Some who have seen earlier messages from me on the UUS-L may recall that I have proposed working toward a world in which the group with which children are taught to identify is all of humanity. In such a world, for example, the power of empathy could not serve to support separatism as it now sometimes does, but only to vitiate objectives of narrowly defined economic and political advantage. I am not confident I know how to get there, but humanistic religion seems to be a reasonable vehicle to ride in, on the journey. And I am confident that stereotyping will play no role in moving us in the right direction, whatever that turns out to be. That, to me, is patent nonsense.
Stereotypes simply have no other use than such discrimination.
Stereotypes do not inhere in the persons who are classified, they exist in the mind of the classifier. Yet the catalog of an individual's character is so much richer than the traits on which prejudicial judgements are made that attributing significance to them is an admission of the failure of judgement. I am not immune to being prejudiced. I automatically act warily in the presence of anyone holding a weapon, or driving an automobile, or making a speech. When I find myself thinking with them, I mentally wash my mind out with soap.