All Stereotypes Are True Essay

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To the editor of Psychology Today,

As a youth that has had the opportunity to grow up in diverse overseas environments I wish to provide some perspective with regard to an article recently posted on your website. The article titled “All Stereotypes Are True, Except…I: What are Stereotypes?” provided a new and broad-brush explanation of stereotypes, or a stereotype about stereotypes. The article goes into depth regarding stereotypes and why they may not be all that bad, a stark contrast to the widely accepted statement that the majority of stereotypes are harmful. Although the article provides some compelling points it seems to miss one fundamental idea, the idea that we shouldn’t be stereotyping stereotypes because it just doesn’t work, …show more content…
Firstly, that gives too much credit to the racists who believe that all Muslims are terrorists or that all Americans are gun wielding fanatic patriots. As well, that statement would only be true if all stereotypes were rooted in some sort of statistical base but that doesn’t seem to be the case. I would argue that stereotypes are often created or used to justify actions by or against minority groups and almost never rooted in true statistical studies. For example, the stereotype that all Muslims are terrorists, which may seem ridiculous to most people, is widely believed by not only the southland of my country but in many regions around the world. Following your prescribed method for the creation of stereotypes it would mean that at least 51% of all Muslims around the world would have to be terrorists and considering there are roughly 1.5 billion adherents to the “Muslim Faith” it seems unlikely. In fact, it would mean that 750 million people around the world are terrorists or roughly 11% of the world’s population. This may have been quite an extreme example it still proves the flaws in the argument, that making broad brush statements about stereotypes is plainly
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