References to Text

Stereotyping also occurs within Genesis, and Judges. A modern text to compare these texts to is Breakfast Club where it shows similar situations. In Genesis the LORD said "The outrage of Sodom and Gomorrah is so great, and their sin so gave! I will go down to see whether they have acted altogether accordingly to the outcry that has reached me; if not, I will take note." (18:20-21) Here is an example of God stereotyping and generalizing the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and believing that everyone within these cities is evil and corrupt. However, Abraham tries to defend these cities by saying "Will you sweep away the innocent along with the guilty? What if there should be fifty innocent within the city; will you then wipe out the place and not forgive it for the sake of the innocent fifty who are in it?" (18:23-25) Here Abraham is trying to convince God not to destroy the cities for the sake of a few people that are innocent in it. Abraham is obviously not stereotyping the cities because he knows that everyone there isn't bad and there are good people there.

In the book of Judges the tribes of Israel wage war against Gibeah and the tribe of Benjamin because of what happened to a Levite. In Judges the text says "But this is what we will d to Gibeah, we will wage war against it according to lot" (20:9). The tribes of Israel assume that every single member of Gibeah is evil and commits sin. Similar to the Genesis story, the attacker of the city assumes that every single person in the city is evil and nobody is good. This is stereotyping the city because they are generalizing it for what they believe happened. There are also echo phrase to connect Judges and Genesis which is "for all the outrage it has committed in Israel" (20:10; 18:20). Here it is assumed that the certain tribe (every single member of it) has committed the sin, where not every single member has.

Breakfast Club by John Hughes attempts to address the problem of stereotypes. He includes five different types of people that do not seem similar but in the end of the movie they each prove that they are very similar in many ways. The brain could be a rebel, and the jock could also be a rebel. The principal of the movie (Mr. Vernon) stereotypes each student to see what he wants to see of them and assumes everything about them. In the end note of the movie, the brain writes to the principal "You see us as you want to see us. In the simplest terms, and the most convenient definitions. But what we found is that each one of us is a brain, and an athlete, and a basket case, a princess, and a criminal." This shows that if you take the time out to talk to somebody, your perceptions of them will be different and what you thought of them could be not true.

How Can Stereotyping Be Fixed

The only way that you could change somebodies perception of you is if you do actions other than what they think you should do. For example, if you are elderly you could try to go to the gym or on a walk to show that you are not weak. Stereotyping is impossible to be fixed with everyone but it can be reduced if you bring people together. When people begin to listen to each other's stories and begin to see that the person is not how they perceived they will begin to stereotype people less and know they should talk to the person before they judge. This will lead to an improved perception of society and people. An example of this is in the movie Breakfast Club, where we see five different teens that have stereotyped each other to be things they want to see such as the rebel, jock, etc. However, after they have a discussion with each other they see that each person is not who they perceived to be in the first place and became closer with each other. Another way to fix people's perception of other people is for educators to teach students how stereotyping could turn out to be false and your assumption of that person is completely wrong. It is impossible to completely destroy the problem with stereotypes but attempting to fix the problem by bringing people together and educating people will greatly eliminate a large portion of the people who stereotype.

What is a Stereotype

According to Wikipedia, stereotype is defined as "A widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing". This belief of the fixed image of a person or thing could be false. People do this when they do not know about a person and they want to classify them into something that they want, for example, an interviewer could classify a person by the way that he is dressed and from that point will view his interview subject in a different way.