Estimated reading time: 2 minute(s)

I was listening to the Glenn Beck Show today (a best of show, since it’s Thanksgiving today…) and they were commenting on a football coach who made some remarks about the other team having more “Afro-Americans” and that being the primary reason that his own team lost the game. So, the radio program was mostly just having fun talking about how people shouldn’t be offended by that… cause it’s true! They went on and on about how there are some general stereotypes of groups of people that are generally true. That it doesn’t mean if you’re black, you are a good athlete, or, that if you’re a good athlete that you’re black… BUT, that they are generally true.

Well, if you know me very well, you can imagine I was not happily agreeing with all of that.

It’s not that I am blind to “trends”. I do understand why we create stereotypes. But, my issue is (and always has been) …. why MUST we LABEL?

Sterotypes and all forms of prejudice and racism come from our us vs. them, labeling mentality. We must for some reason group and identify people. Categorize. Label. Why can we not let people be individuals? Why must we pre-judge people by placing them in some sort of group?

See, for a long time I have hated the male/female stereotypes. I don’t fit a lot of them, and perhaps that’s why I dislike them? But, mainly, I see people using stereotypes as ways to excuse poor choices (women are “moody”, so that’s ok… men are “visual” so, checkin’ out the ladies is ok… etc). In fact, I see no benefit to stereotypes at all. They are only labels that limit and inhibit true, open, deeper relationships.

I wrote a long post about this once, which I never published (at my wife’s request) to protect the innocent. 🙂 But, in summary, it was called “They” because I was part of a conversation where we were talking about people who had some particular physical handicap, and we called every person who had that handicap “They”. We lumped every person into one group, making them some homogenous entity rather than individuals. It just bothered me that even with the best intentions, we were reducing individuals to a mass, nameless and faceless “they”.

If we could somehow stop labeling, I think we’d be better off. There would be no racism, or prejudice. We could just interact with each other without assumptions. I think that’s a bit unrealistic, but I do wish it were possible. I will continue to strive to NOT label in my life.

And I guess that’s all I can do.

(PS… I wrote this while making mashed potatoes for the big family dinner today, so hopefully it kinda makes sense…) 🙂