Be Stereotyped

"One night I accidentally bumped into a man, and perhaps because of the near darkness he saw me and called me an insulting name. I sprang at him seized his coat lapels and demanded he apologize. he was a tall blond man, as a my face came close to his he looked insolently out of his blue eyes and cursed me.. and in my outrage I got out a knife an prepared to slit his throat , right there beneath  the lamplight and in the deserted street, holding him by the collar and opening my knife with my teeth– when it occurred to me that the man had not seen me..." (Ellison, 4)

As "hinted" upon in my last post, people are inclined to see what they want to see in the world. Harsh truths revealing injustice, violence or scary things like unfeeling people are meant to be brushed under the rug. Out of sight, out of mind, they say. This perception as applied to specific groups has brought up on of the greatest failures of humane truth: the stereotype. There are a lot of people in this world, give or take 7 billion. Many of us have taken the short-cut in getting know them by treating people like slabs of meat, slapping a label on them and shipping off to the regions of our brain where emotional responses to those types of people is determined appropriate by societal standards. Yet, while we are all quite familiar with the age old saying, " Don't judge a book by it's cover", we perpetuate the same injustice we turn a blind eye of disgust to the rest of the world. Somehow, because we stereotype so instinctively and can't help but blame human nature, upon sight being of African decent makes you illiterate and "ghetto" while being a man who takes to grooming and enjoys a good show tune makes you gay. A blind spot for instantaneous lack in human compassion and understating has arrived this day in age all because it takes to long to get to know someone for who they are, making it easiest to categorize them for our own mental sustenance.