stereotyping

America is a “mixing pot” of all different cultures, nationalities, holidays and traditions. There are so many different people in America and sadly that means that there’s a lot of stereotyping. People every day mentally judge and place people together into groups. Every human at one point or another has looked at someone without even really knowing them and placed them into a category. Although it’s definitely not a good thing, we do it naturally now. It’s hard to look at someone and not form a mental opinion about them. Sometimes what you think about the person is correct but most of the time it’s completely inaccurate. You shouldn’t place someone into a group without getting to know them first. For example you look at someone that’s blonde. Without even meeting that person you just assume they are dumb. Now if you really think about that you should know that a person’s hair color should not affect their mental ability. The truth is that there can be dumb people with any color hair. Another hair stereotype is that people with red or ginger hair have no soul. Now most people say that as a joke but the stereotype was still made. You wouldn’t look at a person with brown hair and think “wow they have no soul” but when you look at a person with red hair a lot of people think “soulless”. Although they may not seriously think that people with red hair are still stereotyped into the category of being soulless. Another stereotype is that all Asian’s are super smart. For some Asian’s that’s probably true but it’s not true for all Asian’s. Someone’s nationality isn’t going to make someone smarter just like someone’s hair color isn’t going to make them dumber. Gordon Allport feels that “The human mind must think with the aid of categories," Allport explained. "Once formed, categories are the basis for normal prejudgment. We cannot possibly avoid this process. Orderly living depends upon it. This process of categorization applies to the social world as well, as we sort people into mental groups based on factors such as age, sex and race.” I completely agree with Gordon Allport is saying.

Overall I believe that stereotyping is a very serious problem that happens every day. Although it happens all the time people are still hurt by what their stereotyped as. We need to learn not to judge people before we meet them and wait till after we get to know them to form an opinion. Instead of stereotyping someone actually find out what they are like. So remember next time you see someone with blonde hair don’t automatically assume they are dumb and if you see someone with red hair don’t assume they don’t have a soul. Everyone is different so it’s not fair to stereotype anyone. No one deserves to be put in a category based on how they look.