2. In what way should cultural stereotypes be handled?

We use stereotypes in part because it’s so hard to take in all of the complicated information about other people in the world. It’s difficult to spend the amount of time necessary to understand why or in what different ways people behave. So instead, we learn early in our lives to accept stereotypes of groups, or individuals. We develop stereotypes not just for large cultures, but smaller ones.

Stereotypes eliminate the challenges of understanding people who are different from ourselves; they supposedly give us a general overview of whole groups of people so we know what to expect and how to act. Unfortunately, so many stereotypes are inaccurate(неточный) and are used as a method of scapegoating(козел отпущения), or to separate "their" behavior from "my" behavior. We don’t always

agree with, or like the way another cultures behave because it is different, and we therefore perceive it as wrong, and develop negative/ugly descriptions (stereotypes). When we have problems with someone of a different group, we tend to identify the problem as having to do with the group, rather than ourselves or the specific person. So stereotypes do get in the way of how we think and feel. It makes us very judgmental about others and unfortunately often erroneously so. Stereotypes prevent us from identifying the feelings that are really go on inside of us. With stereotypes, the belief will remain that someone did something to us, rather than the problem, fear, or rigidity/closed thinking being within ourselves. When

we’re stereotyping we get caught up in the issue of that’s what "they do", that’s how "those people" are, instead of being in touch with our actual feelings of hurt, confusion, being slighted, left-out, anger, etc.