Stereotypes (Punnily related to music in both textual examples - yes, maybe punnily isn't a real adverb)

I promise: this one will be shorter.  Also, I changed the background, so it should be easier to read.

This week we talked about discrimination, primarily racial, and the effects it has on society.  Sherman Alexie tells a story of a Native American man who goes into a 7-11 store at night, and is immediately racially profiled by the cashier, who expects to be robbed.  The Native American man knows what the cashier fears, and at first allows him to keep suspecting that he will be robbed.  However, the Native American man, Victor, feels sympathy for the cashier (Victor once worked at a 7-11 store himself).  He jokes around casually with the cashier, putting him at ease with a friendly, definitely-not-a-robber manner. 

Brent Staples, an African-American man, talks about the hurtful and sometimes dangerous prejudice he feels as he walks the city streets, not stalking people, but sleep.  He describes himself as he sees himself: peaceful, calm, and docile, the type of person who never wants to harm anyone.  Staples also describes himself as others see him: dangerous, prone to violence, a potential rapist or murderer.  People don’t see him as an individual, but as a member of a group that people have decided is bad news.  He uses multiple anecdotes describing how people run away from him, cross the street to avoid him, bring out a guard dog as insurance against him, and once try to arrest him as a burglar in his own work building.  Staples ends his short piece by describing his best technique to put at ease the people on the streets who fear him: he whistles cheery tunes by popular composers that seem to other people a sign that he isn’t as bad as they might fear.  Staples compares his whistling to the bells hikers wear to scare off bears, making a point about how he, the wearer of the metaphorical bells, is trying to escape harm.

 

The irony of these stories is that the true victims aren’t the people afraid to be robbed or murdered; the true victims are the innocent people suffering from negative stereotypes.  The stereotypes exist for a reason - humans have an innate talent for pattern recognition, bred into us by natural selection over millennia.  If human A recognizes a certain type of person (human B) as dangerous, because human A knows that people like human B are often dangerous, human A is more likely to survive than the non-stereotyping human C, who does not perceive a threat, and as such does not survive to pass on his or her genes.  While this may justify the creation and persistence of stereotypes, it overlooks the harm done to person D.  Person D is a human much like human B, but is different in that person D does not want to harm humans A and C.  However, person D is discriminated against for his or her likeness to human B, and as such may be ostracized, unfairly suspected, or even harmed by human A in human A’s attempt to preserve human A’s safety. 

We recognize and use stereotypes because they keep us alive and well, and because they help us to best predict the actions of others around us.  We are each human A.  However, we all should keep in mind that a human seeming to be like human B might actually be person D, who is innocent, and could be harmed as much by our stereotyping as we might be by the actions of human B.