the paper was my view of stereotypes.  The word is often used synonymously with words like bigotry, discrimination, and prejudice.  While there are many negative stereotypes out there, I don’t see the word or action as being inherantly negative.  The reason our brains form stereotypes is purely for organizational purposes.  While stereotypes can often be influenced by our personal prejudices, they are also very much influenced by statistics.

With all of the people you meet on a day-to-day basis, it is impossible to form enough of a relationship with them to know enough about them to not stereotype them.  You will immediately pick out traits based on looks, clothes, age, gender, location, mood, etc. and use those factors to fit them in a group that you have already formed a set of opinions about.  A wise person would understand that the group your brain has placed them in is a temporary location until you either forget about the person or learn more about them.  I think this is why first impressions are such a big deal for some people, because too many people will stick you in a group at first and then have a hard time moving you to a different group, or recognizing you as an individual.

You’ve all probably heard someone justify a racist comment by saying “the stereotype is there for a reason”, and while that is usually true, I really doubt many people who say that actually think about how it applies to them.  The stereotype can be there for a reason that is not your own, or it could be based on the statistics of your own experiences.  If a higher percentage of a certain group exhibits a specific trait, then you would expect to see that trait in the rest of the group until proven otherwise.  It’s not prejudice, it’s organization.  I can’t imagine going through life and not having any idea how to react to anyone until I knew them on an individual basis.  That would be madness!

Let me throw an example at you in case you’re lost in a dense forest of hypothetical situations.  Let’s look at emos, because they’re more fun to pick on than a barrel of art majors.  If you walk up to someone who’s wearing all black, has spiked hair, too much eyeliner, a teardrop tattoo on his face, metal studs sticking out of every available piece of real-estate, and a DeathRock’R shirt, and you say to him “I bet you don’t like being generalized” he would probably respond with “You don’t know me, sheep” and explode in a self-promoting stereotypical paradox.

So, what caused you to assume Mr. Somebodypleaseloveme didn’t like being generalized?  Chances are it was based on the actions of other people whom you have dealt with who have had similar traits and mannerisms.  Does that make you a bad person?  I would say that it makes you a sane person.  Sure, you’re a bad person anyway, but not for this reason.  It probably has more to do with the dead hooker under your bed.