Letting Go of Stereotypes

There is a tendency in our society today to give everybody a label and categorize everybody as part of a specific group, and that’s how we identify people.

So, when we encounter people from a specific group, the sum of the encounters with people from that group forms our opinions about that group.  This then becomes our expectation when we meet new members of that group. We form a stereotype.

As a young mechanical engineering student from Germany, I had the opportunity to do an internship in South Africa in 1980, while racial segregation was still the law in that country.  I went there with a lot of pre-conceived ideas thinking that the problems of that country were very simple and easy to solve. If everybody would just ignore skin color, things would work out just fine.  The situation was a lot more complex and complicated than I ever imagined.  South Africa is a world in a country not only because of its geographic diversity but also with a tremendous ethnic and cultural diversity.  People from many parts of the world have migrated there over the centuries.  While I was there in the city of Paarl in the Western Cape Province during my internship, I had the opportunity to live and work with people of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds.  And I saw certain traits and cultural norms being more dominant in some ethnic groups than in others.  My exposure to the various groups helped me to overcome some prejudices about people, as those prejudices were not consistent with what I saw in the people I got to know.  However, I must admit that at the same time, I also developed stereotypes for ethnic groups that I had never been much exposed to before.

Thankfully, when I came to the US as an exchange student a couple of years later, I became close friends with people from the same ethic group about which I had developed a negative stereotype.  Their personality and character traits were just the opposite of what I had experienced before.  This taught me to never assume that all people are a certain way just because of their ethnic or cultural background.

Stereotypes can go both ways. A few years ago, I encountered a family from Germany who we wanted to help settle in America.  Based on what I was told about the family but also to a large degree based on their background I had very high expectations in respect to work ethic, cleanliness, quality mindedness and so on.  I had associated all those traits with a craftsman cabinet maker from a small rural town in Germany.  But they completely disappointed me.  They met none of my expectations which were based on a stereotype albeit positive in this case. 

It is natural that we tend to trust people more if they have similar backgrounds as we do.  We have stereotypes of how people are when they are of our nationality, ethnic background or other group association.  But it is not rational. 

What I learned is that I need to let go of my stereotypes and consider each person as an individual rather than a member of a group.  This leaves me open to get to know a person for who they are without having the preconceived notion on how they must be based on the group they are part of.  We are limiting ourselves if we put people in a pigeonhole, we can close ourselves off to potentially great relationships.

Even though there are cultural differences between people and certain characteristics may be more dominant in some cultures than in others, each person is different, and some do not fit the mold we try to put them in at all.

Letting go of stereotypes helps us to see people more objectively, more clearly.  It opens our minds to develop relationships with people where there could have been a barrier before.  Group think on the other hand creates an “us vs. them” mentality and pride which take away our objectivity and create barriers with people we could have had a very good relationship with.  As Martin Luther King Jr. said in his famous “I have a dream” speech, ideally, we judge a person based on the content of their character.

The best part of letting go of stereotypes for me personally has been finding the love of my life from across the globe and to get married to her despite of our different national origins.  We had an instant meeting of the minds to a degree I had never experienced before.  Our two boys who were born in the US to a Canadian mother and German father have triple citizenship.  Some people might think that is confusing, but when I asked our older son at the age of three “Are you an American?”, he said “No!”, then I asked “Are you Canadian?”, again he said “No!”, so I asked “Are you German?” and again he said “No!”.  So, I asked, “Well, what are you then?”.  Emphatically and with confidence he said: “I am David!”  I think he understood back then what the Apostle Paul wrote in his letter to the Philippians:  [Philippians 3:20 NKJV]  “… our citizenship is in heaven…”.

Letting go of stereotypes may be easier if we understand that love has no boundaries because the one who created us all is love!  [1Jo 4:8 NKJV] “He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.”

Questions to ask yourself:

·         What stereotypes have I developed in my own mind?

·         Do I tend to pigeonhole people based on their background or just a very superficial knowledge of or about them?

·         Have I built walls in my mind that have kept good people away from me just because they were from a different group or background?

·         Am I quick to blame a certain group for something that a member of that group may have done?

·         Am I more tolerant of the shortcomings of a person who I consider “one of us” than if that person is “one of them”?

·         Am I quick to judge people as “guilty by association”?

© On Eagles Wings, LLC