Stereotypes

 “Stereotypes are usually inaccurate, often negative and always dangerous” (The Ways We Lie by Stephanie Ericsson), yet use stereotypes all the time. We do it without even thinking about it. Who are some of these people that we are so quick to stereotype?

Teenagers

 As a High School teacher, I know I do it with the teens I work with (if I am honest). I remember one day sitting in the car with my daughter (who is a teenager herself) and I had just spouted off some insensitive statement about teenagers. Her response to me was to point out my stereotypical ways and remind me that if people like me always put down her generation that we shouldn’t be surprised when our predictions came true. It’s hard not to stereotype a group of people we can be frustrated with at times, but when we do this, we feed into the lies that are already believed about that group.

Immigrants

People that we don’t understand or know very little about are easy to stereotype. The media feeds us enough information to make them out to be the reason for so many problems, and rather than doing any personal research it is much easier to believe the stereotypes fed to us. Immigrants fall into this category. Yet to assume that all immigrants are the same is so absurdly unrealistic it should be obvious that we are in error. How can a Honduran born mother of 6 children, an 80-year-old Iranian grandfather, and a 20-year-old South Korean student all fit into one stereotype? Simply put, they can’t. Each is different. They all have different heritages, histories, and perspectives.

Housewives

I, myself have been a stay at home mother, a housewife, and a homeschooler. If anyone was to fit into a simple stereotype it should have been me. But I was not a square trying to fit into a circle whole, I was more of an abstract, star, triangle, unnamed shaped, trying to fit into a stereotypical hole where bonbons are eaten while watching soap operas all day. I don’t think I know a single housewife who does that. Most of us are too busy rearing children, managing a household, and volunteering to bother with such nonsense (not that I want to stereotype all of us).

Each group has its own stereotype and yet each stereotype is incorrect. Yet it doesn’t stop there. Stereotypes are often very painful, can feel confining and create great prejudices. Most of us have stereotypes that we believe about others, and many of us know the pain of being stereotyped. So perhaps it’s time for us to relook at what we think we know about others and remove stereotypical thinking from our mindsets.