If an officer hears gunshots. Someone is laying there bleeding. And 3 people are fleeing the scene in 3 different directions. The cop doesn't have time to have a coin toss tournament to randomly decide who to chase to possibly catch the perpetrator. (We will assume his partner is tending to the victim but the victim is unable to respond.)
One direction you have a white male running away, one direction an African American woman, and in another direction an Asian woman.
The cop using stereotypes would be best to chase the white male if he had to randomly just choose one. Stereotype that the white male is likelier the suspect because gun violence is overwhelming committed by males.
Could this be wrong? Hell yes it could be wrong. Which is why if stereotyping you should be doing so based on data that supports the stereotype and also not assume it is correct either. It can be used as a basis, but not as an absolute.
If someone commits a tech crime. And the suspects are a cheerleader, a special needs student, and the chess champion /computer gamer. Gonna stereotype the gamer as the first lead to go on.
If choosing a team of people at the Y for pickup basketball and you know absolutely no one, you are picking completely on stereotypes. I am going absolutely with the tall dudes, African American dudes, and the not fat dudes.
Sorry, but at that point you are playing the odds. Can this burn you hard? Absolutely. For all you know, you just picked a ton of weakass players based on preconceptions that were wrong. However, you are also using a stereotype based on data. NBA and top college players are overwhelmingly not fat, tall, and African American.
If a business is burglarized in a city where most crime is overwhelming committed by skinhead gangs, I am looking for a skinhead based on stereotypes formed based on that data.
You should never assume this is absolutely correct but you can make estimations based on data available. You should make sure your data is valid, somewhat applicable, and that you do not go to far with the stereotype.
Like, if you shoot that white male in example 1 because "white males commit the most gun violence so I assumed he had a gun" that is too far. It has to make sense also.
Stereotypes do not have to be inherently bad. They just can be very wrong and make an ass out of you when you create them and try to make them have to be correct.
Like, if you pick a bunch of African American kids on your basketball team and they suck. You can't go berating them for being a failure to their race for not being good at basketball. I mean, that's obviously not an applicable stereotype and just racist stereotype.
But the result of this is if you are a black man, you are always going to be suspect #1. Your whole life everytime you are near an incident you are going to be the top suspect. Are you okay with society treating an innocent person this way?
I feel if that's how it's going to be he should at least be entitled to compensation, since police are employed by the state after all. ---
September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013 Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!