Stereotypes: A Short Story
We all harbour biases that we do not consciously notice, that manifest very subtly in our language and our behaviour. We may sit further away from a person of a different skin colour, or hurl spiteful words at someone who is physically disparate—basically, we shun away those who are different from the majority.
And I was guilty of this. It was during a church initiative to help the under-privileged that opened my eyes to the truth behind how I let my prejudices dictate my actions. My classmate, Jane, and I were assigned by the church coordinator to escort Mr Foo home and help him with his food ration bags. Mr Foo was an inexplicable man. A tiny dwarf, he had nearly transparent ears protruding from his bloated face in a rodent-like manner and
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His voice transcended that day’s monotony to make it a new journey of sounds. It was as if he had a different tongue that spoke with soft, musical undertones. It was then did I realise Mr Foo was just like any other normal person. He was us : he had the same fears, hope and love for life. I was reminded of this saying, “the moment a little boy was concerned with which was a jay and which was a sparrow, he could no longer see the birds or hear them sing.” Like the little boy, I became too concerned about the physical appearance of Mr Foo that I failed to understand his true personality and character. I finally learnt the truth behind how I had unknowingly “categorized” Mr Foo and labelled him as a “misfit of society”, triggering the unpleasant reality of myself making assumptions without fully understanding the other party. That encounter with Mr Foo made me realise that this ideology of what people viewed “normal” to be needed to be broken, so that people like Mr Foo could be included in our society.
There was no doubt: prejudice was easy, prejudice was inevitable. But developing those prejudices would dictate the way we treated those different from us, and we hurt them as well as limit ourselves as a result. I took a long time to recognise that the truth behind harbouring a biased perspective of the world made virtually everything black and white, with no room at all for shades of grey. But the world was not colured in black and white. In fact, it was tinged in hues of colour that would take me more than a lifetime to
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