I suppose stereotyping has been around about as long as the human experience. The disease is still alive and well, and there’s plenty of proof, particularly on Facebook.
The first explanation I can recall about stereotyping was a friend picking up a leaf, thrusting it in front of my face and declaring, “This is a leaf. All leaves are like this.”
Of course, even at my tender age, I knew that wasn’t true. I was aware there were many kinds, shapes and colors of leaves on this planet. Yet such preposterous statements about entire races, nationalities and even generations of people we don’t even know continue to thrive in these modern times when we’re supposed to know better.
My daily interactions with Facebook, where I routinely resume my love-hate relationship, have shown me most recently some good examples of the stubbornly persistence of stereotyping. The latest evidence the disease hasn’t been conquered is the incredible notion that an entire generation of young Americans is engaged in the stupid activity of consuming Tide Pods or shoving condoms up their nose and down their throat.
Some people want to insist this is “a thing,” this an epidemic.
Even worse, some want to turn that into a political statement, like the one shown above. Their illogical argument is that silly teen-agers who march in protest against assault-style weapons cannot be taken seriously because they do dumb things such eat Tide Pods or shove rubbers down their throats.
I’m willing to bet a tidy sum that the much-despised David Hogg and Emma Gonzales have not been guilty of engaging in either activity. And I’m willing to bet at least a senior citizen’s cup of coffee at McDonald’s that the number of millennials or teen-agers who done such silly and perhaps dangerous things is a tiny fraction of the actual numbers of such young people.
Stereotyping young people we don’t like is about as smart as suggesting all Baby Boomers were hippies who marched against the Vietnam War and smoked pot, or suggesting that all black people like watermelon and fried chicken, are good dancers and are good basketball players.
I once coached a black baseball pitcher who flatly stated to me back in 1977, “You white folks got me all wrong. I don’t like watermelon. I like Big Macs.”
President Donald Trump too often likes to suggest that Mexicans are rapists, drug dealers and bad hombres, which brings on suspicions that he is racist.
Right-wingers love to characterize liberals as clueless snowflakes, appeasers and having a poor grasp of reality. Lefties too often paint pictures of poor, rural folks as white trash knuckle-draggers of low intelligence. Yeah, both sides do it, as suggested by the Great Divide that now plagues our modern American society. Trump did not cause it, but he certainly brought it onto the front burner.
My message to the Facebook conduits of cancerous vitriol is that first, I do not believe even 1% of millennials eat Tide Pods or snort condoms, and second, I have met quite a few of them who give me hope that they won’t fall for this bullshit distraction and give America a real chance to be truly great again.