In the above conversation it is belonging to stereotypes. Stereotypes are a form of generalization. When we generalize, we group or classify people, places, or things according to the traits they have in common. For example, we may say most Masai tribesmen are unusually tall or Scandinavians are usually fair-skinned. If our observations are careless or too limited, the generalization may be faulty, as when someone says, \"Hollywood hasn\'t produced any quality movies in the past fifteen years.\" But stereotypes are more serious than mere faulty generalizations. They are fixed, unbending generalizations about people, places, or things. When a stereotype is challenged, the person who holds it is unlikely to modify or discard it, because it is based on a distortion of perception. As Walter Lippmann explains, when we stereotype,\" we do not so much see this man and that sunset; rather we notice that the thing is man or sunset, and then see chiefly what our mind is full of on those subjects.\"75 The most common kinds of stereotyping are ethnic and religious. Jews are shrewd and cunning, clannish, have a financial genius matched only by their greed. Italians are hot-tempered, coarse, and sensual. The Irish, like the Poles, are big and stupid; in addition, they brawl, lust after heavy liquor and light conversation. Blacks are primitive and slowwitted. (Often each of these stereotypes includes a virtue or two – Jews are good family members, Italians artistic, Poles brave, the Irish devout, blacks athletic.) Beyond these stereotypes are numerous other, less common ones; Swedish women, foreign film directors, Southern senators, physical education instructors, fundamentalist clergymen, agnostics, atheists, democrats, republicans, Mexicans, scientist, prostitutes, politicians, English teachers, psychiatrists, construction workers, black militants, college dropouts, homosexuals, and society matrons. There are stereotypes of institutions as well: marriage, the church, government, the military, the Founding Fathers, Western culture, the Judeo-Christian tradition. (A full list would include even God and mother.) FACTS DON\'T MATTER It is pleasant to assume that when the facts are known, stereotypes disappear. However, that is seldom the case. The late Harvard psychologist Gordon Allport, in The nature of Prejudice, pointed out that \"it is possible for a stereotype to grow in defiance of all evidence…\"76 People who stereotype don\'t dust accept the facts that are offered to them. They measure those facts against what they already \"know.\" That is, they measure them against the stereotype itself. Instead of seeing that the stereotype is false and therefore dismissing it, they reject the unfamiliar facts. People who think in terms of stereotypes tend to be selective in their perceptions. They reject conditions that challenge their preformed judgment and retain those that reinforce it. Thus a person can notice the Jewish employer promoting another Jew but ign.

1. In the above conversation it is belonging to stereotypes.
Stereotypes are a form of generalization. When we generalize, we group or classify people,
places, or things according to the traits they have in common. For example, we may say most
Masai tribesmen are unusually tall or Scandinavians are usually fair-skinned. If our observations
are careless or too limited, the generalization may be faulty, as when someone says, "Hollywood
hasn't produced any quality movies in the past fifteen years."
But stereotypes are more serious than mere faulty generalizations. They are fixed, unbending
generalizations about people, places, or things. When a stereotype is challenged, the person who
holds it is unlikely to modify or discard it, because it is based on a distortion of perception. As
Walter Lippmann explains, when we stereotype," we do not so much see this man and that
sunset; rather we notice that the thing is man or sunset, and then see chiefly what our mind is full
of on those subjects."75
The most common kinds of stereotyping are ethnic and religious. Jews are shrewd and cunning,
clannish, have a financial genius matched only by their greed. Italians are hot-tempered, coarse,
and sensual. The Irish, like the Poles, are big and stupid; in addition, they brawl, lust after heavy
liquor and light conversation. Blacks are primitive and slowwitted. (Often each of these
stereotypes includes a virtue or two – Jews are good family members, Italians artistic, Poles
brave, the Irish devout, blacks athletic.)
Beyond these stereotypes are numerous other, less common ones; Swedish women, foreign film
directors, Southern senators, physical education instructors, fundamentalist clergymen, agnostics,
atheists, democrats, republicans, Mexicans, scientist, prostitutes, politicians, English teachers,
psychiatrists, construction workers, black militants, college dropouts, homosexuals, and society
matrons. There are stereotypes of institutions as well: marriage, the church, government, the
military, the Founding Fathers, Western culture, the Judeo-Christian tradition. (A full list would
include even God and mother.)
FACTS DON'T MATTER
It is pleasant to assume that when the facts are known, stereotypes disappear. However, that is
seldom the case. The late Harvard psychologist Gordon Allport, in The nature of Prejudice,
pointed out that "it is possible for a stereotype to grow in defiance of all evidence…"76 People
who stereotype don't dust accept the facts that are offered to them. They measure those facts
against what they already "know." That is, they measure them against the stereotype itself.
Instead of seeing that the stereotype is false and therefore dismissing it, they reject the unfamiliar
facts.
People who think in terms of stereotypes tend to be selective in their perceptions. They reject
conditions that challenge their preformed judgment and retain those that reinforce it. Thus a

2. person can notice the Jewish employer promoting another Jew but ignore a dozen occasions
when that employer promotes a gentile. Where the risk of embarrassment or criticism prevents
them from ignoring details that challenge, they can, as Bruno Bettleheim and Morris Janowitz
point out, employ the exception-to-the-rule argument.77
On occasions, though, stereotypers can be surprisingly flexible. They can move from the most
narrow oversimplifications to remarkably fair and sensible judgments and then back again. An
example of this phenomenon was given in a series of interviews Harvard psychiatrist Robert
Coles had with a police sergeant. At one point the sergeant made this statement: "I'm not
prejudiced when I say that colored people have a lot of violence in them, like animals. The
Irishman will get sloppy drunk and pass out. The Italian will shout and scream his head off. The
Jew will figure out a way he can make himself a little more money, and get even with someone
that way. But your nigger, he's vicious like a wild leopard or something when he's been
drinking or on drugs. They throw lye at each other, and scalding water, and God knows
what."78
Despite a generous helping of stereotypes in that passage, at other places in the transcript the
same man who uttered those judgments is revealed as balanced, thoughtful, capable of insights
even in areas where he is given to stereotyping. He can say things like, "I believe you should
know the man, not where his grandfather came from" and "Most Negro people are too busy for
demonstrations; they go to work, like the rest of us."
CONTRADICTORY STEREOTYPES
Robert K. Merton has noted that the same set of characteristics can be used to support opposite
stereotypes. He observed that though the identifying terms differ, Abraham Lincoln has been
loved for precisely the same attributed qualities for which Jews have been hated: his thrift (their
stinginess), his hard working perseverance (their excessive ambition), his zeal for the rights of
others (their pushiness for causes).79 And James G. Martin comments on the ease with which a
person can invoke the stereotype with the least of details. If we wish to have it so, he observes,
the minority group member who is quiet is 'conceited' or 'unfriendly'. And if he is talkative he
is 'aggressive' or 'brash.'"80
Stereotyped thinking often reveals a technique common to all forms of prejudice: shifting
responsibility for its judgments from the judger to the judged. "The pattern of prejudiced
judgment," as Martin explains, "is to ascribe a certain trait to a group with little or no evidence
to support it; to judge the trait to be undesirable; and to hold the object-group responsible for the
trait, and therefore blameworthy." When the prejudiced person says, "I dislike them because
they are…," Martin concludes, "he really means 'Because I dislike them, they are… .'"81
CAUSES OF STEREOTYPING
Among the most significant causes of stereotyping is "mine is better" thinking, especially in its

3. extreme form, ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism – the belief that one's nationality, race, or religion
is superior to other people's – can be present in out-groups as well as in the majority, and in
newcomers to a country as well as in "established" groups. For example, in the United States
the heavy immigration of the past hundred years brought millions of people who had their own
language and culture. These people understandably tended to remain for a time within their own
groups. Later when they became assimilated into the general culture, they retained many of their
fixed views of outsiders. Traces of ethnocentrism can linger for generations and resurface in
movements of ethnic pride. Despite the obvious value of such pride, particularly for groups
whose rights have been denied and whose emotional well-being has been undermined, it can do
great harm.
James G. Martin sees ethnocentrism as "the root of almost all the evil in intergroup relations."
:We are almost constantly obligated to choose sides in human relations," he argues, "to identify
ourselves with one group or another. There is often no room for neutralism… one must be either
for or against, enemy or patriot, in-group or out-group."82
Another cause of stereotyping is what Gordon Allport calls "the principle of least effort." Most
of us learn to be critical and balanced in our thinking in some areas, he notes, but we remain
vulnerable to stereotyped thinking in others. "A doctor," for example, "will not be swept away
by folk generalizations concerning arthritis, snake bite, or the efficacy of aspirin. But he may be
content with overgeneralizations concerning politics, social insurance, or Mexicans."83 Will
Rogers may have had a deeper insight than he knew when he observed how most people are
fools when they venture from their areas of competence.
EFFECTS OF STEREOTYPING
Stereotyping does a great injustice to those who are stereotyped. It denies them their dignity and
individuality and treats them as nameless, faceless statistical units of a group. The effects of
stereotyping on all who encounter it are similarly disturbing. It triggers their frustrations and
anxieties, feeds their fears of conspiracies, and creates a network of suspicion and scapegoating.
Given the popular stereotypes, what is more natural than seeing the Jews as responsible for
periods of economic instability, the Italians as responsible for the soaring crime rate, blacks as
responsible for the decay of the inner city, and radicals and atheists as responsible for the erosion
of traditional values and the loss of influence of organized religion. Stereotypes proved a ready
supply of simplistic answers to whatever questions happen to be plaguing us at the moment.
Nor do the Stereotypers themselves escape the rippling effects of their fixation. Indeed, they are
often its most pathetic victims. Stereotyping cuts them off from reality and cripples their
thinking. Anton Chekhov was right in observing that people are what they believe. When they
believe that others fit into neat categories, they believe a lie. In the sense in which Chekhov
spoke, they become that lie.

4. A good many people see all police officers as corrupt "pigs," all college professors as
impractical or misguided theorists, all sex education teachers as leering perverts, and all
advocates of nuclear disarmament as subversives. It is difficult, sometimes impossible, for such
people to deal with complex issues with such views in mind. How, for example, can people deal
sensibly with questions of Indian land claims when they see every Indian as a feathered savage
uttering bloodcurdling shrieks while burning settlers' homes and scalping women and children?
And how can people be reasonable about the issue of welfare when they see the poor as
scheming, lazy, irresponsible, filthy, immoral, wasteful, undeserving scoundrels?
AVOIDING STEREOTYPING
It is not easy to set aside stereotypes that have been in your mind since childhood, particularly if
they have been reinforced by ethnocentrism. Yet if you do not set them aside, you will never
realize your capacity for critical thinking. Stereotypes will corrupt your observation, listening,
and reading and therefore block your understanding.
Here are two tips for freeing yourself from stereotyping. First, remind yourself often that people
and institutions and processes seldom fit into neat categories and that critical thinking demands
that you evaluate each on what it is at the particular time and place and circumstance, not one
preconceived notions. Second, whenever you begin observing, listening, or reading, be alert for
the feeling that you needn't continue because you know what the correct judgment must be. If
that feeling occurs early in the information-gathering process, you can be reasonably sure it is a
sign of stereotyping and should be ignored.
Solution
In the above conversation it is belonging to stereotypes.
Stereotypes are a form of generalization. When we generalize, we group or classify people,
places, or things according to the traits they have in common. For example, we may say most
Masai tribesmen are unusually tall or Scandinavians are usually fair-skinned. If our observations
are careless or too limited, the generalization may be faulty, as when someone says, "Hollywood
hasn't produced any quality movies in the past fifteen years."
But stereotypes are more serious than mere faulty generalizations. They are fixed, unbending
generalizations about people, places, or things. When a stereotype is challenged, the person who
holds it is unlikely to modify or discard it, because it is based on a distortion of perception. As
Walter Lippmann explains, when we stereotype," we do not so much see this man and that
sunset; rather we notice that the thing is man or sunset, and then see chiefly what our mind is full
of on those subjects."75
The most common kinds of stereotyping are ethnic and religious. Jews are shrewd and cunning,

5. clannish, have a financial genius matched only by their greed. Italians are hot-tempered, coarse,
and sensual. The Irish, like the Poles, are big and stupid; in addition, they brawl, lust after heavy
liquor and light conversation. Blacks are primitive and slowwitted. (Often each of these
stereotypes includes a virtue or two – Jews are good family members, Italians artistic, Poles
brave, the Irish devout, blacks athletic.)
Beyond these stereotypes are numerous other, less common ones; Swedish women, foreign film
directors, Southern senators, physical education instructors, fundamentalist clergymen, agnostics,
atheists, democrats, republicans, Mexicans, scientist, prostitutes, politicians, English teachers,
psychiatrists, construction workers, black militants, college dropouts, homosexuals, and society
matrons. There are stereotypes of institutions as well: marriage, the church, government, the
military, the Founding Fathers, Western culture, the Judeo-Christian tradition. (A full list would
include even God and mother.)
FACTS DON'T MATTER
It is pleasant to assume that when the facts are known, stereotypes disappear. However, that is
seldom the case. The late Harvard psychologist Gordon Allport, in The nature of Prejudice,
pointed out that "it is possible for a stereotype to grow in defiance of all evidence…"76 People
who stereotype don't dust accept the facts that are offered to them. They measure those facts
against what they already "know." That is, they measure them against the stereotype itself.
Instead of seeing that the stereotype is false and therefore dismissing it, they reject the unfamiliar
facts.
People who think in terms of stereotypes tend to be selective in their perceptions. They reject
conditions that challenge their preformed judgment and retain those that reinforce it. Thus a
person can notice the Jewish employer promoting another Jew but ignore a dozen occasions
when that employer promotes a gentile. Where the risk of embarrassment or criticism prevents
them from ignoring details that challenge, they can, as Bruno Bettleheim and Morris Janowitz
point out, employ the exception-to-the-rule argument.77
On occasions, though, stereotypers can be surprisingly flexible. They can move from the most
narrow oversimplifications to remarkably fair and sensible judgments and then back again. An
example of this phenomenon was given in a series of interviews Harvard psychiatrist Robert
Coles had with a police sergeant. At one point the sergeant made this statement: "I'm not
prejudiced when I say that colored people have a lot of violence in them, like animals. The
Irishman will get sloppy drunk and pass out. The Italian will shout and scream his head off. The
Jew will figure out a way he can make himself a little more money, and get even with someone
that way. But your nigger, he's vicious like a wild leopard or something when he's been
drinking or on drugs. They throw lye at each other, and scalding water, and God knows
what."78

6. Despite a generous helping of stereotypes in that passage, at other places in the transcript the
same man who uttered those judgments is revealed as balanced, thoughtful, capable of insights
even in areas where he is given to stereotyping. He can say things like, "I believe you should
know the man, not where his grandfather came from" and "Most Negro people are too busy for
demonstrations; they go to work, like the rest of us."
CONTRADICTORY STEREOTYPES
Robert K. Merton has noted that the same set of characteristics can be used to support opposite
stereotypes. He observed that though the identifying terms differ, Abraham Lincoln has been
loved for precisely the same attributed qualities for which Jews have been hated: his thrift (their
stinginess), his hard working perseverance (their excessive ambition), his zeal for the rights of
others (their pushiness for causes).79 And James G. Martin comments on the ease with which a
person can invoke the stereotype with the least of details. If we wish to have it so, he observes,
the minority group member who is quiet is 'conceited' or 'unfriendly'. And if he is talkative he
is 'aggressive' or 'brash.'"80
Stereotyped thinking often reveals a technique common to all forms of prejudice: shifting
responsibility for its judgments from the judger to the judged. "The pattern of prejudiced
judgment," as Martin explains, "is to ascribe a certain trait to a group with little or no evidence
to support it; to judge the trait to be undesirable; and to hold the object-group responsible for the
trait, and therefore blameworthy." When the prejudiced person says, "I dislike them because
they are…," Martin concludes, "he really means 'Because I dislike them, they are… .'"81
CAUSES OF STEREOTYPING
Among the most significant causes of stereotyping is "mine is better" thinking, especially in its
extreme form, ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism – the belief that one's nationality, race, or religion
is superior to other people's – can be present in out-groups as well as in the majority, and in
newcomers to a country as well as in "established" groups. For example, in the United States
the heavy immigration of the past hundred years brought millions of people who had their own
language and culture. These people understandably tended to remain for a time within their own
groups. Later when they became assimilated into the general culture, they retained many of their
fixed views of outsiders. Traces of ethnocentrism can linger for generations and resurface in
movements of ethnic pride. Despite the obvious value of such pride, particularly for groups
whose rights have been denied and whose emotional well-being has been undermined, it can do
great harm.
James G. Martin sees ethnocentrism as "the root of almost all the evil in intergroup relations."
:We are almost constantly obligated to choose sides in human relations," he argues, "to identify
ourselves with one group or another. There is often no room for neutralism… one must be either
for or against, enemy or patriot, in-group or out-group."82

7. Another cause of stereotyping is what Gordon Allport calls "the principle of least effort." Most
of us learn to be critical and balanced in our thinking in some areas, he notes, but we remain
vulnerable to stereotyped thinking in others. "A doctor," for example, "will not be swept away
by folk generalizations concerning arthritis, snake bite, or the efficacy of aspirin. But he may be
content with overgeneralizations concerning politics, social insurance, or Mexicans."83 Will
Rogers may have had a deeper insight than he knew when he observed how most people are
fools when they venture from their areas of competence.
EFFECTS OF STEREOTYPING
Stereotyping does a great injustice to those who are stereotyped. It denies them their dignity and
individuality and treats them as nameless, faceless statistical units of a group. The effects of
stereotyping on all who encounter it are similarly disturbing. It triggers their frustrations and
anxieties, feeds their fears of conspiracies, and creates a network of suspicion and scapegoating.
Given the popular stereotypes, what is more natural than seeing the Jews as responsible for
periods of economic instability, the Italians as responsible for the soaring crime rate, blacks as
responsible for the decay of the inner city, and radicals and atheists as responsible for the erosion
of traditional values and the loss of influence of organized religion. Stereotypes proved a ready
supply of simplistic answers to whatever questions happen to be plaguing us at the moment.
Nor do the Stereotypers themselves escape the rippling effects of their fixation. Indeed, they are
often its most pathetic victims. Stereotyping cuts them off from reality and cripples their
thinking. Anton Chekhov was right in observing that people are what they believe. When they
believe that others fit into neat categories, they believe a lie. In the sense in which Chekhov
spoke, they become that lie.
A good many people see all police officers as corrupt "pigs," all college professors as
impractical or misguided theorists, all sex education teachers as leering perverts, and all
advocates of nuclear disarmament as subversives. It is difficult, sometimes impossible, for such
people to deal with complex issues with such views in mind. How, for example, can people deal
sensibly with questions of Indian land claims when they see every Indian as a feathered savage
uttering bloodcurdling shrieks while burning settlers' homes and scalping women and children?
And how can people be reasonable about the issue of welfare when they see the poor as
scheming, lazy, irresponsible, filthy, immoral, wasteful, undeserving scoundrels?
AVOIDING STEREOTYPING
It is not easy to set aside stereotypes that have been in your mind since childhood, particularly if
they have been reinforced by ethnocentrism. Yet if you do not set them aside, you will never
realize your capacity for critical thinking. Stereotypes will corrupt your observation, listening,
and reading and therefore block your understanding.
Here are two tips for freeing yourself from stereotyping. First, remind yourself often that people

8. and institutions and processes seldom fit into neat categories and that critical thinking demands
that you evaluate each on what it is at the particular time and place and circumstance, not one
preconceived notions. Second, whenever you begin observing, listening, or reading, be alert for
the feeling that you needn't continue because you know what the correct judgment must be. If
that feeling occurs early in the information-gathering process, you can be reasonably sure it is a
sign of stereotyping and should be ignored.