Concept of Stereotyping

When I first got to the United States, I did not have any deep experience about the U.S. and about Americans. However, now I feel like I have gotten much more knowledge than I expected to have. Everyday when I walk in the streets heading my English school, I get new images and thoughts about people and what kinds of people they are. Even though sometimes I keep seeing the same behaviors, I cannot judge all people according to some sights. Actually, if I wanted to judge, I would judge the exact person which means without generalization. Judging a big number of people is unfair; for example, when I judge an Asian person as a math lover, I judge 3.7 billion persons as math lovers. This is quite wrong because this is a very big number of people and all those people do not necessarily love math.

The concept of stereotyping in a small number of Americans sometimes is exaggerating and generalizing since these people’s minds are controlled by many ideas that they might be right, but they must be restricted in a small group of people, not necessarily all people. However, others understand the right definition of stereotyping and deal with it in the right way.

During our first semester here in the U.S., some of my friends and I have rarely faced some challenges in defending ourselves as Saudi students from many wrong ideas, such as being wealthy, living in tents, riding camels, and being a terrorist. This stereotype gathers 30 million persons under one definition; therefore, it is definitely a wrong stereotyping. In fact, all these previous ideas are not real except for richness, for we can observe rich people in every country. In my opinion, those people who stereotype others according to news, talks, or movies should realize that they might be stereotyped as people with simple controllable minds. The only guaranteed way to judge people is to know about them more than us.