Stereotyping

Today I went to the Fairfield Mall to exchange some Christmas gifts along with friends at various stores within the mall. At one point in the day we went to a shoe store where a white 20-something male was approaching a black customer walking into the store. The black customer was middle aged, had a nuclear family, articulated his words and had a nice gold watch on his wrist. The man seemed pretty financially stable, and on the surface a solid, upstanding middle class citizen in every sense of the definition, yet the sales associate at the shoe store saw only one thing on this man, and it was color.

He didn’t sling racial slurs at the customer, or treat him in any manor resembling racism, but he did try to oversell the items inside the store as black people have a notorious stereotype for overspending on their purchases. No matter that this man was a father, a husband, a college educated man who probably had a good job. Nowhere in there is any recognition of economic sensibility and experience as observed and concluded by the sales associate.

In the popular sociological book “Blink” such scenarios are put into deeper perspective, this perticular instance only heightened my understanding of such a stereotype description by allowing me to relate it the book. As people we usually only recognize the most obvious characteristic about the individuals we encounter, and more times than not that characteristic is one of color. Call it racism if you will, but I assure it happens amongst members of the same race as well as ones of seperate race. We ignore the other features of the opposite party in communication, in favor of quick processing and assessment of the conversee in the hope that our extravaganza would be more efficient. Those who can truly master all facets of the person’s appearence and personality will be most personable and friendly with the people they interact with on a day-by-day basis.

My question for you is, why do we constantly stereotype and profile the people around us? And is it okay?