Just a few nights before I returned to sunny Hanover to spend my entire summer entrenched in the quagmire of academia, I was fortunate enough to be privy to something that I found both odd and quite normal at the same time. It was only odd because I had never noticed the phenomenon first-hand prior to then, but at the same time it was logically consistent with what I had come to accept as fact while growing up in the city. What occurred was a simple act of neglect; a taxicab driver refused to pick up a group of passengers after letting me off near a train station at around 2:00 in the morning. It also should be noted that the would-be passengers involved were a family of four.
Many may be wondering why I interrupt my usual brunch of a 90 cent bagel and Hop cappuccino to set forth this piece of seemingly irrelevant information. Would my motives become any more apparent were I to state that the people left stranded on the curb by a selective cabby were African-American? There is a law in New York City which states that at any time, a licensed taxi is obliged to take a party wherever that party chooses to go within the legal limits of the city. I am not going to appear naive and say that a taxi driver's right to self-preservation should not prohibit him from rejecting blatantly threatening fares, like a large group of armed teenagers. However, it would also appear naive to think that in the case in question, those people were denied access to a cab ride simply because of their race
Scenes like the one I just mentioned make apparent on an almost daily basis not only the problem of prejudice against certain races, but the societal plague of stereotyping in general. Too often, people are quick to judge others due to a superfluous set of criteria when they are not in a position to judge at all. This condition usually springs from preferences born of some sort of experiential learning, whether it be learning somewhat skewed values of those around oneself during childhood, or rather the more popular phenomenon of projecting the characteristics of one individual onto that individual's entire group. Humans should be able to easily overcome these handicaps through the unique faculty of reason, but it is much easier simply to not.
Stereotyping exists in all possible places, and most of us are guilty of it. For instance, many Dartmouth undergraduates choose to rush fraternities and sororities in the fall of their second years here. I chose to join a fraternity, as did roughly half of all males in my class; a similar number of females chose to join sororities. I am in a position to state that being in a fraternity has changed nothing about myself or my friends except for the number of people we know and our proximity to alcohol (the effects of that can be debated). However, whenever I leave my room wearing my letters I feel almost as if I am branded, and whether I acknowledge it or not, people are either consciously or subconsciously grouping me with their present idea of my fraternity or fraternities in general. I am sure that many others have felt the same way at some point. How many times have I heard someone say something to the effect of "yes, he's in that fraternity, but he's really nice," or "every single girl in that sorority is snobby... except her and her and, of course, her..."
Statements like the previous ones are evidently ridiculous. Akin to these would be the idea that since one out of every four African-American males spends some time in jail at one point or another, the other 75 percent are equally likely to become criminals, regardless of socioeconomic status or general well-being. As absurd as it seems, I used to live in a neighborhood in Brooklyn that almost entirely espoused this view, presumably from ignorance. Grouping and classifying individuals exists in many forms, none less egregious than any other. Simply because people voluntarily join Coed Fraternity Sorority organizations does not make stereotyping them any more valid; it actually becomes less valid, because no ties or similarities can be forged between our species that are stronger than any present in nature.
To judge an acquaintance as lacking certain qualities because of the letters he or she wears is just as wrong as to deny someone a job due to physical characteristics, or for a cab driver to show nothing but his rear bumper to a man, a woman and two children looking for a ride home on an uncomfortably warm night. Just because something is foreign does not mean that it is inferior; this fact seemingly contradicts the reality of many of the social constructs that most of us have had a hand in creating. As students, we have all been accepted into Dartmouth on the basis that each of us has certain qualities that give us the potential to add greatly to the community. As Homo Sapiens, we all have an exactly equal right to use and preserve both our planet, and the societies contained therein. Let us once again begin to think and act rationally and, consequently, to celebrate diversity. It should not be difficult to be an individual.
