J U S T I C E   N O W: Walls People Build Between People Humans (and other animals) are afraid of what's different. That why a young rabbit seeing a fox for the first time will run like crazy. The rabbit meets only one fox, but gets some very solid ideas about all foxes. New fox moves into the neighborhood... happens to be a vegetarian. No matter. The rabbit is going to hate and fear her 'cause the fox has been stereotyped. (That means that just one person's experience on one occasion has become some distorted version of "The Truth.") Judging people based on stereotypes is a no brainer. Because the person doing the judging is not using any brain power. You can't know anything that really matters about a person just by looking at them. We all know this stuff already, so how come we get sucked in by stereotypes? Like: skinny kids with glasses are smart. tall guys are into basketball. girls with blond hair are dense. people with red hair get angry easily. None of these makes any sense. Stop and think about it for a minute... you'll probably come up with a bunch of others that also make no sense. Stereotypes based on looks just build walls between people. Same is true about stereotypes based on nationality, religion, sexual orientation, and occupation. When you hear statements like: All Asians are... All gays are... All Muslims are... All lawyers are... All women are... All men are...   Are you automatically filling in the blank? If you are, then you've bought into a stereotype. And stereotypes are a lie because... While some things may be true for some members of every group... Nothing is true for all members of any group. As long as you believe these lies you're contributing to the walls between people and keeping the world divided, and afraid. Let's talk about stereotypes. B E Y O N D L A B E L S