Minorities and the thug life.

Minorities and the thug life.

In this article, http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/11/07/geraldo-rivera-tells-fox-news-minorities-fail-because-of-their-thug-ethic-video/ there are too many generalizations.  And it is sad that is what we do as individuals and as a society.

We see one person or one group dress, act, or do something and we just assume they all do.  Of course this isn’t new.  Our forefathers did the same thing with the Indians.  One group killed and scalped settlers so all Indians are the same.

We know this isn’t true, but we don’t seem to want to stop making generalizations.  And I attribute this to the federal government’s insistence on involving itself with every aspect of our lives.  They can’t address individual needs so everyone and their problems, and the government’s “solution” is generalized.  

Sally Raskoff says, "we generalize about people so that we know how to interact with them. If we see someone in a mail carrier’s clothing, we assume they work for the post office. If we see someone who looks over 80 years old, we assume they are not in the workforce anymore."

And so when you see a young black youth dressed with certain clothes in a certain style, or a religious person with certain clothing or jewelry, without conscious thought we make assumptions and lump that individual into a group and that person now has all the attributes and behavior of that group.  We are very good at stereotyping people within the first few seconds of seeing, hearing, or talking to them.  

We do this based on "how they look in terms of sexual orientation, gender, race, and ethnicity. We look at people and may assume they have a certain sexual orientation or that their gender is either man or woman.  We may assume they are white, African American, Native American, Asian American, or Latino." says Sally Raskoff. 

Of course we don't see the same thing in ourselves. We may go to the same church but not be like the deacon's family at all.  We may work in the same office building with hundreds of other be we are not exactly like any of them.  We boil the entire process down to a them vs us scenario.  "They" act, dress, speak a certain way so "they" are all like that.  "We" don't.   Without thought or consideration we continue this bias.

There is a good read on the historical problem of this and you can read it here.  http://understandingsociety.blogspot.com/2009/05/generalizations-in-history.html