Break The Stereotype

I regularly, or regly as my 3 year old says, have to watch video for my job. It's one of my responsibilities. This morning, I was given a brief description of a person of interest to watch for. Let me stop here for a minute.

1) Try to remember as many details as possible if you want someone else to pick a person out of a crowd.
2) After about three hours of video, everyone starts to look the same.

Now back to the real reason I'm typing this...

The videos I watch don't have sound and you all look really funny when you're sped up 16x, but I have noticed something. We allow ourselves to be stereotyped. We have a lot of stereotypes in the south; we're slow, overweight, using food stamps, are uneducated...the list goes on. We stereotype others a lot here, too.

I've watched one hour of video. That's right, 60 measly minutes. In that hour I've seen people portraying the stereotype they so desperately want to break away from. I'm beginning to question if they really do. I've seen the Hispanic family of 15, including grandmother; the pretentious older white couple, who I'm sure has money because they look at you like you don't; the black family on food stamps with the overwhelmingly rowdy kids; the obese woman that walks straight for an electric cart, then gets angry that they're all in use.

The point of all of this is; if you don't want me to stereotype you, *and I do because it's part of my job, you should break the mold. Don't leave it there to shape your children.


*Part of what I do is watching people. I would say that 9 times out of 10, I'm pretty damn right about a person, at least what they portray to me. It's my job to be able to pick the suspicious from the every day Joe that just walked through my doors.