Grouping is an activity that comes instinctively and automatically to people. It is part of a filtering process that allows us to make sense of our universe.

Anything can serve as criteria for grouping, but because this is a perceptual-interpretive process; differences and similarities in physical characteristics are the most prevalent. As we learn and grow, we also associate ideas and experiences with the items in our cognitive inventory.

We give values to people, places and things based on personal experience, inherited attitudes and beliefs, and assumptions. Part of our ability to form instant impressions and make immediate judgments is based upon preconception—ideas we have formed previously.

Stereotyping is the result of reaching conclusions based on limited observation or information—often inaccurate or unreliable information. The thing that really differentiates the act of grouping people from the act of stereotyping is thinking.

When grouping, you are engaged in a thinking process, perceiving and interpreting raw information, but when stereotyping you are simply calling up some predigested conclusion to save the time, effort and attention required to make an accurate and appropriate judgment.

It is called “jumping to conclusions” and it is something we do so much that we rarely even notice it. What this means for social relations is disastrous.

By assuming that we “know” what we are confronting when we encounter another human being, we actually fail to perceive that individual as a person. We not only take him or her for granted, we automatically dismiss them as being worthy of greater consideration.

The tendency to concentrate into isolated ethnic groups is a natural instinct for most people. It stems from the desire for a common identity or a desire to belong, and apparently the easiest way for a person to fit in is to not stand out.
It is an almost universal aversion to being different.

It is the differences between us that become the focus of conflict, as immature as it is. The ability to single a person out of a group gives the group power or justifies decisions that would otherwise be unjustifiable.

There are no human traits that are immune to discrimination.

Height, weight, color, sex, intelligence, class, nationality, regionality, whatever it is that makes an individual unique can be used to shut them out of the group. Racial discrimination gets a lot of attention, but what about gender-identity discrimination?

When a person who has female psychology and male anatomy acts normal (that is, dressing and acting feminine) and gets raped and or murdered, that is an example of extreme prejudice and discrimination.

The fact is, being different is enough to get a person killed. The reality is, civilization is founded on an impulse that encourages intolerance and breeds fear of individuality.

Each new generation is raised in an environment defined by lingering prejudice and emerging enlightenment, responding to the lingering injustices in positive and negative ways that inform the next generation’s prejudices.

The victims are not just disadvantaged minorities isolated from “mainstream society” in ghettoes, or resentfully integrated into “suburbia.” Most of the people in the world struggle with poverty and discrimination because poverty and discrimination tend to be self-sustaining and mutually reinforcing.

The thing most people overlook is the fact that the rich are a minority isolated from mainstream society—including the majority of individuals of their own race or ethnicity.

While this may sound like a discriminatory statement, minorities continue to struggle with the System mostly because it is not their System.

The government and industry of the United States was created by a specific group with the specific purpose of supporting and promoting their own group.

It is a privileged system and while it’s laid out on paper as ideals and laws, it is made real by people who do discriminate and are prejudiced—sometimes negatively, against people of other races or ethnic origins, but primarily positively toward their own race and ethnic group.

It is perfectly reasonable to point out this selfishness on the part of the elite, and it is not entirely enviable, but it is human.

A better system can only be created by people who hold less exclusive views of people.