3: Stereotyping: Avoiding the Little Murders

A few years ago I was the evaluator for a National Coalition Building Institute workshop on racism. I’d been involved in diversity-type activities for many years and, though this one was quite intense, it followed the general pattern of leading participants toward a greater understanding of themselves and the nature of their racially oriented attitudes and behaviors. The participants were 120 freshmen at George Mason University, in their first weeks of college—basically, 18-year-old students straight out of high school.

At one point in the workshop, the students were asked to reflect on cultural groups of which they were members, to think of incidents in which they were stereotyped and recall how they reacted. Each one remembered—vividly—a time when they were judged incorrectly, and their response. While I had intellectually accepted the idea that stereotyping is human nature, witnessing these students’ frustration and anger made it real. Everyone—every last student, no matter whether they were White males or people of color—felt they were often misunderstood by outsiders.